cooler weather, hot soccer, and spicy mexican night

The weather has cooled down, but the food is SPICY!! We had Mexican night at Bridget’s last night, actually, last, last night. I have been sleeping most of the day recuperating. I hope I remember to attach a picture below of Sergio and Anna salsa dancing in the living room chez Bridget.

Wow, watching the Portugal Pays-Bas (maybe the Lowlands, Netherlands?), anyway, almost everyone on the Portuguese team has received a yellow card, another Portuguese player has just gotten a red card. That makes, two Portuguese and one Pays-Bas player w/ red cards and ejected from the game. Encroyable! There have been a couple of scuffles, the Portuguese goalie just got injured. Is this game ever gonna end? Who knows how much injury time they’ll add at the end.

So, back to Mexican night. I never imagined I would miss any food here in France, but it is almost impossible to find good Mexican food here. Zero markets with chiles, masa harina, and manteca. I had almost resigned myself to waiting until I got home to have some good carne asada, but since we have another calimexian in our group, Sergio, we decided to take matters in to our own hands and make some ourselves.

Yeah, yeah, and I was made fun of for having a timetable and menu, but someone had to do it! Et voila! It was all worth it. Menu:

Margaritas * Beer
Aguas Frescas (watermelon, cucumber, horchata, limeade)
Guacamole
Carne Asada
Posole
Pico de Gallo
Handmade corn and flour Tortillas

Sergio, Susan and I started out shopping at 10 in the morning, started cooking at 12 and we ate at 7pm. The Posole was cooked perfectly, the meat fell off of the bones. Shopping was fun. We went to an exotic spice store where we bought the hominy. The butcher shop was fun too, the transaction took place mostly by sign language because I forgot all of the words for the different pieces of meat. Speaking of meat, it is quite expensive here. We spent 44 euros on 3 ½ kilos of meat. (Another pays-bas player just received a red card.)

The match just finished, PORTUGAL WON! They’re just running around the field now holding hands and falling on the grass. So funny, like boys are. Italy plays tomorrow night. England won earlier today. Not sure how Mexico did against Argentina yesterday.

So……we cooked all day, took a siesta, and the food was great. We were confronted with adversity in many forms, one of the burners on the stove got stuck in the “on” position, so we had to turn the gas off; as soon as the meat hit the grill, we were informed that bar-b-q’ing was illegal in Paris; one of our troop (he arrived early as he was a designated chopper) was mugged on the way to the party and I spent a good hour walking around with him looking for an open police station (without success (it was gay pride day which meant that Place de la Bastille was mobbed, complete with a 3 storey high temporary stage)).

I hid the guacamole in the produce drawer since it would have disappeared long before mealtime if I left it out unguarded. Shame on you Susan! Susan was on a campaign to liberate the guacamole. I had to be tough. The pico de gallo was presque parfait, almost a gallon of it disappeared. Everyone’s plates were heaped high. There were 15 of us altogether and practically everyone had second servings. Sergio downloaded some Mexican cumbias, meringues and salsa onto my iPod for dancing. We danced! We drank TEQUILA. This one can be recorded as a party success in the party log : )

Sirens now and the noise of honking horns because of the Portugal victory. I can hear singing in the streets from my apartment. It is 23:20. Only one class at 12:30 tomorrow, and it’s a demo! Woo-ee.

That’s what I’ve been up to lately. Last week we had a Sundaes on Sunday partee, not as much of a success, but delicious! We made our caramel sauce and chocolate sauce. Unfortunately, we burnt the cherry sauce we were reducing, probably because we were in the living room talking. My new favorite combination is coconut ice cream with caramel sauce and bananas. YUM. The new motto is, we don’t need to buy that, we’re Cordon Bleu students, we can MAKE it. Yeah, I know, a little dorky (but true).

I am so pleased to find people to have food themed parties with. Sometimes I can’t get over the fact that I’m actually here, and that I’m here with some really super people who are as weirdo as I am about having food parties and speaking French. I suppose since none of us has to go to work or take care of kids we have plenty of time to focus on parties. Our next project isn’t food themed though. We are considering doing a calendar. Some of us want to do an R rated calendar with certain Cordon Bleu articles and meringue artfully and discreetly positioned to cover body parts and others of us are for the G rated calendar. Although almost anything we in the states would consider an R rating is only worthy of a G rating in France.

There are boobies exposed everywhere you turn, on TV at the newsstands, on statues, in paintings, at the pharmacie, you name it. An ad for the yellow pages has a map of Paris projected onto a woman’s midriff with her bellybutton somewhere near the Place de la Bastille. It actually is preferable to seeing ads for real estate offices and attorneys on the cover of the yellow pages. France takes using the feminine form to an extreme in comparison to American standards.

This is getting long, so I’ll close now. It is nice to write my entries in my apt. More than likely the reason for the length of this entry. I finally figured out that I can cut and paste to my blog….duh…quite a revelation for a ZRC techno girl.

Until we meet again, yours in food,
Dominique