Teach, eat, sleep, repeat

I have been eating like the very hungry caterpillar!

After three weeks of composing an entry on Food both in my head and in a draft on here, I've decided to go ahead and post part of it and do another one as ideas occur.

Food has been on my brain a lot lately; I've just been really hungry. Not sure why. Perhaps the two main reasons are:

1. I just read Julia Child's My Life in France

2. I made my kids watch The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Actually, this morning, my last two classes watched the movie. I have been sick and even missed work yesterday. I just found out, however, that Luc DANIEL (conseilleur pédagogique) and Lydie MORANGE (resident crazy french lady at the inspection academique who is most of the time incredibly useless and waited until december to provide useful information about registering with the office of immigration, getting social security, and other slightly necessary to-dos) will observe my classes next week at Marcel Pagnol, so it seemed best that I should work this Friday in order to make sure those kids can say some English words come next Thursday.

Anywho, my morning school is Jules Verne, which is also, I have to say, my least favorite. Why? The kids are pretty bad. They talk constantly; they don't listen. They've probably retained the least of all my kids at all my schools.

This morning, however, my least favorite class (M. LeCompte's) at my least favorite school surprised the hell out of me. They remembered the words for fruit that we have been doing. They watched the movie with rapt attention and responded when I paused and asked them to repeat what the narrator was saying en Anglais!! It was just great. After the movie, with just a little prompting, they raised their hands and told me the story as it progressed. And they remembered it! It really made my day...

...especially since I've been run down and tired since last Friday, which finally resulted in a sore throat and slight fever this Tuesday. After lots of rest on Wednesday and Thursday, I'm feeling better, although my throat's still sore, and I'm still a bit tired. I really can't imagine being a full-time elementary school teacher. At least in France, it's pretty acceptable to call in sick. They don't seem to be as caught up in working-at-all-costs. Rather, if you're ill, you should take the time off to rest and keep others well too.

Soo, On y va! La nourriture! (Let's go! The food!)

I recently finished reading Julia Child's book My Life in France, which my mom sent me for Christmas. The book is fabulous; it's well-written and interesting, and it paints a beautiful portrait of France, particularly from the culinary point of view. Additionally, Julia Child herself is fascinating. She loved food but had no real background in it before coming to France. She enrolled in the Cordon Bleu in Paris and learned the basics of cooking, from there she took it upon herself to sample and create anything and everything having to do with French cooking. But above all, the best thing about Mrs. Child was her attitude. Even in her book, written in her 90s, she positively exudes life. She was passionate about food and had unabated energy. The book is worth reading simply for her outlook.

The book also made me very hungry and wish I had Julia Child around to cook French cuisine for me. Unfortunately, I don't, and I can't really afford to eat out every night in order to sample the minutiae of French food. I do, however, have some commentary on food and grocery shopping and just plain old shopping.

Here are some moments as a eater and shopper in France:

1. Cheese -- one of the first things I bought upon my return to France was Camembert cheese. Camembert is one of those cheeses that takes a little getting used to, especially if your idea of cheese is mild American cheddar (or worse, American cheese). It makes your whole refrigerator stink and has a funny-textured rind. But it is absolutely delicious.

In France, cheese is consumed after the main course, usually with fruit. Most cheese that you buy even suggests that you remove it from the fridge at the start of the meal in order for it to warm to room temperature and thus reach its flavor-potential.

I'm trying to buy a new cheese on each grocery expedition. It's difficult not to buy the same things that I know that I love, but living here is an adventure. And, yes, even buying cheese qualifies as an adventure. I have no real basis for selection, so I just find one that says "Special Offer!" and go for it. Recently this ignorant purchasing procured Saint Marcellin, a cheese which came in a package as two small 80g rounds. It appeared to be a softer cheese, but I didn't know how soft! Each round was in its own plastic ramekin, not just nice packaging, but a preventative measure against the mess it makes. At room temperature Saint Marcellin practically melts. It's quite good and very creamy, but rich. Who knows if I know what I'm doing, but I ate it with bread, which was delicious. The strangest cheese I've tried recently, also on sale at Carrefour, is Gouda with Cumin seed in it. I'm pretty sure it's actually a Dutch cheese, but it's pretty good. The cumin gives the cheese an interesting kind of round spicy taste. I don't have any kind of master palate, so that's the best description I can give!

