It's November 6. I have been in France for exactly 41 days and managed to work all of about 10. Tuesday ended the first scholarly vacation and I confronted the grueling workweek of 3 days with less temerity than my first days here. By contrast, am dragging my feet all the way across a new frontier; the graduate school personal essay. No task could be worse for someone who is already introspective to the point of self-torture. my mind is constantly in rummaging mode, which is an even more premature, cruder stage than brainstorming. So instead of obsessing over frivolous points of craft in writing this essay, I have decided to embrace the process and let my brain meander through its fields of recollection and HOPE, like all of my academic work, it will not only get done but be completed brilliantly. Maybe I am writing this to assuage myself of the guilt of not working at ALL on this essay but at least my stalling produced some good eats.
In a fit of procrastination, I successfully attempted my first mousse au chocolat. My culinary expedition only validated my brain's stubborn adherence to craft over process. As soon as I began melting the chocolate my computer finally realized it was in france and decided it didn't feel like working anymore, so it stopped working. HMMMMM.. I wouldn't have minded improvisation if I weren't making this for a lunch I was going to tomorrow. After a brief lecture (composed mainly of swearing) on the merits of capitalism and a few hard bangs on the keyboard, it resuscitated itself and SUCCESS!
But that is not all the imagination had to reveal today. i whipped up a simple dinner of mache, beets, goats cheese and smoked salmon dressed with a homemade shallot mustard vinagrette and baguette. Oh yes, along with a recent discovery of mine: THE DEMI-PECHE. This is simply a light beer with peach syrup. In concept it doesn't sound too tasty but in practice the palette takes this idea nicely.
My inspiration to finally launch myself into eating the French way "off hours" that is to say without the steady gaze of the French person who observes every detail of your behavior during meals straight down to how you place your utensils, was inspired by the results of my successful lesson with my younger students yesterday. I gave them several restaurants in New York to research on-line and they had to choose two items from each menu and re-invent it a la francaise. Even though they didn't quite grasp the concept and ended up just making their own menus, the results were quite impressive. We had hamburgers laced with foie grad, frog legs enrobed in citron vert, ile flottantes.... These were ordinary foods for these kids. The ordinary status of mousse de canard is like the status of kraft mac and cheese in the U.S. My suspicion that the way of living in France IS much more refined than the U.S. moves to claim now. Extrapolating even further, I will move to say that the basis of their general education is more refined. they may not have as stringent work standards as we do but they have more standards for more important things than how to make a buck, like how to eat well.
I'm not sure if I agree on this last point about the French Education being more refined. More refined compared to what? Compared to ours? But we have different cultural values, so it's not a real comparison you can make. You may have adopted French values, which might make it more fair to say "I find that I agree with French educational values, and I wish I had been raised this way." But to say they are superior to American values is to discredit the fact that what is valuable is relative; get your absolutism out of my peanut butter!
ReplyDeleteWell,operating under the (correct) assumption that YOU have resentment against the French and I have a proclivity towards the culture byway of my fluency in the language, I'll have to say that both our opinions are subject to absolutism. I did not STATE point blank in my post that the French were superior to Americans. To qualify my use of "refined", that you so heavily imbued with negativity,I'll say that by refined I meant that in terms of their eating habits, I believe that at an earlier age the children are exposed and have detailed knowledge of what in American we would consider "haute cuisine". . Yes, my palette tends to veer more favorably to the French manner of eating and yes I believe having an early knowledge of modes and manners of living favorable to physiological health is indicative of a good general education (not to be mistaken for academic education). I do not miscount my bias, however, YOU should not miscount yours either, especially since you have never lived in France or worked so intimately with their youth. So, I'll extract my absolutism out of your peanut butter if you let me eat mine in the way that I like:)
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