truffe en fête.

blogosphere! i have news to report, at long last. it’s been a quiet month here in the countryside – lots of movie watching and novel reading. but, this weekend, i had one of the coolest experiences that i’ve had to date here in france… and it was all about the truffle, the cherished black diamond of the périgord!

a few weeks ago, a couple of my pilates friends here in excideuil told me about a special all-day event held each year called “truffe en fête.” it's put on by the local chapter of the rotary club, and celebrates one of this region’s most precious commodities – the truffle. the whole shindig is split into two parts… the first segment is an afternoon “conference,” at which attendees learn about the truffle, listen to local “trufficulteurs," and even have the opportunity to do a little taste-testing as well! the second part is a full-on french feast experience, with every course featuring (you guessed it) the truffle. when christine and beatrice told me that it was a benefit dinner for a local cancer research fund, i was sold! what better way to experience the local culture and taste truffles for the first time than by giving back to that same community. as the date approached, i continued to look forward to the event with high expectations!

finally, the weekend arrived. i had offered to go with christine and beatrice on friday, to help set up for the event on the following day… and i’m so glad i did! i met several members of the rotary club, who were all wonderfully charming and friendly. we spent the afternoon/early evening rearranging tables, perfecting the place settings, and generally making sure that everything was ready for the 200 person dinner the next day. the venue itself was absolutely gorgeous. situated just a few kilometers away from excideuil, the “domained’essendiéras” is a beautiful complex of two chateaux (one from the 16^th century and one from the 19^th century), a banquet hall and clubhouse, golf course, vacation homes… you name it. the chateaux were beautifully renovated by the family that owns the property, and i was continually impressed with the attention to detail they so obviously devoted to the process.

on saturday, i got myself all dolled up and went down to the venue early with the ladies (begging rides has become the norm, since i have no car) to help with last-minute preparations before the afternoon session started. there wasn’t much to do for the first hour or so, but around 2pm, the highly-anticipated (and slightly late) keynote speaker showed up! her name is danièle mazet-delpeuch, and she is an absolute gem. as a native of the périgord region and a world-renowned specialist in the regional cuisine, danièle was a total match for this event. she had even agreed to prepare a little “amuse-bouche” as a treat for the audience, so when she arrived, beatrice and i kicked into sous-chef mode. we spent about an hour and a half in the kitchen in total, preparing the cutest little hors d’oeuvre you ever did see. step one was cutting a big loaf of freshly baked, freshly delivered bread into strips and arranging them onto plates for eventual toasting. for step two, danièle showed me how to carefully cut little quail eggs open with nail scissors and pop them into pre-heated frying pans for some sunny-side-up goodness. once they cooked, i was given a little scalloped biscuit cutter and told to place the beautiful little eggy flowers into the shallow plastic bowls that beatrice had set out onto the trays. once the eggs were placed, the freshly toasted bread strips (called tartines) were lovingly spread with the foie gras that delphine had made especially for the event. DI-VINE. the final, and most important, touch was to lightly touch the foie-gras end of the tartine into some crumbled raw truffle, sprinkle just a teensy bit of the truffle onto the egg yolk, and place the tartine across the bowl. throughout the process, danièle was so wonderful and encouraging – she even complimented my egg-cutting techniques and told me i had a future as a chef. once the assembly was complete, danièle went out and spoke for about 30 minutes before doing a foie gras demonstration! her life has been incredibly interesting; she started out as a sort of local culinary hero in the perigord region, welcoming chefs and cooking enthusiasts from all over the world to her country home/farm for foie gras and truffle camps. then, in the late 80’s, she was summoned (almost literally) to paris, upon recommendation, to be the personal chef for the then-president-de-la-republique françois mitterand! she worked in the palais de l’élysée (equivalent of the white house) for two years. then, she went to work in antarctica as the chef for a french research team for 14 months! she’s literally been on every continent! a movie was made about those two experiences (working in paris and antarctica) – it is called "haute cuisine" (or les saveurs du palais) and came out last fall. i just watched it today – it’s very entertaining, and the woman who plays “hortense” (danièle) did a great job of capturing her spirit. all in all, i consider myself very, very lucky to have had such a unique opportunity!

