Something Old, Something New

Once again, welcome to another self-promoting blog post of the shameless variety. 

If you've ever clicked on the button over on the side of my blog, called Provence Rugs, you'll know that I have an Internet store that sells handmade rugs and accessories from the south of France. 

Today we're announcing new products and hope you'll take the time to check them out. New in our line-up of cool, French stuff are table linens, as in

 placemats….

napkins...

and tablecloths.

All featuring our beautiful, French cotton fabric and all (mostly) made in the U.S. of A.

My favorite feature in our new product selection is the Brocante. This is because this gives me a great excuse to scour the Brocante markets here in France. Okay, I do that anyway but this gives me an excuse to buy as much as I want! This month we're featuring vintage, linen dishtowels which are a hot item 

and will probably be gone before I get back to the states in a week with a suitcase full of new treasures. Namely, luxurious linen, vintage monogrammed sheets. Here's a sneak peak. Drum roll please…...

I can't even tell you how hard it is for me to sell these new finds.

Please push that gigantic, yellow button over to the right of my blog and do a little window shopping. Or you can click here. Don't be afraid to buy…it's the giving season you know!

* * * * *

And while I'm self-promoting, I want to mention that someone has nominated me for the

 ExpatsBlog.com Top blog award. I don't really know what that means, but if you like my blog (particularly on non shameless self-promotion days) and have a moment, head on over there and write something glowing about it. I would like that very much.

Okay. I think I'm done. 

From here on out, I'll be back to my vie quotidienne.

I promise.

Thanks for hanging in there with me!

Pork Shoulders and Butts

I've said it before and I'll say it again. One of my favorite things about living in France is the food. I love being able to buy fresh vegetables easily and eat them according to the season. I relish the simplicity of the food and people's respect for it and it's origins. I adore eating dishes in which I can taste each delicious ingredient. Today I ate a salad with fresh ingredients from the market down the street. Yesterday I made a leek quiche because leeks are plentiful right now. The day before I invented a simple dessert with the last of this year's strawberries. Of course, this can be done in the states, but truly, it is just so much easier here and much more a part of the culture.

That being said, I have publicly admitted before, and will again, that I love Spam. It's a treat I eat once or twice a year and I always have a can in reserve for the necessary moment. I don't know where I learned to love this canned, gelatin-entombed, square block of pork shoulder and sodium nitrate. Perhaps when I worked as a trail cook in Canada where I would serve Spam when we hadn't found anything to shoot for dinner that day. Or maybe it's because I grew up about 1/2 hour away from the Hormel factory in Austin, Minnesota where it's made. The reason for my amour is shrouded in jelly and mystery.

In my humble opinion, Spam can only be prepared ONE way; sliced, fried until crispy, and served on soft white bread with yellow mustard. It is not the same on a baguette with dijon mustard.  I know this, because I've tried it (yes, people bring me Spam here in France). Okay, and maybe it can be served with eggs.

Most likely because I've mentioned this before on this blog, an ad popped up on google page advertising a recipe for Spam Casserole. My curiosity took me to a page called Recipe Source where I found the following recipe.

Title: FRENCH FRY SPAM CASSEROLE
  Categories: Main dish
       Yield: 8 servings
  
       1 pk Frozen french fry potatoes,
            -thawed (20 oz)
       2 c  Shredded Cheddar cheese
       2 c  Sour cream
       1 cn Condensed cream of chicken
            -soup (10 3/4 oz)
       1 cn SPAM Luncheon Meat, cubed
            -(12 oz)
     1/2 c  Chopped red bell pepper
     1/2 c  Chopped green onion
     1/2 c  Finely crushed corn flakes
  
   Heat oven to 350'F. In large bowl, combine potatoes, cheese, sour
   cream, and soup. Stir in SPAM, bell pepper, and green onion. Spoon
   into 13x9″ baking dish. Sprinkle with crushed flakes. Bake 30-40
   minutes or until thoroughly heated.

