To Welcome You (or Welcome Back) to Cassoulet Cafe

Below was my very first story about France on Cassoulet Cafe Blog, a few years ago already!  I'm going to recommence my blog with this post for those who are new here...Enjoy!

I have so many things to write about, analyze and discuss when it comes to France but I feel that I can't begin unless I get a relate our first days in France as expats.

I still can't believe I had convinced my husband to move to France, without him ever having been there even for a visit. Dreaming of something is one thing, but when it actually comes to fruition, worry plagues the fairytale in your mind and then gets replaced by nightmare scenarios. Mine was that Hubby would hate France and then hate me. So naturally, I wanted everything to be parfait when we arrived.

We decided to fly into Paris and then take a train a couple days later to our new home. We had two nights booked on Rue Cler in the 7ième arrondissement. For those not familiar with it because they haven't seen the PBS program that has made it famous, it is the stereotypical image we Americans have of Paris. A cobblestone street near the Eiffel Tower, lined with cafés, crêpe stands, flower and cheese shops, boulangerie, ....you get the idea. Top it off with a violinist on the corner playing classic French-film scores just for you, it all seems to be saying, "You're dreams have come true! You've made it to paradise!" It would seem.....

...Until we actually got to Rue Cler, by way of Métro, pulling our 3 spring loaded suitcases containing all our possessions in the world (well, on this continent), two gigantic backpacks, and a small child. Lugging and tugging, over the cobblestones. After having pulled all of that up and down several flights of steps and platforms the previous hour. Using public transport is cheaper than a taxi ride from Charles De Gaulle airport, but leaning on the side of "nightmare scenarios".

When we entered our hotel lobby, just a few long, bumpy blocks from the beginning of Rue Cler, we were exhausted, moody and stinky. Suddenly, I realized just what I had brewed up and convinced my poor little family to do! I started to cry uncontrollably. What if this didn't work out? We were stuck anyway! It was a burden I didn't want anymore.

At that moment, an American family came into the lobby, exuberant from their morning of touring, and tried to befriend us. They told Hubby how wonderful Paris was and they were sad to be leaving the next day. I hated them. They got to leave! I was here stuck for the next who-knows-how-long not knowing how we would survive this situation. And this was only Hour One!

After I scared them off with my sobbing, my husband consoled me and said it would all be great, he loved it so far. Ok, tears dried up, our room was now ready, time to shower, sleep and get emotionally stable again.

But when I got into the tiny room, went to use the tiny bathroom and then saw the flushing mechanism on the foreign-looking toilet (for those who don't know, the flushers in France are usually buttons or pulling devices on the lid of the tank), I started to get hysterical again thinking about having to flush like this for the next year. Ok, if you don't get the picture by now, I was completely irrational from sleep-deprivation, not making any sense, because back in The States I had raved to everyone about how cool French toilets were, because of their flushers!

After passing out and sleeping the rest of the afternoon, I awoke to Hubby saying he was going to go across the street to get some juice and snacks. He was eager to use his French independently. I was amazed but terrified he'd come back ticked off because someone was rude to him. I watched from the window above as he crossed the street and made a successful friendly purchase! He came back jazzed and ready to explore.

Late that night after soaking up the dazzling lights of le Tour Eiffel, we chose a brasserie near our hotel to eat le diner and suck down some vin français. Things were looking up. Of course wine will do that to you.

And then, the people at the table next to us seemed to be staring at us and with judgemental looks. I've been know to be paranoid about this, but I swear they were making a scene. It was a middle-age group of French men who were staring at us like we had just destroyed their evening. (Line from Shrek coming to mind: "It's rude enough being alive when no one wants you...") Anyhow, I was really uncomfortable and infuriated at the same time that they were gawking at us like we were barbarians. My anxiety peaked when I thought I heard the word "américains" in their conversation. Ok, now I had the proof! Turning to listen closer, I heard (in French), "Oh, look at me, I am American, I need my ketchup!" one said, and they all laughed hysterically in response. WHAT?! I didn't order ketchup. I hate ketchup. I kept listening, hearing stereotypical-American one-liners. It went on for several minutes. When they saw my expression, they laughed even harder. I wanted to leave, to check out of our hotel and hop the next flight back home. I HATE FRANCE, I screamed inside, French people are so rude!

act French!) and placed our order. The waiter, astonished that he was receiving the order in his tongue, smiled very lovingly as if to say "You showed them!" I'll never forget the shocked, open-mouth expressions of the men at the table next to us when they heard their language roll off my tongue, understanding now they I had heard it all. Sweet victory!

It taught me a lesson as well. Don't be an Ugly American, even if someone is being an Ugly Frenchman.

Tomorrow I go on to Part Deux: The TGV Tragedy! Vomiting, tractors, accidents and more Frenchiness. Sure to appeal to all sorts.

