So on Wednesday night (I’m pretty sure it was Wednesday, I don’t think it was Tuesday) we had a party at Collin’s house. By party I mean, we made our own food. Collin’s famille d’accueil is on vacation right now; they have been this entire week. So he’s been alone in his house every single night, which, I’m sure, was super duper fun. We’ve been trying to put together a study session so that we can go over all of the French that we used to think that we knew but that in all reality we have found we don’t know at all. We thought, “Hey, we’ve got time tomorrow night. Let’s make dinner and study French and be amazing!”
After classes Jessica and Mark and I went to the marché by the university and got penne, sauce, meat, salad stuff, cheese (le petit Breton…oh yum), and wine (of course). Oh, and we got a box of crêpe mix for dessert, and of course a monster loaf of bread. By 18h00 we were in Collin’s rather small kitchen putting together the dinner stuff. The kitchen is smaller than my bedroom, not to mention it has kitchen appliances in it (yes, I know, what a surprise); and the fact that we fit Mark, Collin, Jessica, Sophia, and me in it all at the same time is pretty much phenomenal. Of course there was always at least one of us who was just standing off to the side, wondering if they were supposed to be doing something.
Here’s something funny about the French: they don’t really believe in spices. They like sauces. Not spices. Unless, of course, you count salt and pepper as spices. I’m not sure that they really count, though…So we have this .35 kg of boeuf, and we need to make meatballs, and I’m just fine with rolling it up and throwing it in the pan, but no! Mark says that there have to be spices, because how can you even think of making meatballs (balls of meat! Haha cause you can’t say “meatball” in French….boules de viande!) without putting spices in them?!?! And bread crumbs! You have stale bread?! Let’s put it in!
What spices did we find? Salt, pepper (which are possibly not spices, since they’re, what, rocks and…uh….plantage?), and some really really really old thyme. At least, Mark said it was thyme, and I believe him. I’m proud to say I made the salad, which contained some of the best pieces of carrot and tomato ever. I’m not just saying that because I cut them up. I’m saying it because I put that piece of carrot in my mouth and it very nearly melted on my tongue. Tellement belle…so beautiful…
I also rolled the balls of meat, yes, aren’t you proud of me, mom, I know how to make balls of meat which are all exactly the same size. Unfortunately, I can’t then pick up the skillet that they are in and flip them in the air and catch them again like Collin could…The only thing about our dinner that wasn’t perfect was the monster amount of noodles we made. So we’re college kids, right? We should be familiar with pasta and how much feeds how many. Ha. Ha. Ha. Jessica and I, while at the market, had had a choice between little baby bags of like .3 kg and monster bags of 1 kg. Looking back…haha…we totally could’ve gone with the baby bag. Should have, in fact. Because did you know that 1 kilo of pasta is more than two pounds? I do. Now.
I helped Mark strain the penne and then put them in the bowl and HOLY COW that’s a lot of noodlage. Seriously. Once we got everything on the table I couldn’t help but laugh every time I looked at the overflowing bowl, which we barely ate the top off of.
The cheese was on the table three minutes before it was utterly demolished and even then I turned around and Jessica was trying to get some last morsels off a piece of rind. The wine was pretty good, too; it’s amazing the quality you can get for E7 a bottle…when you have a friend who knows wine, that is. During dinner, in order to make up for the fact that we knew we were definitely not going to be studying, we watched Shrek in French. Ironically, when I got home, Shrek 2 was playing on TV. Weird.
Jess and Sophia and I had to leave in a little bit of a rush because our last bus from
Sadly, we didn’t get to make the crêpes, but we have dessert plans for tomorrow night. Once more, to Collin’s house, to make dessert crêpes (aka NIGHT OF NUTELLA AND FRUIT!)! If you can’t tell, I’m super excited. I love crêpes. Especially since here, whenever I’m eating dinner, I always feel weird eating a lot cause my frère d’acceuil Pierre has been eating with us a lot lately cause he has an internship in Rennes, and he literally eats nothing. Ok, so not very literally. But last night, for instance, we had chicken and green stuff (spinach? Veggieness?) and these wonderful, beautiful potato balls, and what did he eat? A single piece of chicken maybe the size of a thumb on steroids, and three potato things, which were a little smaller than ping pong balls.
Dumb French people making me feel like I eat too much. To top it off, he doesn’t like sugar. Luckily my père LOVES sugar, so there’s always some yummy thing for dessert if I want, but I just feel so weird eating in front of Pierre, like I should eat as much as he does. Psh. Like he’s critiquing my French AND my eating habits. Haha…
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