Bonjour mes amis!
I hate to say it, but its raining AGAIN this Sunday - that's three in a row, for those of you who are counting. Some of you have expressed dismay at the amount of rain there seems to be here - do not worry, we did actually have a sunny day yesterday, beautiful crisp fall weather that prompted my neighbor, Mr.Attal, to tell me when I met him going down the stairs 'Il faut profiter tout suite, ca va changer" - translation: you better get out there and enjoy this right away, because it ain't gonna last. Yes, it is getting colder, and in general is pretty chilly here compared to New York - although apparently the weather, while damp, won't ever get as bitterly cold or snowy as the East Coast, which is a bonus.
However, the general dampness here prompted me this week to buy a CLOTHES DRYER, a major purchase that the French are usually very skeptical of - they prefer to hang their clothes on drying racks, and for some reason seem to view a dryer as a suspicious and unneccessary luxury - I confronted my friend Marco, who used to live in our apartment, about this when he was over trying to explain all the places I could hang the clothes in our 450sq ft apartment (hang them from the ceiling,toss them over the heaters, etc) so I wouldn't need to buy a dryer. He said "No, no, my mother has a dryer and in fact I find it very convenient - I just figure when I retire, that will be my time to get a dryer." - Well, despite seeming very American-consumerist, I decided my time to get a dryer is NOW, and I could not be more excited to have properly dry jeans in this weather.
I also joined a gym this week, which is kind of a major milestone in gym-averse Paris. The gym I joined, Club Med, IS in fact affiliated with the 80s vacation resort brand, but is sort of like Parisian New York Sports Club - there are 17 of them around
thethe city, and with my membership I can go to any of them - which is good, because the locations vary extremely in quality. Often you're stuck in an old building with no ventilation, no windows, low ceilings, maybe underground ... kind of depressing. However, there is one sort of near my house that thankfully feels like a real American gym, a giant room with high ceilings and windows, with lots of cardio and weight training machines - this took me a month to find. Gyms are slowly catching on here, because even though the French famously don't really believe in exercise, they also don't believe in being fat, EVER, and are terrible hypochondriacs - so eventually, the gym thing was gonna catch on, but it's still something French people seem to do in secret and don't talk about much, for most part. Though there were some guys at my gym who were clearly on
thethe creatine, there in general wasn't as much of that grunting crazy body building dude that I seem to find all over New York, and I haven't yet seen any exercise-anorectic women (you know the ones, they seem to ALWAYS be at the gym, running on the treadmill, looking emaciated). For the most part, the French gym-goers seem somewhat bemused to be there.
One thing I will mention is that my first time at the gym I was really stunned at how hot all women's bodies were. People had warned me about this - Parisian women are fanatical about looking good, but in a "natural' way. You won't see any plastic surgery, but I was stunned in locker room that basically every woman had a flat stomach AND boobs, which I tend to think of as genetically impossible. It almost ruined my day, until my cousin Hillary (who has lived here for 5 years) helped calm me down by explaining that since gyms ARE so new here, really only
thethethe very active people go to them, and they tend to look pretty damn good - all the other body types stay home or do more walking/biking exercise or something. Well, true or not, I am grabbing on to this as a lifeline because let me tell you, these women were INTIMIDATING, and that's coming from New York Equinox gyms, which are pretty hardcore. Maybe I'll start taking the most popular class, which is "Abdo-Fessiers-Cuisses", or "Abs-Butt-Thighs", which they offer about 5 times a day at each location.
There is a sort of 80s overtone to gym, very Richard Simmons aerobics-y, and sometimes complete with the outfits that you didn't know existed any more. My friend Blaire goes to a gym here called (yes) LadyFitness, and she swears she sees legwarmers and thong leotards all times. There's also something called Le Gym Suedoise, which is like a Swedish aerobics class where you do
thethe Jane Fonda workout to ABBA....not kidding. Proving once again that the French are both super hip and SUPER out of it.
Okay, so enough GYMS, you guys probably want to hear more about out adventures in food, of which there were several this week. This began with my discovery of Tonka Beans at Lafayette Gourmet, the giant food market that's connected to the Galeries Lafayette department store - think of it as the Bloomingdales of food. Matt had read this article about Tonka beans, which I had never heard of and which are apparently illegal in the US, but which you can buy here and which the French are crazy for. They are made from the seed of a South American fruit, and are little black nuts/beans that smell like a combination of vanilla, cinnamon, and cloves- they're used in a lot of desserts here, and have the aromatic properties of truffles but are sweet instead of savory. Also, apparently, they contain the compound Coumarin, which in large quantities(like 100+ beans) can cause your liver to shut down. Tonka beans are classified as an illegal substance by the FDA, so naturally we had to have some.
We're not sure what we're going to DO with the Tonka Beans, but one idea Matt had, which we did yesterday and which worked SHOCKINGLY well, was to make Tonka Bean infused vodka. We just put 10 or 11 beans in the bottom of a bottle of vodka, and let them soak - and infusion happened very quickly; within 4 hours
thethe vodka had turned a golden color and was extremely perfume-y. Matt put it in the freezer last night to slow the infusing, but as promised the beans definitely impart their flavor and aroma VERY quickly.
Thanksgiving is this week, so we've been starting to prep for that, and Matt had the idea that we should make our own version of the very traditionally French dish Confit de Canard, or Duck Confit. We'll be serving this with a roasted chicken or two, because whole turkeys aren't really sold here. Confit de Canard involves slowly cooking a duck in its own fat, and then using that fat to preserve the meat. Once you've preserved it, you can leave it in the fat for up to 3 months, and then pull it out and sear it when you're ready to serve. We discovered that you have to confit the meat at least a week beforehand, so I went out earlier this week in search of duck legs (easy to find) and duck fat, which I wasn't sure where to get. But thankfully, my local butcher had both - and also, upon hearing I would be making duck confit, started a spirited debate amongst staff about what I should do - salt
thethe meat, don't salt the meat, how much fat to buy, etc. One guy, upon hearing that Matt had a recipe he wanted to use, said "Alors, si votre mari a une recette, il faut le laisse faire - ne pas perturber" - "Well, if your husband has a recipe, you must let him do it his way, don't bug him about it". How did he know so much about my marriage?
The confit-ing turned out to be super easy, and filled the house with a delicious duck fat smell. Now the legs are lying in the fridge in a congealed mass of their own fat, getting more and more tender, and again, I have to wonder how I"m changing as a person that this looks SUPER DELICIOUS to me...
That's all for this week, I've been loving getting your letters so please keep writing, and I will too - And I promise next week I will try to attach some pictures FINALLY, we've been having some camera issues.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
xo Claire
