This Old House

In a house as old as this – 600 years give or take a few – winter is a constant battle.  Curtains billow as the wind slithers in between the aging woodwork, windows ice up reminding us there is only paper thin glass separating us from the freezing temperatures, and an occasional snow flake can be seen making its way under the door.  Anyone who’s lived in an old house knows nature makes its way in and an additional dose of courage and another sweater are needed on days like these.
Winters long ago must have been hard in the house. People lived a much more rustic life, but without a doubt, it was difficult.  What we consider to be our home was actually habitable living space for humans, a barn for the animals, and a dry storage area for hay and grain.  The basement, which has low ceilings, was for the animals.  While I’m certain it smelled to high hell, their body temperature heated the house from below.  (Could this have been the inspiration behind heated floors?)  The living room was the hay loft, and a grain shoot still exists under the kitchen.  People lived in small spaces alongside the sole heating source, the fire, and the whole family slept in what we consider to be a relatively small bedroom; quite a stark contrast from the comforts we demand today.
I don’t have look far for a reminder of what life could have been if I had been born centuries ago. When it comes to things of this nature, I don’t consider myself to be hardy stock, so I would have been cold, cramped, and most likely un-bathed, so not at all happy.  While this puts the drafty window into perspective, I still want my modern conveniences, but forcing that square peg into a house like this isn’t easy.  There are some compromises.

French Winter Dishes

une potée of pork shoulder, carrots, leeks, and white beans

I was debating if this should have been placed in the Pleasures of the Season series.  I love les plats hivernaux, or winter dishes, but I’m not crazy about the weather that comes along with it, so I decided in the end this was only a ‘half-pleasure’ and didn’t qualify.  Contrary to the image of sun filled lavender fields and never ending warmth, Southern France does get cold.  The Moscow-Paris, a bizarre metrological phenomenon with Siberian winds, came back this year.  Last year’s appearance was supposed to be a one in a life time experience.  We’re hunkering down again until it goes away. 

On any given evening, or a Sunday afternoon, preparing one of France’s multitude of les plats hivernaux is one way to ignore the wicked winds tapping at the door.  Seasonal dishes, such as pot au feu, tariflette, or cassoulet are just some of my favorites.  Pot au feu gets its name from the dish it is cooked in; anything cooked in a pot can be called une potée.  Cassoulet is finished in the oven covered with bread crumbs to give it a crusty top; it gets its name from the baking dish it is cooked in, a cassolette.

Les plats hivernaux often consist of legumes sec, or dried beans.  Other vegetables, such as leeks, carrots, or cabbage, which can either be conserved or grow in the colder winter months, are also used.  Potatoes didn’t arrive in France until 1772 when Antoine-Augustin Parmentier brought them back from Prussia, so they are a relatively new addition to the winter dishes.

Not only do les plats hivernaux warm the soul, but also they heat the house, as often a long cooking time is required, which is just enough time to enjoy the crackle and hiss of the fire and a glass of red wine to chase the cold away.

Unwritten Rules

When I was a kid, we always got in trouble if we put the ice cream carton back in the freezer when it was empty.  I guess the dumb thing was not throwing it away, but the truth is, I put it back in the freezer because I wasn’t supposed to be eating that ice cream in the first place.  If I put the ice cream carton in the garbage, I was busted.  When my father went for his after dinner snack, I’d just play dumb and blame one of my brothers or sisters.  “I don’t know”, I murmured, “I didn’t eat the ice cream”. 

The unwritten rule of the house was not to put the empty carton back; as I got older, I understood that.  I still ate the ice cream; I just learned to buy more before my Dad got home.Each society, or even household, has unwritten rules we must abide by; they keep peace in the house or help us become accepted.  It’s not easy learning these unwritten rules because they aren’t something you can pick up in a newspaper or text book.  They are something that needs to be experienced, and this comes by trial and error.

In France, everyone you pass says “bonjour”, regardless if you know them or not.  It’s a courtesy; it’s part of the unwritten rules of society, but, that’s an easy rule to pick up on.  There are others though, depending on the situation, which are not so evident.  They depend on the people and scenario involved.  These are make or break moments, and I am witnessing one in a very small circle of my life.  Should the unwritten rules be stated or should the situation be allowed to run its natural course?  It’s more complex than just buying more ice cream, but the lesson is the same: are you willing to following what is expected of you, or are you willing to pay the consequences?

