Victor Hugo Poem

Demain dès l'aube

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,

Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.

J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.

Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

I have taken the first stanza of Victor Hugo's 1865 poem because the sentiment matches my feeling as we prepare to leave on our trip to Vaison la Romaine. 

As the poem continues, one learns that it was written to his deceased daughter - his promise to journey to her grave site. It remains a love poem and I find it beautiful.

Cheese, please

It was possibly the first time we went to stay at our apartment in Vaison la Romaine. I went to the local cheese shop. The proprietor of the cheese shop, a meilleur ouvrier de France recognized by President Chirac for her skill and knowledge, gets to wear a chef jacket with a red, white and blue ribbon collar that indicates her status. When I asked her for 200 grams of Roulé, she looked over the top of her fashionable glasses and said: “Ca c’est un fromage industriel. Je ne le vend pas ici.” (That is factory-made (processed) cheese. I do not sell it here.) Her response was so abrupt and (to me) so aggressive, I decided to buy my cheese from the market vendors.

Over the years, I have gotten to know our famous cheese shop owner and have overcome my reticence of visiting her shop. Josianne Déal provided the cheeses for the Valentine’s Day dinner at La Lyriste, our friend's restaurant. For that matter, if you eat in just about any of the restaurants in town, the cheese they offer is probably from her store called Lou Canesteou fromagerie.

I now visit the shop regularly because there are so many varieties of cheese from which to choose and I appreciate the guidance from her and her staff. The first problem to overcome is to decide among the options for one style of cheese. Did I want the Comté that was aged 12 months, 18 months or 24 months? Did I want the Roquefort that was creamy or the Roquefort that was spicier to the taste? And then, of course, several of the cheeses are sold with the AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) which means that the product is certified as coming from the region named on the label.

Last winter, I stopped in the cheese shop and Josianne waited on me. I told her that there was a difference between her shop and the cheese store where I shopped in Lansing. I explained that in Lansing, the shop runs on a binary system: “Do you have Roquefort? Yes/No. Do you have Morbier? Yes/No. Press 1 for yes, 0 for no… Josianne smiled at me and said: “We have a few more options for you.”

On Saturday, I stopped at our cheese shop and asked for a half of a pound of Comté. (Hills Cheese is the most popular of all of the shops at the City Market. Hills has been a vendor at the City Market for more than 50 years. Their success is offering quality cheeses from across the world, not just France. When you go there on the weekend, expect to be third in line.) The young man that served me brought me the piece of Comté that he had cut and told me the price. I asked him if he knew how long it had been aged (12, 18, 24 mos). He replied that he did not know but he was sure that the Comté had come in a green wrapper which meant that it was high-quality Comté; better than the Comté that comes in the blue wrapper…

It seems strange that a city of the size of Lansing does not have the equivalent of the cheese shop in Vaison which is 5% of the size of Lansing. But one must consider the importance of cheese in France (DeGaulle once posed the question: ‘Who can rule a country that has more than 278 different kinds of cheese?’) It is a question of priorities. France has over 200 cheeses. We have more flavors of Cheetos here than are available in France. Which do you prefer?

French Reminders

There are a lot of things that remind me of France while we are in the States. I read several French or French-theme blogs and I see notes on FaceBook or in my e-mail from French friends. Ellen and I go to the meetings (réunions) of the Lansing area Alliance Française. Even the mundane activities of the day make me think of France:

·         I was buying beets to make a beet and pistachio salad and seeing the raw beets with greens attached made me long for the vacuum packed peeled beets that I can buy at grocery stores in France.

·         When I buy gasoline here, the price is per gallon but it makes me think of the price of fuel in France where the signs advertise the price per liter or roughly per quart. Prices vary, but a liter of gasoline is about €1.40 or about $7.00 per gallon. (Given the disparities in the price of fuel, it is no surprise that the French and other Europeans buy smaller, fuel-efficient cars.)

·         I have read all of the novels about “Bruno, Chief of Police” by Martin Walker about a village chief of police in Southwest France.

·         Shopping for spices and missing the spice and herb vendors at the market with their bags of spices and herbs (and the aromas!)

·         The summer film The Hundred Food Journey.

·         Buying eggs makes me wonder: why do we keep eggs in the refrigerator in the States? (In France, eggs and milk are not stored in coolers in the grocery stores. They are found on regular, un-refrigerated shelves.)

It has been a good summer and despite some “powdery mildew” on my zucchinis and my squash, we had a bountiful harvest from my garden and enjoyed fresh vegetables during August and September and our French friends know how much I like gardening and often ask about my potager (vegetable garden).