Am I all wrong or did just reading this make you want to evacuate the contents of your stomach? Did it make the buttons pop on your skirt or the seam in your jeans split open? Do people REALLY eat this? Seriously, cheese AND sour cream AND cream-of-anything-soup? I just did a calorie count per serving and it was 597 calories and 46 grams of fat, providing you really divide this into 8 servings. And most Americans don't.

I'm not dissing one of my favorite treats. I really wanted to be the Spam Queen at one time until I found out the expiration date for this honor was a much younger age than I was imprinted with at the time. And I do have a full set of jewelry that my auntie made me out of Spam cans. And an alarm clock. And a toy Spam race car. And a tee-shirt. And framed old Spam advertising. And...


But I must insist that Spam cannot be eaten in this manner. Spam is pure. It needs to be eaten in simplicity with respect for it's origins (see first paragraph)... whatever they are! (actually you can find out here plus a whole lot more).  And none of this creamy, casserole business. After all, this fine food got an entire country through a world war.

This article is simply an expression of my outrage at such blasphemy.  In fact, the folks at Hormel have no idea that I exist. But if they wanted to crown me The Sovereign of Spam...The Priestess of Pork...the President of Potted Meat Products...The Hormel Ambassador to France, I would accept. Providing they gave me this to wear during my promotional trips. It would look great with my jewelry collection.

And I would travel the world promoting it's simplicity and handing out little Spam finger sandwiches. One can never be too old or too proud for a new career.

Operation Escargot

Aix en Provence is under siege! We've been taken over. Okay maybe not taken over, but we've been blocked. Blocked by Operation Escargot.


Apparently the venders who sell soft goods at one of our markets are ticked off. They've got a list of the city's transgressions to be sure, but their main gripe is that they've lost one day of market this year. They want it back and thus they have been blocking the entrances to the city for the last 3 days starting at 7 am.

Aix en Provence has a reputation as having a great market. We have our regular market, held 7 day per week market at Place Richelm where one can buy fruits, veggies, sausages, cheese, fish and a few other things. Our other market on Place des Prêcheurs, is held Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It includes all the aforementioned items and then some. It's bigger, busier and includes a brocante as well as the soft-goods dealers who sell clothing, fabric, and shoes. The soft-goods market spreads out into the streets behind the Palais du Justice...normally. But changes this year have them remaining in their normal spot on Saturdays, moved to Cours Mirabeau on Thursdays, and their market was eliminated on Tuesdays. I've never been able to find out exactly why.

Anyway they're ticked. So they're on strike and each morning they choose a couple of main city entrances to block and then they eventually rally their white trucks and vans around the Rotunde, our central circle. My friend Lynn tried to get into town Monday, not knowing about the grève. She called me to find out what was going on because she was stuck in infernal traffic, so bad she said, that people were actually getting out of their cars and leaving them. Oops, I forgot to tell her about the local newspaper tweet that I had seen regarding this little inconvenience! I just didn't think it would be so all-encompasing. Yesterday her plan was to try again and I followed the newspaper tweets so I could tell her which entrances were actually open and where to park. Our collective effort managed to get her into town.

The forains say they're going to hold out and Operation Escargot will continue until they get their market back. I, for one, would love to have them back on Tuesdays but this is feeling a little like terrorism to me. Nobody stops them, this is France after all, and striking is a national pastime. But at what point can the city just say," Knock it off? We can't have a market on Tuesday for such and such a reason and our people need to be able to get in and out of the city."

So for now, it's pretty quiet here in the old town. If you're trying to get into Aix anytime soon, I suggest that you arrive in a white van and join the parade. That should deposit you in centre ville without a worry.

Aisle Pick Up Something For Dinner

Aside from those rare days. …even rarer in the summer, when I go into some sort of cooking flurry, I really don’t need much food. Gone are the days of feeding 2 teenage boys (they're generally normal...unless I'm taking their picture), 17 of their nearest and dearest friends and a couple of neighbor kids thrown in for good measure. Also gone are the days of enough storage space to have one extra of almost everything in case of famine or plague. I buy my vegetables precisely when I need them at the daily market down the street, my bread at the patisserie, fresh daily also, and the tiny grocery around the corner suffices for anything else I might need (save Skippy Super Chunk).