And in my spare time....

 

Loisir: [French]  /lwasir/ nm spare time: leisure activity

Not many people I know would say they have a lot of spare time on their hands; in fact, most people would say they are overloaded.  Work, school, family; all these things add up at the end of the day.  This doesn’t seem to stop some of us from starting something new: the weekend warriors, house fixers, garden tinkerers, artists.  Most people who are completely over their limit during the weekday often find something to do on the weekend.  Christophe spent to whole week cutting wood, but that didn’t stop him from trying to trick out his chainsaw so he could make his own carpentry wood.  He had spent hours on YouTube watching videos from the Northern United States and Canada where large men in flannel shirts proudly flaunted their do-it-yourself skills.  As for me, I decided to make paper.  It’s an easy enough process with quick results, and I didn’t have to spend the same amount of time hearing the whine of a large machine in my ear. I remember a girl at college whose major was paper making and the sculptures she made from her paper were more than just a little cool.  Today was my second run at it, and the paper came out a little more regular, not that I want it to be like the stuff I can buy in the store, but at least I didn’t need two hands to pick it up.  Why do we do this?  Why, on Monday, do we look forward to the next weekend where we promise ourselves to relax only to find ourselves exhausted on Sunday night from our creative exploitations?  Does it make that rare venture into nothingness even more relaxing, or do we do it so we have something to talk about on Monday morning?  I don’t have the answer – for me anyways, but I know I’m happy with the results of trying something, whatever it might be, even when I fail.  As for the papermaking, I’ll stick with it for a while.  It’s still winter, but spring will be arriving soon.  Then I can take my loisir, whatever it might be, outdoors again.    

Grève!

"France"
Quick: What word associations do you make?

Wine.  Yes
Cheese.  Yes
Love.  Oh, la la …Bien sûr
Strikes.  ???

 

Once you get to know France a little more, you’ll see they like to strike.  Over the holidays, there is always a threat of us missing a flight, whether it be the airline workers or the train conductors that get us up to the airport.  I’m for unions; I was in one when I was a teacher.  My union did a great job negotiating for my needs and I had no problems supporting them for the work they did on my behalf.  Thanks to their hard work, I never had to strike.

This last year, I had friends who went on strike.  They are Chicago Public School teachers and they went on strike for 7 days.  When the strike was called, they did not know when they were going back to work.  Negotiations needed to be made and only when a satisfactory deal was meet did they walk back into the classroom.  These are the type of strikes I knew; hard shut downs that were meant to send a message when backs were put against the wall.

In France, strikes occur differently.  They are soft strikes; that is, they are not indefinite; they last only a day.  The trains don’t run, airline baggage doesn’t get checked, or teachers don’t go to school – for a single day.  The next day, everything is back in order as if nothing has happened.  This occurs quite often, for example, elementary school teachers went on strike yesterday.  Today, everything is back to usually.  I’m not questioning the reasons for a strike, but the method.  Quite often, the needs of workers are not met and they’ve simply missed a day of pay.  Sometimes, a second strike day is called a few weeks later, but the moment has already passed.  There are not more negotiations and the workers’ contracts have already been modified.  The second strike day is just to say they are not satisfied with how things went down.  I’ve seen this happen time and time again, so I wonder why French workers stick to the soft strike.  It doesn’t seem to really work, at least from my perspective.

Cheese: Camembert



This is even ten times better than it looks.

Given the abundance of cheese France produces, I’ve decided to tackle the subject once a month in a series of posts that bring some of the lesser known cheeses, (at least outside the France borders) into focus.  Some cheeses have a complicated history which I try to boil down to what makes them unique and notable, and others simply developed from “farm cheeses” made to be consumed where they were produced.  Either way, “Cheese” gives me a chance to explore one of the gastronomic delights of France and justify my excursions to a cheese monger as “research”.  And the research can be oh, so grueling…

 This post is from last year, but I couldn’t resist sharing it again since we got our hillbilly on and had some of this Saturday night.