Interesting fact: there are traditionally 4 or 5 hundred types of French cheeses, but to-date one can find over 1000!

camembert

2. Chocolate - It is a fact, not an opinion, that chocolate in Europe is better than chocolate in the United States. Now, many of you who know me well know that I do not like chocolate. And it's true that when I was a kid and in school, I didn't like chocolate. It gave me headaches and left a bitter taste in my mouth. My mom and sister LOVE chocolate, but I never really knew what all the fuss was about. I did like Reeses and Snickers, usually because of the ingredients other than chocolate. Now, I'm about to sound like a snob, but bear with me: I love chocolate in Europe. In fact, around November, I started to crave it like a crazy person. I actually bought a bar of chocolate when I went grocery shopping. I don't think I've ever in my entire life bought a bar of chocolate. I'm serious. I went through that bar and bought another. What was wrong with me?? It did taste better, but I've never been big on sweets in general. It was a mystery.

Then I went to Germany and hung out with Franzi to whom I mentioned my bizarre cravings. According to her, a lot of people crave chocolate around November because they start missing the sun. The chocolate gives you the endorphins that help you feel better when you're lacking sunlight. I consider this a full endorsement of eating as much chocolate as I like. She's right, though, and the lack of sun is totally depressing.

3. Fruit - Produce, due to our shrinking world, seems to be pretty universal. But I've had the opportunity to try some things here that I may not have tried at home.

Most boringly, apples. At home, every fall, I look forward to McIntosh Apples. Not the computer, though I love my mac too... McIntosh Apples are also a real fruit, and one of my favorite. Wikipedia says they originated in Canada. They're small, red, and crispy. The insides are very white, and McIntosh have a sweet tartness. Delicious. This fall, I discovered the European near-equivalent, Elstar. The texture is very similar, although the skin has more green in it, and they might be a little sweeter. They were so good that I kept buying them past season, which resulted in some very disappointing lunches.

Franzi has introduced me to a couple fruits that probably exist at home, but I would never think to buy and try them. One of these she called a "Sharon" fruit, which took me over a year and a half to identify as a Persimmon. Both names are nice, and perhaps you've tried it. It's very sweet and has a really strange texture: it's kind of like a very firm tomato. Also, I just read that there is medical precaution against eating the fruit unripened, apparently it can

"contain the soluble tannin, shibuol, which, upon contact with a weak acid, polymerizes in the stomach and forms a gluey coagulum that can affix with other stomach matter. The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy notes that consumption of persimmons has been known to cause bezoars that require surgery in over 90% of cases." Interesting. haha.

The second fruit was something I ate over Christmas at the Roth's; it is called Physalis fruit. It is small with a husk and also kind of looks like a tomato, a orange cherry tomato. It's sweet, kind of like a berry. I also bought some when I was in the Netherlands, and we maturely referred to them as the Syphilis fruit.

physalis fruit

4. The French celebrate Epiphany on January 6 with a cake called gallette des rois, king cake. Like the King Cakes during Mardi Gras, there is a small trinket inside and whoever receives that piece is king for the day. I guess I should say the Mardi Gras cake is like French gallette, surely the Louisianan tradition comes from the French, non? Mme. Goupille, whom I think I am allowed to call by her first name, Geraldine, made one for Epiphany and brought it to Marcel Pagnol. It was flaky like a pastry and had a kind of almond paste in the middle; it was, of course, buttery and delicious. It was also a mess; I struggled not to spill any crumbs and watched in sheer astonishment as none of the female teachers dropped a single flake of the cake! However, the men were not so neat, and I was glad because I made a little bit of a mess. Just a little.

That's all on food for now. It's the weekend, and I plan to do a lot of sleeping. My body is still telling me it's not entirely well, which is a shame since I just got back into the habit of running... c'est la vie!

Oh, and a final moment in the life a Teachair:

I mentioned that I missed the first Monday of school after winter vacation. The next day, some of my kids were asking where I had been. J'avais mal à la tête - I had a headache, I said. One audacious little CE1 at Jacques Prévert (who, I will add, never NEVER pays attention, at all.) said to me Quand on a mal à la tête, on doit aller à l'école - When you have a headache, you have to go to school. I didn't really know what to say back to him, so I just told him to stop standing in his chair, which is what he was doing. Oh, children.