A Day on the Homestead

 So today when I woke up I was happy to have been able to sleep in. It was really nice and I woke up around ten. When I came out nd sat on the couch before deciding to have breakfast, Madame asked me if I had any plans for the day. I said umm not that I know of but I thought we were making cookies today? She said of course we are! I was thinking that after we both take showers and get dressed and you have breakfast we could go and walk around town and maybe get a hot wine and a pretzel. I said Sure! That sounds like a wonderful idea!

 She headed for the shower and I headed for the kitchen. We had the music videos on like most mornings while we got ready for our day. Once I finished breakfast and she got dressed I went and took a shower and then we got ready to go. We went down and said hi to Paul who was printing out coloring pages from the computer. When we were leaving he came over and hugged me and told me he didn’t want me to leave. We told him that we would be back soon. He wanted to come with us but we told im no because he wasn’t dressed and showered yet. We started walking and went to the dumpster to dump our trash and Madame asked me if garbage was the same like this in Oregon. I told her no it is more like every house gets a separate trash can that gets changed once a week. She was like aren’t there trash cans everywhere then? I said yeah but because of that there is less garbage in the streets. Then as we were crossing the road we ran into one of her friends who we talked to for a little bit. When she left Madame told me that she had just got a new apartment so we watched which way she walked so that we could know what direction her new apartment was. It was kind of fun. Then we continued on and I asked where Laurences store was. She said we could walk by it even though it was a bit out of the way.

On our walk when we passed by the hotel de ville we could hear music coming from up the road. When we got up there it was a group of people dancing. I assumed it was a flash mob and when I said that I had to explain what a flash mob was to Madame. She liked the idea. Then we went and found Laurences store which looks like a VERY expensive boutique from what I saw in the window. It turns out it isn’t too far away from my school so I had probably walked past it many times. I also made the connection that the email that I had used at the very beginning of this whole process to send a letter about me to Madame was actually the stores email. So also because Madame doesn’t have a computer or internet that is why she wasn’t able to reply back! It makes so much more sense now!

So then after we walked by there we walked down to the chalets on Cours Mirabeau. We walked down and looked at all of the shops and Madame commented on how this or that was made or how this or that is overly priced because it is in a chalet and it is Christmas time. It was pretty fun. When we got to the end where the food was Madame ordered us two hot wines and two sausages with cheese in a pretzel bun delicious things. It was really good. I guess that hot wine is a newerish thing here. Madame had never had it and decided to have it because I had come home after Marseille and asked her how to make it because I really liked it. She didn’t know because she hadn’t even tried hot wine.

 We stood at one of the barrel tables and drank our wine and ate our sausages and another group of French people asked if they could use our table too. We said sure why not! So we started talking to them a little bit and asked them if they knew how to make the wine. They said you take spices from Alsace and then leave them in the wine for at least four days and then after that you heat it and that is how it has the spices in it. But some of the ones I have seen have citrus fruit peels in them but I don’t know what kind of fruit that is. But I bet I could google it.

 The other group asked us to take a picture of them so we did and then after Madame told me to go take a picture of the stand that we got wine from because it was pretty. When I walked away she started bragging that I was a student from the US. When I came back they were still talking about me so I talked with them a bit. Then I asked them if they could take a picture of me and Madame. The lady agreed and then I showed her how to take the pictures. We posed and she didn’t think it was working so she took like 12 pictures but we were not really smiling in many of them because we were trying to tell her how to do it. So we have some with me smiling and some with her smiling. Oops! So I am seeing if Sally can photo shop it so that we both look good. After that we walked down and left that stall and said bye to those people and then went and bought some churros to share. Then we walked past the Santons and she told me that she doesn’t have any but she thinks they are cute. They are a truly Provencal thing so because she hasn’t been living here too long she doesn’t have any. But we looked at them and then walked down through the house stuff store down by the theater where the fireworks show was the night before. She told me about this tradition where you plant blé on the fourth of December and then how ever much it grows until Christmas is how much good luck you will have. I told her she better not leave it somewhere that Beebo can reach it! Then we decided to head home.

When we got there we were getting ready to start the cookies when Paul came up and sat with us for a while. He was going to lunch at a restaurant with his parents and meeting with some people. He was not happy that we were going to be making the cookies without him so we said that we would wait. In the meantime I wrote some blogs. Madame did some laundry and some ironing and she would talk with me while she did it. We listened to a lot of Celine Dion as that was the artist chosen by the channel that does music videos for the day. After a while it got to be five o clock and we decided that we needed to be done waiting for Paul because we needed to get the cookies done tonight and he told us they would be back by 4:30. So we started without him. Madame showed me some of the recopies that she had and I gave her the one that I had converted from the recipe I know on the back of the toll house chocolate chip bag.