Camembert cheese, a product of the Normandy region in Northern France, is probably the most widely consumed cheese in France.  Supermarket aisles are reserved for it alone, and consumers take their time choosing one.  A good cheese needs to be soft and it needs to smell.  If it doesn’t, the cheese is put back with a grimace and another one is picked up for inspection. The wooden boxed stored cheeses are opened, smelled, and squeezed.  I’ve witnessed heated discussions over cheeses and Camembert coinsures have probably spent days over the course of a lifetime picking out the right cheese.

Traditionally produced from unpasteurized cow’s milk, Camembert was first made in 1791 by Marie Harel, a farmer from the Camembert village.  Caving into market demands, most mass produced Camembert cheeses are now made with pasteurized milk, and therefore cannot carry the label AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), which is only reserved for those traditionally made with unpasteurized milk.

Camembert cheese is what American nightmares are made of; it is stinky, strong, and builds character the more it’s aged.  We bought a wheel two weeks ago and let it sit in the fridge.  Three days went by and the smell was getting so strong we had to pop it into a Tupperware.  We opened it Saturday night and were almost knocked to the floor the odor was so strong.  Our timing was perfect; it was ripe, soft, and ready to be cooked.
We bake our Camembert in a true country style: in the chimney.  The wooden box is wrapped in foil and placed on glowing ambers.  I’d be hard pressed to find a Parisian who would admit to doing this; however, anyone I’ve spoken to about it speaks rather enthusiastically, so I’m convinced this is a guilty hidden pleasure.  I refuse to hide my guilt; this is a simple gastronomic bliss.  Camembert is rich, creamy, and unctuous.  We reserve it mostly for the winter months when fresh cheeses are scarce, and when it can be devoured in front a warming fire.
Ahh, camembert... how I've missed thee!

The Glamorous Life

A lot of people ask me how life is different in France.  There is a lot: the food, the culture, the language, all very predictable elements.  I guess what people don’t expect is, just like elsewhere, there are days that nothing exciting happens.  On this blog, I try to point out some of the really fun differences, the oddities of life not lived anywhere but here, but the hidden truth is sometimes my life is just ordinary.  I do the laundry, clean the bathroom, make dinner – all very glamorous things.  Today is one of those days.  I do try to temper this with trips to the market or complete immersions into cultural events, but honestly, the ins and outs of living, the daily needs, are simply a part of life, no matter where we live.  We all try put forth the image of our lives well lived, that we’re arrived, and somehow have become the person we have wanted to be, that we have somehow achieved “glamour”.  Sometimes that happens, other times, not.  I’ve never tried to lie about life here; I’m still working on being the person I want to be, and that person who writes about cheese, lives in a 600 year old house, and writes about some of the odd things about life in rural France, still needs to clean the toilet and have ordinary days from time to time.

Who Won?

What did I tell you about that iris?

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl last night; not that I could have if it was broadcasted, so I have no idea who won the game.  The TV was out.  As predicted, the spring like weather didn’t last and we got an artic like weekend with wicked winds that came howling down from Norway.  The winds and the cold knocked the local transmitter out and we got a big ‘zero’ when we tried to find any television channels.  Just a reminder: cable doesn’t exist, and where we’re at, options are limited. It’s not the first time this has happened.  Our region is noted for having a less than acceptable transmitter; it’s weak at best.  We can’t even get cell phone reception in the house; Christophe has to walk out onto the terrace to get his calls, regardless of the weather.  It’s one of the “perks” of living where we are.  But honestly, I don’t know if I would have wanted to watch the Super Bowl anyways.  All the commercials are cut out and French commentary on the game is dull, very dull.  I did get to watch it a few years when Devin Hester from the Bears ran 92 yards on the opening kickoff for a touchdown.  That was exciting, and I screamed louder than anyone else in France. It was the first time the Super Bowl was broadcasted here; we stayed up to 2am to watch it live.  It was also the second to last time I saw it listed in the TV program.  I guess it didn’t go over very well, but that could be because the French commentary of the game was as exciting as the other side of a butter knife.  Yeah, it was that good.  At least I can get the game highlights and commercials on the internet; that is, when it’s working.