But whenever a friend with a car heads out to one of the big supermarchés on the periphery of the city, I hitch a ride. I love to poke around, checking out what’s available, what’s prevalent, and what is non-existent. This sport is only fun when I have nowhere to be because the grocery store lines are un-flipping-believable. But that’s another article.

So here’s my rundown. The fruit and vegetable section is enormous. I mean, HUGE. And busy. I’ve never had to wait in line to get at the tomatoes before, but it’s happened to me here.  This section includes most things I’m familiar with although it’s really light on broccoli. Which is just fine with me. Don’t tell my kids but I’d probably be happy if I never had to eat broccoli again for the rest of my life. There is a higher preponderance of endive, shallots, leeks, fennel, and zucchini, a gazillion types of lettuce and various bean pods that mystify me. I mean, who really takes the time to shell these things, anyway?

The fresh milk section is about 2 feet wide and there is no such thing as a gallon of any of it. A pint is all you’re going to get…although you can buy the type of milk that will last, unrefrigerated, through a nuclear holocaust…but I am genetically incapable of buying it. People just don’t drink milk here. When I tell them I love a tall, cold glass of milk with a sandwich they come dangerously close to gagging.  I’m a little disappointed because one of the first phrases I learned on my Rosetta Stone French program…. actually the only one…was “the boy drinks milk”. I have NEVER been able to use that sentence; although I’m sure French boys drink milk…somewhere!

The proportions of the chip section….that enormous, colorful and caloric aisle in the U.S. is only a little  larger than the milk subdivision. Oh they’ve got salty snacks and some are REALLY nummy, but they obviously do not carry the importance in the French diet of…say….CHEESE.

The cheese aisle…now that’s another story! Do not get stuck here at 6 o’clock at night when you need to be somewhere in a hurry. You won’t get there. Trying to get through the mob is problem enough but making up your mind also takes time. Hard, soft, pasteurized or not, fresh or aged, goat, sheep or cow.  This thing goes on forever and doesn’t include the deli section of cheese (a small portion of it on the left), which also blows the mind for variety. The yogurt sector is the same. I don’t know what the French fascination is with yogurt, but they’ve got an entire aisle of it…. that and creamy pudding type desserts. So I shan’t worry about them. They’re getting their vitamin D.

Which brings me to the deli. There are sausages (some of which I just don’t even want to know their origins) a few salads, you can ask for sliced meats, sauces, cheeses and a few ready-made savory pies, pastas and roasted meats. But I want to point out there is not one, single, shuddering bowl of pink fluff or pistachio goo. Nor, have I seen a single clear plastic catering pan heaping with bright yellow, over-mayonaised potato salad. In fact, in spite of the fact that mayonnaise is French, I rarely see salads bound together with the stuff. Perhaps that’s different in the north…but this here is olive oil country, cowboy!

Chocolate also has an aisle of it’s own and I have been known to spend 20…okay, maybe more…minutes there examining my options. And don’t bother me while I’m pondering either!  It could get ugly. Chocolate chips are not included in the French penchant for the cocoa bean, however.

The wine aisle is not an aisle. It’s regional airport landing field. And it’s not one runway…. it’s three. It’s miles bigger than the beer section in a Wisconsin liquor department, which is saying something!  Local wines, wines from all the other regions of France, very little foreign wine, red, white, rose, dessert wines, wines for 75 euros and wines for 2 euros. Boxes of wines and cases of wines. Wines on special and wines for special occasions. This is just too much for me! While I may have a genetic inclination to drink real milk, I do not have that special, distinctly French gene that seems to just understand wine. Mind you, that doesn’t keep me away from this particular aisle. I look at it as research.

I haven’t even started on the meat aisle, but if I continue, this article will just be too long. So I won’t. That will be next week. As I sit here in the square, sipping a glass of red and eating a bowl of tapas, which in this case is a spicy, marinated version some of those mysterious, aforementioned beans, I’m thinking of what to make for dinner. I’ve got loads of fresh veggies given to me by a friend. Along with my string of garlic hanging from the ceiling and a bottle of olive oil and one of shallot vinegar, and a wedge of some variety of savoie cheese, I should be good. The Skippy is coming with friends in two weeks!