PS. All photos on this post have been taken personally by moi, except the Rue Cler photo, because I did not have time to find mine today :)

Cassoulet's First Homemade Macarons!

I'm in French Nostalgia mode, so I reopened my blog, and succeeded at my very first attempt to make La Duree style macarons today!

Coffee Talk...Revised

I’ve already discussed cassoulet, for the “cassoulet” component of Cassoulet Café. But we really haven’t discussed the café part of it, have we? Be it the drink or the place. I mean, I’ve touched upon it, put in plugs for French and Italian coffee brands, talked about going to cafes, but I think I’ve really hidden how much coffee rules my life. Oh, it started out innocent enough. Trying to drink coffee at home, as an adolescent trying to feel like an adult, ending up with a disproportionate amount of creamer to coffee, to disguise the coffee-ness so it would be acceptable to a youth’s palate. Then ditching it for a Dr. Pepper.

Then Coffee-Mate came out with Hazelnut creamer. That is when my true coffee addiction began. It camouflaged the Folgers oh-so-well!

Then, as I started getting weary of all that non-dairy sweetness, we started to drink it black and a bit stronger. We moved on up to a metal can of...Yuban! But soon, we declared a ban on Yuban in our house, because we were finding ourselves in the midst of the Starbucks revolution and we adjusted accordingly. We thought that if we slurped down the burnt-tasting brew (and bonus points if we actually liked it), then we were true coffee connoisseurs. And certainly buying the beans and grinding them ourselves confirmed it! No more canned grounds for us, we said.

But then when we moved to France we suddenly felt like Coffee Pre-Schoolers. The coffee there was so strong that it shocked our palates (and guts) the first few mornings and we soon realized we only needed one cup to get going, as opposed to our normal three. After moving back to the States, we continued to make strong puts-hair-on-your-chest java, much to the dismay of our occasional guests. And when friends or family came to visit from France, we’d make requests for loads of Lavazza and Carte Noire to be brought to us.

Then my coffee maker sizzled out. Being the Google Queen that I am (and really, who isn't nowadays?), I had to Google "coffeemakers" and read reviews on oodles of brands and models. As I pored over brewing devices, I came across a site about home roasting coffee beans. Roasting my own coffee? Why would I want to complicate my life more than it already is by adding another step to my coffee drinking regimen?

When FedEx came the next week to deliver my new coffee roaster, I was ecstatic but intimidated. Could someone like little ol’ me really take these green beans resembling lentils and actually come out with a product even close to Starbucks or Tully’s? I wasn’t so sure.

Fast-forward two years. We are officially coffee snobs. After taking that first sip of home roasted brew, Hubby and I looked at each other and could only say “WOW.” No after taste, no burnt flavor, and do we detect…chocolate notes? As home roasters often do, we now refer to that chain as Charbucks. Because, my dear friends, charred coffee water is not a sign of quality, nor does consuming it make one the ultimate coffee connoisseur.

I’ve also added a French Press (ok, I have three of them) to my coffeemaker collection. 

We serve up the best coffee in town, heck, in the state! and friends come from far and wide to enjoy a cuppa Chez Nous (at our house).

When my Best Expat Friend was packing to come visit from France, she called to tell me she received my shopping list, but said I forgot to include my normal order for the usual 10 bricks of Carte Noire coffee. “Oh no,” I told her. “We don’t drink that stuff anymore. From now on, you’ll be taking my coffee back to France!”

And she does.

Stay tuned, as I have some exciting things concerning coffee coming up!

Coffee, Please!

This is a rerun of an early Cassoulet Cafe post...enjoy!

Let's have a little coffee talk. So I'll wait right here while you go pour yourself a cup. If you're not into coffee, any other hot beverage of your choice will suffice. But as for me, I'll be drinking un cafe'.

When we think of coffee, we tend to think of it as the Starter Fluid of the day; a warm companion that we can snuggle up to in the mornings before we face our day. We even go to great lengths to get a paper cup of it later on, maybe placing a group order for a colleague to pick up on her way back from lunch. Each cup check marked in code only a barista (or experienced coffee go-fer) could decipher.

However, in France, things are different. Coffee isn't just the drink, it's the activity. It's the act of sitting down to relax and watch the world go by. Ordering a coffee in a cafe translates into renting your own little piece of La Belle France for as long as you wish to be there. What a bargain! Chairs are strategically placed facing the same direction, lookin' at you kid! If you ever got a complex while touring in France thinking people were staring at you, you were right, they are! But it's not considered ill-mannered. C'est normale, as the French say. It's what you do. People watch.

So in order to rent yourself a slice of France, you just need to know how to order a coffee the way you like it.