Now, we are sort of in preparing-to-return-to-France mode as Ellen has purchased our tickets for the trip. We leave Lansing on the 9^th of December and will arrive at our apartment on the 10^th.  Having tickets makes every day a reason to think of France and to wonder if there are items available here that we want to take because we have not found them in France. (In May, we do the reverse and think about the items available in France that we want to bring back to the states.)

Quel chanceux (I am a lucky/fortunate  person.)

French Cooking Lesson

Last year we, with help, advice AND the offer to use their great house and wonderful kitchens from our good friends Brian and Ken, the four of us offered a French Cooking Class/Dinner as our gift item in the Meals on Wheels auction. It was snapped up by the same couples who had won the bids on our French dinners the previous two years.

The cooking class and subsequent meal were Saturday night. We guided six adults through the steps of preparing a five-course meal and then we became the servers for the dinner. The menu follows:

Menu

Amuse-bouche (Appetizers) :

Wine : Pierre Delize Blanc de Blanc Brut, Vin Mousseux (Sparkling wine)

Tapenade aux olives noires, paté de foie de volaille

Black olive tapenade, chicken liver paté

Entrée (First Course):

Wines: Chardonnay de Chardonnay,Vin de Bourgogne (Unoaked Chardonnay)

Villa Chambre d’Amour, Gros Mansang Sauvignon Blanc

Soupe au potiron

Butternut squash soup

Plat (Main Course) :

Wines: Chateau Pegau Côtes du Rhône 2012, Cuvee Maclura

OR Continuation of first course wines

Lapin à la moutarde, épeautre, carottes aux olives

Rabbit in mustard cream sauce, spelt, carrots with olives

Assiette de fromages

(Cheese plate – assortment of cheeses)

Wine: Chateau Pegau Côtes du Rhône 2012

Dessert :

Wine : Mas Amiel vin doux naturel 2011 (Red dessert wine)

Crème caramel

and

Chocolat au piment d’Espelette

Chocolate mousse with chili pepper

We all had a lot of fun and I think that our guests learned some new kitchen techniques and enjoyed some new food items. Curt Kosal at Vine and Brew in Okemos provided the suggestions for the wine pairing. He did an excellent job of matching the wines to our menu.

Cooking in a group can be a wonderful sharing experience. The food plus the aromas plus the wines make a formula for enjoyment. Sharing tasks, telling stories and learning about new food items turned the evening into a seven-hour party. Food with friends is the formula for a great evening.

Money (the Beatles), Money, Money (Cabaret) Money, Money, Money (ABBA)

We have done a fair amount of travelling since returning to the states: Gull Lake, Chicago, Pennsylvania (Greensburg), Beaver Island. The trips have all been fun and were opportunities to see/spend time with good friends. Time spent with friends is time well-spent: good food, preparing meals together, new recipes to share, new wine discoveries and, this year, stories about the winter of the Polar Vortex (compared to our mild but rainy winter in France).

During our travels, I was struck by the ways in which we pay for things – and the differences between money/payments here and in France.

Obviously, the currencies are different. France is part of the European Union so currency is Euros. Euros are easier to use than dollars as the sizes of the bills change based on the value. There is a small note for five euros, a larger note for 10 €, the 20 € bill is bigger still and the 50 € note is about three times the size of the five euro note. In addition to differences in size, the bills are different colors. There are no one € notes. There are coins in values from two € to one centime. (2 €, 1 €, 50 centimes, 20 centimes, 10 centimes, 5 centimes, 2 centimes and 1 centime.)

When we first moved to France, I seemed to end a day carrying about five kilograms (ten pounds) of coins. It was easier to get out a bill and take the change rather than work though the coins to find exact change – though I was sure that I had it.

Credit cards are accepted in most stores but European credit cards now have a security chip that is still rare in American credit cards. The credit cards with a security chips require a pin number much like our debit cards. Friends who came to visit last spring got to Marseille, rented a car and started their trip to Vaison la Romaine only to discover that the toll booths at the expressway exits require cash or European credit cards with-the-security-chip. Luckily, they had come with a small amount of euros and were able to exit the roadway after they dug the cash out of the bag in the back of the car – much to the chagrin of the always impatient French drivers in line behind them.

Checks are still popular in France. At the big grocery stores, I often see the cashier telling the customer the total amount. The customer then tears out a check and hands the blank check to the cashier. The big stores have machines that print all of the necessary information on the check. The cashier gives the check back to the customer for her/his review and then signature.

When Europeans rent our apartment, they most often pay with a bank transfer called a RIB. (Relevé d’Identité Bancaire). When Americans rent our apartment, they use PayPal.

Whether it’s cash, cowry shells or credit card, the song title by Lefty Frizzell seems the appropriate way to end this post: "If you’ve got the money, I’ve got the time".

Belle Provence or Beautiful Michigan?