                                                          

It IS Easy Being Green

The markets here in Aix en Provence are exploding...bursting with choice, local, fruits, vegetables and herbs. But the most magnificent thing about les marchés (read more about our markets in Aix here) in August, is they're not exploding with people. There's a laziness to the days right now that I love. Everyone is on vacation, including many of the venders. And I can move around the market without getting stepped on or jostled and I have the opportunity to converse with the venders about such earth-shattering subjects as the merits of Tahitian versus Madagascar vanilla beans.  I want to stay away from the markets...I really do. Because I always buy more than I can consume in a day or two...just because it's beautiful... and ripe...and perfect. I have become pretty adept at taking veggies almost past their prime and turning them into something that I can at least stick in the freezer. I see, as I'm writing this, that there is a red pepper in the basket in front of me that is starting to shrivel with age. It will go in the broiler today with some olive oil and get itself roasted back to a new form of perfection.  I wish I could do that for myself! Oh yes, I guess I could. It's called a chemical peel!

Anyway, 2 weeks ago on a rainy, gray day I was perusing the market...again for nothing in particular. I passed a vender who happened to have a big fat, glorious pile of basil. And it was the thick-leaved, shiny variety (they call it Italian basil here) that I love to use for pesto. Summer pesto is a tradition at my house and when this herb is  thick and fragrant, before it flowers, one has to grab the moment. Which I did this day. I filled a sack and changed my afternoon plans.

Pesto was always one of my kids' favorites. On pasta, on crackers, on a sandwich, with tomatoes...whatever. And the wonderful thing about pesto is it makes basil preservable. It freezes like a dream, thaws fast and brings the late lazy days of summer back to mind when one is buried up to the neck in snow. Of course, here in the south, I don't need to worry about the snow thing but...winter is winter...no matter how it presents itself.

I'm low on good kitchen tools here but I did buy a food processor. My splurge was really the fault of a fellow blogger named Sharon, and her citrus tart recipe but I did have pesto in mind when I bought it. And you really need a food processor for this. Unless you're a kitchen saint...or nuts. So here's our favorite pesto recipe.

Pesto


4 C. well packed basil leaves (this does not mean well packed as in brown sugar. But you can push it down a bit. Bruising won't matter much. It won't have time to lose it's flavor).

1/2 C. olive oil

2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 to 1/3 C roasted pine nuts (do not skip the roasting step. This makes a world of difference in the flavor.)

1/4 C. grated parmesan cheese (yes, I mean buy a good quality wedge and grate it in the food processor)

1/4 C. grated asiago or pecorino cheese (same as above)

Wash and dry the leaves. Make sure they're good and dry by flinging them around in a towel or running them through the spin cycle of the washer (in a towel) ....yes you heard me. A top-load washing machine is the BEST kitchen tool. Do not try it in a front-loader (I tried that at my friend Kerry's house one time and she was picking spinach out of her underwear for a month). Then spread them out on a towel to dry.

Puree the leaves with a food processor. Add the oil, garlic and pine nuts and process until a paste forms. Then add the cheese and just process to blend.

That's it. Perfect pesto. I leave one batch in the fridge for dinner and the rest is frozen in 1/4 C. portions in freezer bags. I NEVER make one batch....it's always at least 4. And it's so comforting to have a stack of flat little green bags in the freezer. For that moment when....

Just for extra fun, here's a great recipe using pesto. I haven't got any photos. Philadelphia Cream Cheese has just recently come to France and I can only get it at the big supermarkets. But take my word for it, unmolded, this is a beautiful addition to an apero table;  it's green, red and white stripes singing summer.

Pesto and Sun-Dried Tomato Torta

1 ½ pkgs (8 oz. each) cream cheese           

            into chunks
 ½ C. unsalted butter, into chunks

8 oz. dried tomatoes                                    

fresh basil leaves for garnish

 In a small bowl, cover tomatoes with boiling water and let them stand 2-5 minutes, or until softened.  Drain well and chop.  Line a mold or bowl with plastic wrap, letting ends hang over.  Layer half cream cheese mixture, half of the pesto and half dried tomatoes.  Repeat layers.  Fold ends of wrap over top and refrigerate at least two hours.  To serve, invert and remove plastic wrap.  Garnish with basil leaves and serve with crackers or toasts.

