plus d’un peu bizarre

At this very moment my roommate is entertaining a couple guests for dinner. And one of them brought a bottle of….Yellow Tail Shiraz? The meal is not Australian by the way, endives baked with cream and ham.

Maybe this is not so odd. I was thinking of American comparisons, and we certainly drink plenty of cheap imported beer.

However, a six-pack of Corona is easy to come by, whereas finding non-French wine here involves shopping in the ethnic section. I would imagine the Yellow Tail lives next to jars of Vegemite and boxes of Tim-Tams.

l’hiver et les écrivains

Slightly downhearted in the midst of la grisaille, I browsed a NYT opinion piece from someone in Seattle claiming that the gloom inspired writerly creativity. The author cited Seattle, Paris, and London as examples. A few quibbles from this latitude:

1. Very cute to compare Seattle to Paris and London, but I’d wait a hundred years before making such a bold statement. Sure I don’t read contemporary fiction, but maybe I would if Dickens or Dumas were still writing.

2. The Bible. The Odyssey.

Please do not blame me for being a bit mean spirited and probably overly negative with only 8.5 hours of daylight and none of them “light”. Since coming back to Paris I saw the sun once, on Friday morning. So if the article had posited instead that better critics could be found in cold, damp, dark climates, well, I might be more inclined to agree.

Though 21 December marks the first of winter, for me it also marks the beginning of hope. As each day quickly descends into darkness I know that the next day will contain a few more moments of potential Vitamin D (also available in mushrooms, thank goodness).

The whole notion of creativity and weather being correlated is an old and racist one with some choice nineteenth century examples, which always end up pointing to the creative advantages of living at the writer’s locale. It’s a very convenient science.

Speaking of literature, I haven’t been able to fall asleep lately, so today I picked up one of my favorite somnifère, Henry James. James wrote several novels that take place or pass through Paris, but the one on sale at Shakespeare and Co happened to be Washington Square. I read the first sentence and realized that it could possibly have a really terrible influence on my dissertation (which my French advisor says is already American and overwritten):

During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and practised in the city of New  York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an exceptional share of the consideration which, in the United States, has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical profession.

Oh, yes!

Even worse, I am planning to buy Les Misérables next weekend (finally found a used French copy at Victor Hugo’s house of all places!), so please expect plenty of lengthy digressions leading to relevant and irrelevant places (much like my lost walk in the 11th arrondissement yesterday afternoon).

On another note, while browsing the shelves of S and co, I came across a book that at first looked amusing. Emily Dickinson “translated” into contemporary witticisms. Well, they weren’t actually. Deeper than the so-called translator’s ineptitude, the idea of the text being something worth publishing felt very profane. Dickinson poems are like koans, and shouldn’t be meddled with as such. She is the patron saint of lonely souls, if I do say so. Though, once more, probably not the best model for academic writing…

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Les soldes

For those of you who didn’t get quite enough stuff this past holiday season (or were given oodles of cash to spend), Paris is in the midst of the winter sales. As far as I understand, “les soldes” are government regulated and occur only twice a year. Whereas in New Orleans, the celebration of the Epiphany is marked by replacing Christmas decorations with those for Mardi Gras. Here, trees, ornaments, and twinkling lights are replaced by brightly colored letters marking nearly every store window (sadly not the wine shops): SOLDES SOLDES SOLDES!

And for a limited time only the good resolutions can wait.

Years ago when I was a bit of a jerk (i.e. in high school), I recall someone asking me if I got everything I wanted for Christmas, to which I replied, no. Even worse, this conversation was carried out in front of my mother. Embarrassing to even recall. I don’t remember, on the other hand, what it was I had so desperately desired but not received.

I’m sure it was very important.

Now, though, I see no obvious reason to take advantage of the sales (unless they are selling sunshine?), which I suppose means that I did get everything I wanted for Christmas.

So…thank you!

Les poires et les pommes

At the end of summer 2011, as I rather dolefully packed up to head north for Vancouver my parents asked me if there was anything I was excited about returning to (probably they had better grammar than to end with a preposition, but so goes paraphrasing).

After a bit of thought I replied, “flour and water.”

I have been lucky to have lived in three cities with far above average tap water (Paris, unfortunately, not being one of them). Vancouver’s farmer’s market also boasted a reasonably priced and quite delicious local flour mill, who in the following year even delivered free (the free part may have been an accident) to my apartment (unfortunately, they arrived just as I was burning some potstickers…).

For fairly obvious reasons, I do not bake bread in Paris. However, after a few days of fighting a nagging head cold and homesickness, I have found a couple persuasive arguments for being excited about the coming half-year.

No, not museums and butter, nor cheap wine and opera, nor even bridges and oysters–though as you see the list could go on–but rather the pears and apples from Picardie. In particular, the conférence and the belles de picardie. Both now crunchy and flavorful and hopefully will remain so through the end of March when things start growing on trees again.

Une recette

Returning to Paris after an always too short winter’s break, I found the refrigerator entirely empty except for some garlic, a bag of peanuts and pumpkin seeds (mine), a smelly but not expired soft cheese (roomate’s), a pear (mine, and surprisingly still good), and the refrigerator door condiments.

Before leaving I had randomly prepared various dishes to use up my eggs, butter, and produce and stashed these in the freezer. The freezer is surprisingly large given the size of the fridge. In my freezer drawer I had sesame seeds, orange curd, mirepoix (now in a soup in the fridge actually), crunchy spiced walnuts and raisins, roasted hot green peppers, gingersnaps, duckfat, and frozen berries and peas from Picard (not in one bag, d’accord).

So this evening it was time for a bit of a grocery shop. I planned out a route to the organic store not too far from my first apartment on Beaumarchais. Welcome back to Paris–the store had closed down. Thus I shortened my grocery list to basic store items and went to the G20 for cheese and citrus (tried to find some tea for colds or sore throats, but the only “medicinal” teas were for digestion, weight loss, or a flat stomach (not sure how the last one would work)). Then to Picard for frozen spinach and tomatoes (I have heard frightening things about non-organic canned tomatoes, and actually the frozen ones are cheaper too).

While mixing up a soup platform for my newly imported chipotle peppers in adobo, I was quite amused that the frozen spinach was formed into many small green cubes. Seeking further information I read the side of the bag. Unlike the typical product placement type of recipes where most ingredients were indicated by brand name, this recipe for spinach casserole very subtly indicated with footnotes that certain items (onions, garlic, spices) could also be bought along the frozen aisles of Picard. However, most strikingly, while the vegetable measurements were given in exact grams, the second to last step simply called for Béchamel sauce. As if the steps for making that butter, flour, milk mixture would be well known to every potential cook and Picard shopper.

I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.