We’ve been in Lansing for two weeks. The vegetable garden is planted, most of the home maintenance chores are finished and I am back on my volunteer schedule at the two nearby child care centers. Clearly, we are settling into our state-side routines.

As we encounter people we have not seen for six or more months, we are often asked about what we missed while we were away or what strikes us as a source of differences between Lansing life and life in Vaison la Romaine.

From the get-go, I turn around the first question and reply that I miss living in the center of a village where a car is not necessary. I miss the walking to – everywhere! Not just in steps logged but in people encountered who smile or stop to talk or simply offer “Bonjour Monsieur” as I pass. (At some point in time though it must have been recently, I stopped being middle-aged and became old. People say “Bonjour Monsieur” as a respectful way of greeting someone older – and to most of the world, the someone older is I.) In France, I averaged 12,000 steps a day. In Lansing, I may get to 12,000 steps once a week. In Lansing, one can’t walk to any grocery or butcher shop or bakery… - did I say ‘butcher shop’? I am not sure where there is a butcher shop outside of a grocery.

I have missed the camaraderie of people with whom we have forged friendships over the past 30 years. I have missed our neighborhood and the special connections/supports that our neighbors offer.

I have missed NPR and the Sunday word puzzle with Will Short on Weekend Edition. And John Stewart, and Steve Colbert and John Oliver. (I have missed understanding subtle humor and political comedy.)

In general, people speak louder here than in France and we Americans laugh louder than the French.

I like the pervasiveness of “the customer is always right” attitude in stores here. It may also be true in France but you might have to do penance before your shopping error is absolved and the item is taken back…

I miss good, cheap wine. In the US, food is less expensive – even though the produce in the grocery stores comes from three different continents – but wine here is more expensive. Similarly, a baguette in France is only a dollar. In Lansing, a baguette costs three to five times as much.

On balance, there are so many things to make each “home” attractive. We are fortunate to have such wonderful options.

Missing You! Missing France! 2

A week from today, we leave our apartment to go to Marseille. Our flight to Lansing is at 0 dark thirty on Tuesday morning and it is a whole lot easier to deal with the early departure from a hotel at the airport.

Given our departure, we are working on turning our apartment into a rental property for the summer/fall. The focus on work helps me not think about leaving here but I nonetheless do think about leaving and what I will miss most. (I looked back through my old blogs to the one I wrote as we prepared to leave in 2009 after our first six months here. My list of things I will miss has not changed a lot. For the sake of redundancy, I offer my 2014 edition of “Missing You! Missing France!)

·         FRIENDS! We have developed wonderful friendships here in Vaison la Romaine. The village is ‘just the right size’ for encountering friends on a regular basis. I realize that the village is also large enough that it could feel isolating without friends.

·         The “Bonjour, monsieur” greeting as I walk into almost any store (followed by: “Au revoir, monsieur. Bonne journée” as I leave a store – even if I didn’t buy anything.

·         The plethora of wineries and all of the wonderful wines of the Rhone Valley. We are fortunate to live amongst some of the best wine-producing villages of the southern Rhone Valley: Cairanne, Chateauneuf du Papes, Gigondas, Rasteau, Roaix, Sablet, Vacqueyras, Vinsobres, Visan. An American friend once asked if one could drink the water in France. I replied: “Of course! But wine is cheaper!”

·         The emphasis that the French put on good (and fresh!) produce, meat and fish. Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, underscored the importance of buying fresh/buying locally produced. Right now, asparagus, strawberries (from the next big town – Carpentras), spring melons make shopping more fun and cooking easier. I learned from the fish monger that the best mussels are from Brittany but the ‘moules de Bouchot’ have a season – July to March.

French grocery stores and shops as well as the Tuesday market vendors always display the country of origin of the produce, meat, fish and cheese they are selling. As I have tried to become more of a “locavore”, I have started paying careful attention to the country of origin of my foods.

·         Our world-class cheese store and the choices of cheeses. I am pleased that our market in Lansing has a very good cheese shop but in Lansing, the choice is usually binary: ‘Do you have Roquefort?’ Yes! (or no!) Here in our village, if I ask for Roquefort, I have to clarify what style of Roquefort I want. The same is true for Gruyere, goat cheese, brie, etc…

·         The varieties of meats and poultries

·         The View! from our small but viewalicious balcony on the 3ème étage (4th floor) The spectacular views as one drives/walks around the area.

·         Our daily bread (baguette)

·         Being able to clean the WHOLE apartment while standing in one spot (almost) – in about 12 minutes

·         Leaving the apartment at 5:25 for a 5:30 movie and being on time

·         Playing with the kids at the crèche.

Luckily, the sadness of leaving here is replaced by the joy of returning to Lansing and our wonderful friends there. Life is good!