These freeze beautifully so I make two in soup bowl sized molds and one goes in the freezer for the inevitable moment when someone arrives for a drink and all I've got is old cereal and sour milk.

Bon Appetit!

The pesto recipe looks amazingly like one at Epicurious. Who knows, maybe that's where I got it back in the '80s...but I doubt it. I'm sure they stole it from me! The Torta recipe, if memory serves me right, came from my friend Steve Immerman. Thanks Steve. I've used it a million times.

Take Time to Smell the. …Fish Guts

This Monday Memory wasn't actually written exactly a year ago at this time but since I'm been been beating the markets to death recently, I thought I would publish this one. I'm no longer in the throes of moving woes and my visitor season doesn't begin until May 11, with my first arrival. But the sentiment still holds true... often I forget to take the time.

Tonight I am once again sitting on the Place Richelme writing my weekly newspaper column. Since I first arrived here, this has been my choice place to write. I love to watch the day turn to night and take in the constant action of the square. It’s like nothing we have in Eau Claire, Wisconsin or even in Minneapolis. It has it’s own heartbeat; a life of it’s own, that I seem to feed on.

It is a cool evening, still t-shirt weather but cooler than normal. The everyday bustle of the square is a feast for my eyes and ears.  I’m watching an old woman with flaming red hair try to manage her 3 tiny dogs as well as a man in an automated wheelchair trying to maneuver through the crowd and over the cobblestones (I don’t know how he manages in a city of hills, steps and no elevators).  I have been so busy lately, with visitors and moving, that I've forgotten to take the time to watch and listen, and I didn’t realize that until just this minute.

Every single day here on the Place Richelme, in the very early morning before my eyes have even adjusted to daylight,  white vans arrive from the nearby countryside. The vans wander in like a band of white druids gathering for a mysterious ceremony. This particular square has a food and fish market every day but there are several other markets here that offer antiques, books, flowers, clothing and artisanal items. But all proceed in the same fashion. It’s a choreographed ballet and all the dancers know their roles by heart.

The vendors climb out of their vans and begin to unload their wares, their tables, their kitchens, their scales, their coolers...whatever is that they need to display, sell, or prepare their goods. They set up, assemble, lay out, and prepare for another day. Soon after, the people of the city with shopping baskets in tow, begin to arrive for their own ceremony.  They purchase sausage, roasted meat, cheese, vegetables, honey, lavender, olives and tapenades, spices, and fish of all kinds.  They are the old and the young, children and dogs, tourists and residents. Every single day they congregate at this market.

There is market protocol, which I am quickly learning. For instance, don't scoop up the cherries with the little shovel provided.  Apparently, it's just there for decoration. If you attempt this maneuver, the proprietors will shout, slap their foreheads, look at each other in exaggerated disbelief, wag their fingers and shake their heads. Protocol demands that you apologize profusely, in French, and then buy a lot of cherries. Never try to pay with a 50 Euro bill, always say Bonjour, Merci, Au Revoir and Bonne Journée and if you can manage a little chit-chat in French, go for it!  You are a hero if you bring your own shopping bag and if you go on a rainy day, be prepared to lose an eye from the innumerable and dangerous points on all the shoppers’ umbrellas.

Around 1 o’clock the market draws to a close. The remainders of the day are packed in crates, booths are disassembled and reloaded, garbage is deposited on the ground, and the white vans slowly wander back, one by one, to wherever they came from.

Then come our men in blue and yellow. These are the guys that clean and wash our streets....daily.  They pick up all the garbage, the boxes, the old vegetables, the fish guts, the cigarette butts, and, yes, the dog poop. They sweep the square with these weird implements that look like old-fashioned twig brooms but they are actually made out of  green plastic. Then they begin with the hoses, washing the square so it is pristine and looks as if the market never happened.  The smell of fish, however, remains a little longer.