My husband was shocked the first time he got a coffee in Paris. He successfully utilized his French lessons to order his favorite hot beverage. But to his dismay the waiter set before him a saucer holding the smallest tea-party sized cup he ever saw, containing a shot of black tar, garnished with a paper-wrapped sugar cube and baby spoon to stir it with. So, as if it was a shot of tequila, he tipped his head back and took one small gulp and voila! It vanished!

Then, he asked me, "Honey, how do I say "refill" in French?"

Now, at this point, anyone who is familiar with France is probably laughing right now. Everyone else, listen up! Refills do not exist in France. Unless you just want to order a whole new coffee and call it a refill to make yourself feel better. But it'll set ya back another 2 bucks or so.

So on his next "refill" he decided to use the sugar cube. It was so cute, wrapped up in decorative paper as if it were the smallest present in the world. He unwrapped it, then carefully lowered it into the precious few ounces of black goo and stirred it with the tiny spoon. However, the amount of sugar was disproportionate to the amount of hot liquid (Cubes big, Coffee Small). So he was in a quandary. Does he order more coffee to dilute the sugar? Or suck down the sickening sweet concoction and say goodbye to coffee in France forever?

Later, after learning there were indeed other ways to order coffee , he quickly honed his skills of ordering it with supplemental ingredients (milk or cream) to increase the volume, therefore extending his sipping pleasure. Café creme, cafe au lait, s'il vous plait.

Something you never see in France is coffee to go. Oh sure, you'll see American tourists in Paris lining up at that certain international chain to get their fix, but the French will be the ones using the tables and drinking from ceramic. Yes, the word "emporter" does mean "to take out", but just because it exists and is even advertised doesn't mean it's the right thing to do when it comes to coffee. I should know. I tried it, twice.

On a road trip from Paris to Brittany, we stopped at a little roadside cafe to counteract the drowsiness. When we walked in, we saw the sign "Café à emporter" behind the bar. I jabbed my husband and said, "Hey! Finally, a place that caters to American coffee drinkers!" So, in my best French I asked for 3 cups of coffee to emporter. The lady looked at me flatly and then said, "Je comprends pas, Madame." I pointed to the sign to explain, and she said, "Yes I understood, but why would you want it to go? Are you sure?"

Then, a few days later on our way back to Paris one morning very early, we stopped at truck stop (no, i didn't know they existed in France either). It looked exactly like a 50's diner you'd encounter on road trip in the States. A long bar with bar stools loaded with big burly truck drivers. Surely, they would do coffee to-go for me here. As I confidently sauntered up to the bar, asked for "Trois cafes à emporter" (3 coffees to go) I heard all 10 truckers whip their heads in my direction and dead silence filled the place. The waitress stared at me. The truckers stared at me, holding their itty-bitty cups of coffee between their fat sausage-like fingers. At that moment, I realized that even big burly truck drivers prefer to drink their coffee sur place and out of a real cup.

I got what I ordered, even if was handed to me in a thin plastic Dixie cup which burned all ten of my fingers.

So the moral of this coffee-flavored story is, when in France, drink coffee as the French. Relax, sit down, take in the sights and sounds around you. This is why you came to France. But under no circumstances, even if it is advertised, order "Un café à emporter".

Getting A Good Deal in France

What can you get right now for four hundred and eighty-five dollars? Three hundred euros, for one thing. The exchange rate at my bank last Friday was a whopping $1.59 per Euro.

Dining out is expensive in France, and many times the food is just mediocre, so we'll be eating chez nous often, and chez nos amis. Of course, when in villages or centre ville, we'll not skimp on sitting down for a break at a cafe' for some boissons.

Speaking of mediocre food, we were invited to a certain restaurant twice by friends. Each time we got the invitation, it was accompanied by phrases like, "It's so cheap! It's so good! It's all-you-can-eat, just like in America!" We went to lunch at Flunch. It was not cheap. It was not good. It was only the over-cooked, limp, sans flavor vegetables that were all-you-can-eat. It made Hometown Buffet look like a foodie hang out. We had a Flunchy Lunch. Don't be tempted, don't be fooled. You won't save any euros here!

So where else can I get some bang for my buck? I suppose if we have the need to go to a doctor or hospital, it'll be dirt cheap compared to here. Which reminds me of my trip to the opthalmologist in Toulouse.

One day we had a picnic with friends outdoors in the sunshine. As we were leaving to go home, my eyes starting tearing up and turning red. By the time we got back to our flat, water was pouring out of them and I could barely keep my eyes open. Later that night, the pain was so severe, I had to keep a cold wet washcloth on them and moan in agony. This was pre-Lasik, so I had to take my contacts out, rendering me as good as blind. I managed to get a couple hours sleep, but woke to crusty eyes, painfully red, and itchy. Classic pink eye symptoms.