by 6:30 or so, everyone had left to go get ready for the dinner. we made sure everything was picked up  and tidy before heading down to the banquet hall. i sat and watched the england/france rugby match (the 6 nations tournament opener!) with a bunch of the men. france ended up winning right at the very end, which put everyone firmly in a great mood for the rest of the night. i was also interviewed by the local blogger for a little article on his site, periblog (link forthcoming). around 7:45, we lit the candles and the “servers” (rotary club members) started popping bottles of bubbly! now, i’ve had my fair share of authentic french dinners… but i’ve never been to a banquet-type dinner. and let me tell you, this one was special. we started with the pre-dinner drinks around 8pm, and everyone kind of just mingled until about 8:30. after a few opening remarks from the rotary club president and christine, the first course was served. naturally, it was a soup – a velouté of white beans and potatoes, with the ever-present truffle, of course. it was delicious. i could have had 4 bowls of it. and of course, with a new course we must have new wine! throughout the night, our table ended up having something like 8 bottles of wine… there were only 10 of us at the table, and two didn’t really drink. so, you can do the math there. the second course was a truffle foie gras (heaven help me) with carmelized onion jelly and fresh, crusty bread. i cannot even begin to describe the delicacy that was this dish. it was simply divine. i was starting to feel full by the end of it, though, because that slice of foie gras was substantial to say the least. thankfully, the third dish took a while coming, because the purée had to be prepared exactly before serving… and it takes a lot of purée to feed over 200 people. finally, the main course came out, and boy, was it worth the wait. a beautiful cut of beef cheek, roasted for several hours and served alongside a potato purée made with truffled crème fraiche and this fantastic gravy. it was absolutely decadent – the meat was so, so tender and the purée was this velvety concoction of perfect seasoning, buttery, truffley, potatoey goodness… mmm. i will never think of mashed potatoes the same way again. after that, we had the cheese course, which was a truffle-infused, soft goat cheese with a slice of toasted bread which had been glazed with truffle oil… i love goat cheese, but the texture was different than any kind i’ve tried thus far. finally, dessert was fresh crêpes with truffle caramel – exactly as delicious as it sounds. as is only fitting, there was a round of coffee to finish everything off, despite the fact that it was pushing one in the morning at that point. the meal honestly took like 5 hours. #france. i have never, ever had a meal so decadent and detailed and perfectly french in my entire life. each course was introduced by a meticulous explanation that perfectly explained the treat we were about to receive. we took our time, enjoying each dish as it was brought to us and praising the elements that were particularly phenomenal. the evening was made even more special by the fact that i got to sit with several friends from excideuil and the surrounding area, some that i have known for a while now and others that i met that evening. i also got to meet christine’s daughter and beatrice’s two children, which was a treat! it was funny to meet the kids, now that i’ve gotten to be friends with the parents.

i stayed and helped clean up a little bit – mostly bussing the tables and getting all the glassware sorted into the trays. finally, just after 2, i left with christine’s husband gilles (my name counterpart), who kindly offered to bring me and beatrice’s son adrien back to excideuil. i was talked into staying for a drink at their house, since i’m friends with the kids and there’s nothing like a beer at 2:30 in the morning. i finally, finally got home just after 3am, and promptly fell into bed soon thereafter.

it seems only fitting that this post is one of my longest ones yet, and it’s about food. that’s a very appropriate metaphor for france, if i’m being honest. if there’s one thing the french know, it’s how to eat, and eat well. bon appétit, indeed!

silver and gold

this entry is going to be a little more of a “captain’s log” style… too much to recount!

as i mentioned in my last post, i had a medical appointment on wednesday, in bordeaux. basically, the immigration office needed proof that i am, in fact, alive and not likely to cost them too much over the course of my stay here in france. so, i spent two hours on wednesday afternoon hanging out with several other assistants (we’d all been given the same appointment window), and intermittently entering various offices to discuss my vaccination history, strip from the waist up for a chest x-ray (no TB here, yay!), read a tiny line of text across the room, and finally get that long-sought-after OFII sticker in my passport. now, i’m a legal citizen! at least, until june…

one nice (read: incredible) part about my job is the flexibility. the principal had no issues with me taking wednesday and thursday off for this doctor appointment, so i made the most of my time and went up to paris for a long weekend! i was excited to see the city again, but i was more excited to finally get a chance to catch up with one of my closest friends from my semester in angers! jessie lived across the hall from me, and is basically the reason i stayed sane during my time abroad. she introduced me to several other international students on our floor, who ended up becoming like family to me. seeing her this week in paris felt like a true completion of my prodigal return to france! she met me at the metro stop near her house late wednesday night, and i’m pretty sure we didn’t stop laughing until i left eeearly monday morning. love that girl.

being back in paris was a little surreal – i’ve visited several times before, but it had been over two years since my last visit. it was also the first time that i’d gone primarily to visit friends (as opposed to going for touristy purposes), and i genuinely enjoyed the lack of pressure i felt to go, go, go all day, every day. i spent a lot of the weekend simply walking around various neighborhoods, soaking up the atmosphere and marveling at the beauty that i found in literally every direction. i did, however, do a few touristy things… i spent the better part of thursday afternoon meandering through the louvre, since i hadn’t been since 2008 and i can get in for free with my newly-validated residency visa. i was particularly blown away by several of the greek and roman scultures, but my favourite part was the decorative arts wing, which includes the napoleonic apartments. having just finished reading vanity fair, it was cool to see what the setting of the novel looked like in person. i really enjoyed walking through rooms that held such historical significance, especially since they’re not reproductions – real life happened in those rooms. or, as real as early 19th century napoleonic society could be. i love imagining all the women in their gowns and jewels and feathered hair ornaments, perching daintily on the crushed red velvet couches in the salons, and the men with their breeches and starched neckclothes and quizzing glasses. if i had a time machine, that’s definitely where i would go.