While they are still working, you begin to hear a rumble coming from all the streets around the square. From all directions come men pushing trolleys filled with tables, grand and colorful umbrellas, and if the weather is cool, tall heaters. These items are stored wherever a restaurateur can find storage space so they may be pushing the carts a long way. As the cleaners wash away the market, the waiters begin setting up tables.... 50 or 60 or 70 tables. They set up the tables, the umbrellas, and the chairs. They set out ashtrays, and menus and hang the chalkboards with today's menu on the trees.

And soon, new people arrive to fill the tables. They are full all day! It makes me wonder when people work here. Lunch is a 2-hour affair; dinner is late but can take 3 or 4 hours. There is, of course, afternoon coffee and wine, the after work coffee or apero, and the evening pre-club dinners and gatherings.

During the summer months, as the sun sets, a bar is set up near the tables, and music plays. The buildings surrounding the square act as an amplifier and it is so noisy, mostly from the din of conversation, that you can’t even hear a telephone call. But it’s not a cacophony…it’s actually quite pleasant. That is, if you’re not one of the unfortunate souls with an apartment on the square who needs to get up early for work! People are everywhere, eating and drinking and conversing; a sea of black and white (heaven forbid you should wear color) and candles. As a special treat, summer Sunday nights on the square are Tango night. It's magic to wander through the mass of dressed-up, high-heel wearing dancers as they glide (okay the word "glide" is a stretch for some of them but hey...it's dark!)  through the candle-light shadows under the night sky. 

As the evening draws to a close around 2 am, the waiters begin disassembling the day’s equipment, load it back onto the trolleys they have retrieved and they rumble their way back to wherever they came from. It’s exhausting to think that all of these people do this every single day, but this dance is the lifeblood of the square and nobody seems to think twice about it.

As the tables disappear, the groups of people, mostly under 30, stand up to leave. The kisses begin and after everyone has kissed (once on each cheek) everyone they’ve spoken to, or even looked at during the evening, they wander off, either to return home or to continue their evening at one of the all-night clubs.

As an American, who formerly often did not even take the time to sit down and eat, let alone meander through a market on a regular basis, this is an education. And one of the most pleasurable fields of study I have ever gone through. Everyday I must remember to take the time to enjoy.... to converse.... to savor...to watch, and to attempt to make my crabby waiter smile. I'm not sure how this class will look on a resume but I'm trying to take it very seriously.

                                              

The Marché...of all the other good stuff to eat

I've been in a funk this past week and have not felt like writing or exploring or doing much of anything. I'm not sure if I've yet dug myself out.  Nevertheless, this morning I made sure to go to the market for today's photos. I was on my way home to post them...I really was....I had all good intentions! However, I got waylaid by a little jam session at Hubelot, my neighborhood coffee shop/bar/internet cafe/now music venue! So today I'm a wee bit late posting.

When I grow up I'll try to be more responsible!

Today I want to give you a glimpse of all the other great stuff to enjoy at our daily markets. True, the fruits and vegetables are more colorful, but I can really find almost anything I need at our outdoor markets here in Aix en Provence

Who doesn't need candied fruit or salted anchovies, anyway?

In fact, the selection is endless....from bread...

to fresh eggs.

Dried meat...

fresh meat....(yes I'm afraid that is sheep's brains!)

and....NO MEAT! 

I've really got to get out of this slump and get up earlier.

We've got olives for the beginning of the meal..

and cheese for the finish.

You can even buy the meal and skip the cooking!

Like this glorious seafood paella...

and this mouthwatering roasted chicken with potatoes.

Say FROMAGE, Monsieur!

Baked goods...both sweet and savory

And artisanal products like the local honey...

and the home made nougat made from the local honey.

(which I really don't love...mostly because I don't like the word nougat!)

 This young man was kind enough to tell me all about it. All I managed to glean from the conversation is that it is a candy made with 60% honey, sugar, egg whites and nuts or dried fruit. But after all that, I really felt I had to buy some! That will teach me to keep asking questions!

Next weekend is the big, city Vide Grenier (giant thrift sale). I can't wait. Mostly because I've got to stay away from the food markets until my jeans fit a bit more comfortably!

Bon Week-end!