 The problem is that here they don’t use the measuring system of teaspoons or cups or things like that. So it makes it a bit complicated because everything is in grams which all matter about what kind of ingredient you are measuring. So I had to ask my translation teacher about how to make the conversions. So we used all the recipes to figure out what seemed the most universal between the recipes. It was really fun. They don’t use liquid vanilla extract they use packets and it is the same with baking soda/powder they use a packet called leavening powder. It was a pretty interesting. We also couldn’t find any chocolate chips at the store so we bought a chocolate bar. The part I was most worried about was the butter because it comes in much larger sticks but then she bought a different kind of butter that we the equivalent of two sticks of US butter so we used that. It was a pretty fun experience. I would add stuff and she taught me that if the bowl is sliding that you can put a towel under it and it won’t slide anymore. She says it is a secret she learned from working in the restaurant before she broke her wrist.

 We were just about done with the dough when Paul came in. He “helped” us make the dough balls to put on the wax paper sheet. He made huge balls of dough so we had to make them smaller. Overall,  it wouldn’t matter though. We got the dough on the sheets and put them in the oven. We were keeping an eye on them and suddenly noticed that the dough was falling through the sits in the oven shelf and onto the bottom of the oven. So we put some aluminum under it so that it would be better. The cookies spread out SO much! They all turned into about four giant cookies instead of 12 smaller ones. We also put in a regular metal pan of some which ended up just turning into a giant cookie. We laughed at how silly it was and Paul and I ate the dough. It was great dough! It was pretty fun and we all laughed at how silly these cookies were working out. We had to keep opening the oven and turn the trays because they were cooking more in the back than in the front. I think it was part of the problem that we kept opening the oven and so it would have to reheat each time.

When we gt them all out we left them cool a little bit more and then debated on how to cut them. Eventually we decided on the bigger ones to just cut them like a pizza. It was pretty funny. When we decided to eat them as they were cool enough they were delicious!!! They are definitely not the prettiest things but they taste really delicious! I was happy to have my craving solved. Madame kept saying that the next time we would only do one egg and see what it did because my recipe was two eggs and all the others were one, so we tried it with two eggs. I am excited that she is talking about doing it again :-) I am going to see if Cassidy can bring her some US measuring cups and stuff because she has a cook book here that she can’t use because all the measurements are in US measurements. So she was saying she would really like something like that.

After that we ate some cookies and Paul watched Gangnam Style on my iPod while Madame took some cookies downstairs. Then I talked to my Parents on Skype. After that Paul went downstairs and Madame started dinner. We had Pot roast with leeks, carrots, onion, celery, and potatoes. It was really good pot roast and we had some red wine. I did eat bone marrow though which was super gross. Madame was like oh this is good you have to try it and she scooped some out of the bone and put it on a little piece of bread. She told me to put some salt on it and so I put a ton on knowing I was going to have problems getting through the texture. It was like blech. I did not like it. She said I didn’t have to finish it before I tried it if I didn’t like it. It wasn’t very much though so I forced it and when she asked if I wanted more I was like nope! SO that was the end of that. It was a good dinner and afterwards Madame was like “Now we can eat more cookies!” I think she really likes them! :-) I am glad. 

After dinner we watched some news and they said that tomorrow is Saint Catherines day which I guess there are parties for women who are over 25 and not married will make hats that are yellow and green and then go to bars. It is kind of a marker that is like Hey I am single! I thought it was a pretty cool idea and when you google the hats they can be kind of crazy. 

After that I skyped my roommates and spegan back home. That was kind of cool to see them but they were off to see a movie. Dad earlier was off to see Catching Fire with Thad. I was only really jealous. We also started watching My Fair Lady in French. It was kind of funny and I noticed that Elizas French accent isn’t as terrible as it is in English. So that was kind of funny.

Then I had a good personal talk with my host mom about cheating. I learned that she was cheated on and that is why she left her fiancé that she had about 6 years ago. She had been with him for about 12 years and then he cheated on her with a really good friend of hers that she also worked with. We kind of talked about that and I told her my life experience. It was a pretty personal conversation and I felt really close to her after that. Also it was just kind of good to talk about it? Yeah.

After some more My Fair Lady we both decided to go to sleep. We were both exhausted and once we made Beebow leave my room we went to sleep.