thursday actually was kind of a luxurious day. when i left the louvre, i walked along the rue de rivoli until i passed a fancy-looking bookshop (you know how i can’t resist the allure of a nice book display) and ducked inside… only to almost immediately and very nearly bump into karl lagerfeld, of chanel fame. he came in to pick up a few gifts, and you would have thought a member of the royal family had walked in, with the way the employees jumped up to help him. although, i suppose that he is sort of royalty in fashion-loving paris. i continued my walk all the way down to the eiffel tower, where i enjoyed a little picnic dinner and watched that steel celebrity sparkle for a little while. there really is nothing like it anywhere in the world. right as i was about to head back to the apartment, jessie called and said she’d gotten tickets through her university to attend a play at the “theatre de la ville” for free that evening! evidently, it was the play to see in paris right now, so i scurried over there and met up with her and her classmates. it was a packed house – there were even people standing outside, trying to scalp tickets! so, i guess it really is popular. i had no idea what the play even was called, let alone what it was about! as it turns out, it was a two-man show called “the old woman,” which is a sort of theatre-of-the-absurd work, based off of a russian poem, and performed by none other than willem dafoe and mikael baryshnikov! it lived up to its genre… it was certainly absurdly bizarre, but i enjoyed it purely as a cultural experience.

friday was all about friendship. i walked around a little in the morning, did some grocery shopping, and then had a big lunch prepared for when jessie got home from school around 2pm! we ate and talked for a long while, just enjoying the opportunity we had to finally catch up after nearly two and a half years! it was so lovely, and really felt like we picked up right where we left off. then, around 8, jessie got ready for a night out with her NYU classmates, and i got ready to go have dinner with another friend of mine in paris, devon! she was a french major at belmont who graduated my freshman year, so we never really got to know each other during college. however, since she had studied abroad in angers, she was always the person to whom  we were referred with questions about life as an exchange student. so, we’ve communicated on facebook intermittently for years. now, she’s living with her french husband (who she met while studying abroad, precious!) in paris. she is a true gem – we sat in her little studio apartment and talked for almost 5 hours; i only left because i had to get the last metro home! it was so, so great to finally have the opportunity to sit down in person and get to know each other – it already felt like we had known each other for ages!

saturday was much more relaxed. after the late night, jess and i both enjoyed sleeping in and making breakfast for lunch! one interesting thing about the holiday season over here is that, for obvious reasons, it goes straight from halloween to christmas… so paris was in full christmas mode during my visit! we spent the afternoon wandering through the christmas market that lines the champs-elysees, stretching all the way from the place georges clemenceau to the place de la concorde. jessie’s friend emily joined us, and we did a little shopping and a lot of eating – there is nothing like holiday fair food. from there, we headed down the seine to my favourite place in paris – shakespeare and company. i go there every time i’m in the city, and it never fails to make my heart skip a beat. i have dreamed of working there since the first time i visited, and that dream is still alive. one day! the evening was spent walking through bustling streets, eating crepes in paper cones and enjoying the festive atmosphere.

the grand finale of my weekend in paris was a wonderful ex-pat thanksgiving dinner, given by two lovely friends of my friend, devon... it was an absolute treat! devon invited me (and Jessie!) to join her home-church group for a big meal on Sunday. i’ll save my reflections about celebrating thanksgiving abroad for my post later in the week; suffice it to say, i have been immeasurably blessed with friends in this world, both old and new, and i thank the lord every day for those relationships!

as always, to see photos from this trip, check my facebook album here, starting at photo 25!

the title of this blog comes from the “friends both new and old” concept… but it also reminded me, indirectly, of a great christmas tradition in my family (and many others, i’m sure). here’s a sneak preview, to get you in the spirit. it’s that time of year again!

vacation life.

hola amigos!

it’s been far too long since i’ve posted on here – but, i’ve been busy (read: on holiday in spain)! here in franceland, vacation days are plentiful. usually, schools go for about six weeks, and then the students get a two week break. this pattern continues from the beginning of september to june. as a teaching assistant, i have the pleasure of benefitting from this lovely little schedule, which means i get 8 weeks of vacation this year (fall break, christmas break, winter break, spring break). the halloween break snuck right up on me… i felt like i’d only just started work (because i had) and then boom! two weeks of vacation. being the proactive little traveler that i am, i had to take advantage of the time! i was pretty exhausted from the constant vagrancy of september, so i decided to go easy and plan a trip to see two of my friends from nashville, who are living and teaching in madrid for the year! it was much simpler than planning a big tour through scandinavia, which was my other idea.

