Tag: Food

Life in France

Comfort food

Plate of the day
Plate of the day

One morning last week I happened to look out the kitchen window just as a couple of our neighbors from the end of the street were passing by. They were clearly on the way to the market, rolling cart in tow, but stopped long enough for a quick chat. Francis told me that they were going to buy the ingredients for a choucroute that his wife, Isabelle, always made at this time of year. That word sounded familiar and it only took a minute to pull out an ad that we had saved from our favorite bistrot promoting their 10 euro/dollar plate of the day: Choucroute-charcutière. Continue reading “Comfort food”

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Life in France

Winter blooms

Traditional winter blooms at the base of the war memorial
Traditional winter blooms at the base of the war memorial

Former Carcassonne residents Tracy and Alan, whose “An Italian Point of View” blog we follow (link in the right column), told us that although the streets here might seem deserted if the weather is bad, as soon as the sun comes out, so do the people. That was definitely the case last weekend when the city seemed to come alive after being cooped up for several days running. Continue reading “Winter blooms”

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Life in France

Christmas bonus

The bouquet on our table
The bouquet on our table

Last Saturday we were invited for dinner at the home of one of our neighbors on our “old” street; that is, where the rental house is located vs. the “new” street where we’ve bought a house. Of course those terms are both relative when you live someplace where the castle has been defending the land for about 1000 years or so. The first gathering we had attended like this was just two weeks after we moved to France and those invitations with the resulting fun evenings haven’t stopped. But this was going to be different since it was Christmas Eve and we’d read about the Réveillon, a feast often served after midnight mass. We were going to need some extra sleep! Continue reading “Christmas bonus”

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Life in France

Close to home

Onions by the 5 kilogram sack
Onions by the 5 kilogram sack

Although I grew up in a city in Virginia with twice the population of Carcassonne, we still weren’t that far from the farms that produced a lot of the food we ate. Leisurely Sunday afternoon drives would take us out into the country where our parents could buy vegetables that had been picked that morning and we could have them for dinner that night. I remember as a child being overwhelmed by the huge burlap sacks holding 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of peanuts, standing taller than I did at the time. Recently, although our backpacks weren’t quite that heavy (but felt that way), we did bring back from the market a woven bag of 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of onions. At a cost of only 1.49 euros for that entire sack, it was hard to pass up. Continue reading “Close to home”

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Life in France

A matter of taste

Texmex, pizza, and beer
Texmex, pizza, and beer

Across the street from where we often catch the city bus is a restaurant that advertises “Tex Mex” in two large signs on the front of their building. We haven’t eaten there yet but we are intrigued to see how one of our favorite meals is translated 8000 kilometers (5000 miles) from Dallas. Much closer than a transatlantic flight, as in a short walk that we take every week or so, is a grocery store that sent us a catalog entitled Taste of America featuring products that they associated with the country where we grew up. This was going to make for interesting reading to see how an international supermarket chain, based in Germany, was going to label and promote to a French audience what they considered representative of the USA. Continue reading “A matter of taste”

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Life in France

Not like I recall

A very fit and trim Père Noêl
A very fit and trim Père Noêl

This time of year was always fun growing up because lots of Christmas catalogs would arrive and you could spend hours sorting through all the latest toys, games, and all the other items you never knew you wanted. As an adult in our fantasy land called France, it’s really no different except that the amusements that now catch our eye are likely to be centered around food and drink but it’s still fun to peruse all of these catalogues de Noël looking for everything we didn’t know existed, seems unusual, or we just don’t recall ever having seen before. Continue reading “Not like I recall”

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Life in France

Fill in the blanks

No blanks to fill in this castle wall
No blanks to fill in this castle wall

It will be a long time before Bill and I speak French well enough that there aren’t pauses between thoughts while we search for words. Luckily, the French seem to be very skilled at filling in the blanks both in real life and in what we see on television. In an effort to increase our knowledge of the language, we watch game shows with the subtitles turned on since that doubles our chances of connecting the words we hear with those same words we see on the screen. In programs with names like Slam, Don’t Forget the Lyrics, and Questions for a Champion, there are dozens of blanks to fill in daily, some of which we’re starting to understand ourselves. Continue reading “Fill in the blanks”

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