Food Tour

After looking at my pictures from the last week I have concluded that I am not studying abroad, but rather conducting an extensive food tour of France. My journal, which contains the following list of foods that I have tried since arriving (banh bao, rice with chopped peanuts and sugar, banh couh, carmel pork, durian, speculoos, pave du poulet, foie gras, dauphin potatoes) displays similar evidence. Last weekend I actually visited a traveling show entitled Salon du Chocolate. It was, as you are probably imaging, literally a warehouse full of chocolate vendors. The pictures below come nowhere near capturing the amazing flavors I have experience, but they are all I have. Bon appetite!

A field of chocolate flowers

Nougat

Me and my new best friend

Arles Market

Pave du Poulet and Dauphin Potatoes

Vegetables from beneath the rotisserie

Baguette, Sausage, and Comte Cheese

Raspberry, Coffee, and Vanilla Macaroons

Tiramisu Ice Cream

Macaroons and Crepes and Tartes Oh My!

Espresso and Chocolate Macaroon

Stuffed chicken thigh with date, fig, and prune sauce, curried chicken, homemade vegetable soup, meat and caramel sauce, tripe, scallion and cheese quiche, apple tart, crepes, macaroons. This is a just a sampling of the foods I have eaten over the past two weeks. My family has this horribly wonderful habit of serving five different dishes for dinner each night to satisfy everyone. From an honest desire to be polite and a selfish love of food, I have been trying everything that appears on the table. My family is very encouraging with this habit and keeps offering me more and more food. I try to keep my portions small, but they don’t really have an understanding of this and continually berate me to “Mange! Mange!” (Eat! Eat!). So, it quickly became evident that I needed to learn a polite way to express that I was stuffed! After gesturing to my stomach when night and saying, “I can’t” one evening, my host mother provided just the phrase. “Ah,” she said, “you are rassasié.” Rassasié, she explained, is a more polite and posh way of saying that you just cannot eat another bite. The traditional, “Je suis plein” which is a direct translation of “I am full,” is not as chic as rassasié. This new expression has served me well over the past weeks. Waiters at restaurants are always pleasantly surprised to hear such a Parisian phrase coming out of an American mouth and when I am invited to other French homes it usually wins me laugh. In a country where eating is truly an art form and even the fast food takes a half an hour, rassasié is one of the most useful words I have yet to encounter.

Photos!

Marseille!

Old Port and view of the Notre Dame de la Garde

My new dream neighborhood......