before i left, however, i did have a very interesting teaching experience. as the only english assistant in the school, i was offered the chance to teach an optional english camp during the first two days of the vacation. the school puts on this program each semester, and they usually find a native english speaker to plan the lessons and run the two-day camp. this time, i had 15 high schoolers, ranging from 10^th-12^th grade, to entertain for a total of 10 hours. i was exceedingly pleased with the lesson i created, which centered around a “roadtrip across the usa” theme and touched on all aspects of language acquisition (reading, listening, writing, conversing, public speaking). in theory, it was great. in reality….. it was alright. some things just didn’t work in practice like they had in my head (ie – group vocabulary research, roadtrip itinerary creation). if i had known that the students expected these camps to be mainly focused on speaking practice, i would have planned differently… however, considering the fact that i was given literally no guidelines or instruction, i thought it was pretty successful. the first time trying something is always going to be awkward, and now i know better for next time!

the moment my camp was over on tuesday, i hit the road for my vacation! since excideuil is so far out into the country, it’s kind of a process to even get to an airport. i’ve found that the best thing to do is get into bordeaux for the evening and then fly out the following day, so that’s exactly what i did. plus, i got to hang out with my friends in bordeaux for a night, which is always, always a plus. :)

europe is so fun, because international flights can be amazingly short! we crossed a mountain range and completely changed cultures in less than an hour… i’m not sure we even got up to full altitude. but anyway, i got to madrid in about an hour and fifteen minutes, and promptly got to partying! the friends i was visiting, mitchell and nicole, met me at the airport, brought me home to drop my bag, and then led me to this fantastic area of madrid called lavapies. this particular neighborhood just haaaappened to be in the middle of a week-long event called “tapapies,” in which dozens of bars were offering signature tapas for 1 euro each. convenient. we ended up bar-hopping through lavapies for a couple nights of my stay, because it was just too good for one visit.

the majority of my time in the city proper was spent walking (as is my habit in new cities), visiting some seriously fantastic art museums (mostly for free, thanks to the handy free-admission hours that most museums offer throughout the week), and eating. my lord, did we eat. here in excideuil, it’s hard to cook for just one person… i invariably end up making the same couple meals, because they’re easy to make in small quantities. but in madrid, we got to cook for four, which led to some wonderfully creative dinners and snacks. it was great to get to see my friends and spend some quality time together in such an exciting and vibrant city!

consequently, we did get out of town on two separate day trips, which were both fantastic. one of the days, we took the train out to avila, a medieval city with a giant wall surrounding the old town. we did a little taste test of the typical pastry of the town and then walked along the top of the walls for over a kilometer. it was interesting to see how closely it resembled the walls of the chateau in angers, where i used to live. they were constructed around the same time, so i guess that was just the style back then! our other day trip was to toledo, another town about an hour south of madrid. we went on a sunday, so it was pretty quiet, which meant fewer tourists but also earlier closing hours. we saw a lot, but i definitely want to go back one day and see all the churches and museums that were closed! even so, it was great just to walk around and see the tiny streets and hidden plazas.

my last day in spain was halloween, which was so fun. i went with nicole out to the school where she teaches, so i could visit her classes and help spook the kids in this haunted classroom experience one of the teachers had set up. it was so entertaining, because the kids immediately came up to me and started asking questions and trying to figure out who i was. i even bonded with one of the girls when i told her i was from the same town as taylor swift. i was particularly interested in seeing the differences between her school and mine here in france – the educational systems are really quite different! all in all, i’m happy with my decision to teach middle/high school… as cute as the primary school kids were, i just don’t have the energy for that kind of mayhem every day!

if you would like to see photos from my trip to spain, check out this facebook album, starting at picture number 77!

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after i got back to excideuil from vacation, i worked for 4 days (for a grand total of 10 hours) and then had a 4 day weekend, thanks to armistice day. #france. my upstairs neighbor, mathilde, invited me to her house for the break, which was super kind of her. we left friday afternoon and made the 5 hour trek up to her town, which is called ‘les sables d’olonne.’ it’s a beach town on the atlantic coast, and it’s so lovely! luckily, we had a few hours of sunshine on saturday and sunday, so she got to show me the beach, the boardwalk, the harbor, and some of the more rugged coastline. the weekend was filled with exceptional food (oh, how i missed home-cookin’) and lots of french practice for me (note: conversations in loud bars and comedy shows containing political satire are even harder in a foreign language). mathilde and her parents were so hospitable and fun – i had a great time. (for pictures, click here!) and now, somehow, my christmas break is only 5 weeks away. so, naturally, i’m already planning. that’s pretty much how things go here… finish one vacation, start planning the next!