A friend made an appointment for me with an opthalmologist. She warned me that it was very expensive without health insurance. We knew this was a risk we were taking living over there without employment or benefits. But I had to go. I needed a prescription for eye drops asap.

She told us which bus to take to get there and as she is a very sweet person, she even met us there to make sure everything went smoothly. I entered the office, which strangely resembled an apartment living room. The doctor invited me into the exam room, which was also her personal office. Wearing corrective lenses since I was twelve, I was no stranger to eye exams or pink eye. The exam started off familiar enough, but then came the confused exclamations from the doctor. She seemed seriously unable to understand why my eyes were red and burning. She kept mumbling and sighing as if I had the first case of pink eye she'd ever seen.

She asked me what I did the day before. I told her we had a picnic with friends. She asked me if I got anything in my eyes. No, I did not (Wouldn't I have already put two and two together on my own?) But then my friend, who was in the exam room with me, piped up in an effort to help and said, "But wait, you made salsa for the picnic. Maybe you got some in your eyes!" No, I did not, I exclaimed and rolled my eyes, mentally.) Then the doctor says, "Hmmm....I think that indeed you burned your eyes when you made salsa. It was from the poivrons. Yes, that explains it now."

No, that doesn't explain it, I was screaming in my head. But I calmly explained that I did not put poivrons in my salsa. Nor would I ever put bell peppers in my salsa because what you put in salsa is chilis. What I normally put in my salsa is jalapenos. And yes, I did have a terrible jalapenos vs. eyes experience. But as I could never find them in France, it was impossible that they were the cause of this pain and suffering!

The doctor looked genuinely flabbergasted that I was not accepting her explanation. So then she said, "You said you were at a picnic. It was sunny, non? Did you wear sun glasses?" Yes I did. "Did you look at the sun?" she asked. Um, no. But as I also apparently put bell peppers in my salsa and flung it into my eyes without memory of it all, maybe I did look at the sun?!

"That's the explanation", she said again. "The sun burned your eyes because I'm sure your sun glasses are not good enough, and you must have been looking at it. I will give you a prescription for drops"....blah blah blah.

She got up and walked over to her desk to fill out the paperwork. She gasped when I told her I did not have insurance and I would be paying for it with cash. She said, "But, you will have to pay 100%!!!", horrified at what that would mean for me. She scared me. She scribbled on her papers and then stated the amount with reluctance. I had to ask my friend to make sure I had understood correctly.

It amounted to 21 dollars.

I gleefully paid the money, left, and told my friend that would have cost $120 minimum at my opthalmologist back home.

I got the same treatment from the pharmacist when I told him I didn't have insurance. The drops that cost me $40 here, cost $3 that day in the Toulouse pharmacy. The Gucci sunglasses I purchased later, to replace my inferior ones that caused my eye trauma, did cost me, however. Still, it amounted to the price of the American eye doc, no Guccis included.

I really don't want any of us to have to see a doctor during our month in France, but if we do, we shall receive a bargain...even at full price.

Flowery French to My American Ears

Yesterday, I received an email from Madame Gite-Owner regarding our stay. As I had dealt with a lot of gite owners before we finally chose this one, I was always impressed with this particular lady. Madame Gite-Owner was always so pleasant and....flowery.

Other gite owners answered me matter-of-factly, some even rudely! Others tried to persuade me to change our travel dates and chose their gite (because it wasn't open yet for the season when we needed one.) But Madame Gite-Owner always asked me how we were doing, told me my French was wonderful, and even wanted to meet my relatives who live in a village nearby.

Interestingly, this gite was the very first one I pulled up last year when I was trying to convince my parents that we should all do this thing. It was the gite that made changed my dad's mind about going to France (he didn't even come visit us when we lived there, if that tells you anything.) I looked at hundreds more gites after it, but we always came back to this one.

My uncle called and talked to Madame Gite-Owner and reported back that she indeed seemed very lovely and legitimate.

So the email I received yesterday was really no suprise, and it made me smile everytime I thought about the last paragraph. So I want to share it with you. Now, I'm going to translate this a bit differently. Instead of the idea being translated into how we would speak English, I want to translate what my American English ear "hears" when reading French. A literal translation, if you will.

"....You really need to think of your trip now. You must to count on 10-12 hours on the aircraft...so we are offering you the calm and tranquility of our home and the countryside, and I am hoping that the sun will accompany your stay here, so that you can rapidly recover from the due fatigue that you will have because of the jet lag; and get the maximum benefit from your vacation in France......" --Mme Gite Owner

I suppose if I were doing a translating job, I would say she meant: "I'm sure you have a 10-12 hour flight ahead of you. Don't worry, you'll have peace and quiet when you get out here in the country and hopefully we'll have some sun while you're here, so you can rest up from jet lag and have a great vacation." ---Mme French-to-American English Translator

I prefer flowers.