We had a robot delivered last month. In the US you might think of it as a multi-function kitchen machine but here everyone just calls it a robot and we don’t even have to pronounce the “t”. As you can see from the photo, this is not just your standard food processor, but oh so much more. Just as those “but wait, there’s more” television commercials tell you, it slices, dices, chops, and juliennes. It’s a blender, a mixer, a grinder, and a juicer. Where is it all going to fit?
At first glance, you might think that every retail store in town is going out of business. There’s hardly a shop window in Carcassonne now that doesn’t have what I thought was an oddly-cheerful “sold” sign in the window. Twice a week the advertisements that fill our mailbox currently carry that same message as do the emails we receive from the supermarket we go to when we can’t find something at the open air market. Panic? Not at all when you take a word we recognize like “sold” and add the two letters “es” to the end to get the French word meaning SALES! Continue reading “Sold(es) out”
That blog post title sounds like the name of a romance novel, doesn’t it? You may have read an earlier post about how we got to know our mailman simply because for a month we were waiting daily for him to deliver our appointment letters from the French immigration office. We don’t get very much paper mail since most of our communication is electronic so it’s quite the event when there’s actually something in our box. That was the case two days ago when we found an announcement about a jazz singer that would be appearing in one of the two Irish pubs in town. Continue reading “The postman’s wife”
This post’s title is what I used, just for fun, to search websites for the French equivalent of America’s Johnny Appleseed. It’s my rough translation, but essentially it’s meant to be John(y) Seed of Cherry since at this time of year they seem to be everywhere. The search led me to numerous newspaper articles about seed-spitting contests, a singer named Jean who wrote and performed “Love is a cherry” and a wood carver named Jean who makes tiny sculptures from the seeds. As interesting as all that was it still didn’t explain why so many vendors at the market have this luscious fruit available. Continue reading “Jean Graine de Cerise”
We were invited for dinner to the home of someone that we had only recently met. Over the years we’ve had many meals at the homes of French friends where we were staying but this was the first time that we were “on our own” so to speak. The questions came pouring into our minds about what to wear, what to take, what time to show up, what utensils would we use first, and the all-important: what are they going to serve? I thought you might enjoy reading about this authentic and really fun evening in a French home. Continue reading “What’s for dinner?”
For over 3 months we’ve gone past this church at least twice a day to pick up a fresh baguette, go to the market, drop off some glass bottles for recycling, or just to take a walk. There’s not a sign on the front to identify it and the door has always been closed so we’ve often wondered about its history. On Monday we were headed over to the main square when we stopped in our tracks because the door was open. Naturally we had to go inside. Continue reading “Photo op”
After over 700 years we could probably all use a bit of refreshing to our faces and that’s exactly what’s happening in Carcassonne this summer. The façades that we’re talking about here are for many of the buildings located inside what used to be the walled lower city laid out in 1260. According to the city’s tourist office, few structures survived the fire of 1355 but there are many examples of mansions, shops, and apartments from the 17th and 18th centuries when the textile industry rivaled only the King for power, that today are getting some help. Continue reading “We’re getting a facelift”
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