Friday, June 22

snails snails everywhere

This year’s June has been weird. It’s been raining on and off for a while now. We haven’t gone more than a couple of days without rain, in fact, and some nights have been cold enough that I’m glad I ended up bringing a coat along for the summer. When the rain comes, so do the snails. For slow-moving creatures, they sure come out quickly. When the lawn is wet, there’s an inevitable crunch every so often. So Claudette, Sarah (the new stagiaire), and I went foraging for the little homemakers. They seem to like climbing on walls and around certain plants. We loaded up a special escargot basket (with a locking door, and mesh too small for them to crawl through) full of them and pondered our upcoming meal.

A couple of days later, Mami finally got around to cleaning the suckers (turns out you soak them in a water-based mixture of salt and vinegar, with some stinging nettle if you feel like going to the trouble), and boiled ‘em. I whipped up a nice aioli, and we got to eating (I eat the whole best, while Claudette likes to get rid of the guts). A couple days of this, and the idea (and the snails) grew old. Claudette made a little tomato-based stew with the rest of them, which we thankfully gave up on days later. Still, it’s nice to be up to date on my snail-handling skills.

Wednesday, June 20

self-conscious evolutionary introspection

I’ve written about fifty posts thus far. Enough tedious verbose prose to fill a small book. I’m psyched to have so many thoughts and ramblings on record—artifacts I’ll revisit someday, to laugh and blush. The past months are far from over and have been nothing short of amazing, even on my (mostly) shoestring budget. They've changed my life, even though I haven’t outwardly changed much.

I’m still shy about meeting new people (well, women, really), and that’s helped me keep this journey calmingly introspective, though isolated at times. In addition to the lucky few that I’ve added as valued people in my life, I’ve had time to think about those I’ve increasingly missed. And then there are those that I’ve lamentably alienated and neglected, usually without even knowing it. I wouldn’t trade or imply regret about a day of it.

This time-consuming project started with wanting to keep friends and family in the loop about my hopefully debauched exploits. Pondering aloud (it’s my blog, and I’ll ruminate if I want to), it’s both succeeded and failed. The successes can be found in those of you who continue to read and stay in touch. I’m so happy about the few I haven’t heard from in ages, with whom I now correspond. I get to keep everyone (well, anyone who cares enough to read) updated. The failure, however, is rather obvious to those of you who haven't kept up from the start: information overload. There's just too much to read in fewer than twenty sittings. Who knows, maybe there'll be a book deal?

Wednesday, June 13

boudin noir

My first morning on the farm, I moseyed on over to the charcuterie (the same general structure that houses some storage spaces, the patisserie, the boulangerie—really a huge wood-burning oven where they bake the bread, and the cheese cave). I was delighted to stumble upon Benedicte (married to the Pozzers’ middle-generation, Nicolas) getting ready to make what Daniel already tipped me off as the best boudin noir (blood sausage) in the region.

She had cooked (boiled) the heads, feet, lungs, and hearts, of the two pigs that had been slaughtered four days prior. Everything except the bones and the snouts got passed through the grinder. She fetched the bag of blood and added it to the mix, along with some onions, garlic, and seasoning, and mixed it all up. We sorted out the salted intestines (different pigs’) and started stuffing the casings. All this went back into the original cooking liquid for a few hours, just short of simmering. What came out was magic.

I ate the stuff for the next few days, a piece here and there for lunch—it really is the best I have had—it’s all the goodies that elevate it above the usual blood and fat mix. It’s a shame, but they stop slaughtering pigs during the summer: it gets too warm to properly handle the meat. This was sadly the last for the season, and the first of many reasons to come back.

Tuesday, June 12

drinking and driving

I landed in France an hour late. No worries: I still had no idea what train I’d be on. Border control and baggage claim were a breeze, my 28kg (60lbs) of baggage notwithstanding. I had cheese with me from New York. French cheese—silly to import back to France, but I knew it’d be a while til I saw some decent food. Short of decent bread, I made an attempt, and bought a few dinner rolls at one of the overpriced airport cafés. I got to the airport train station and did the obvious thing of using the automated machine to buy my ticket. Except for that machines in Europe (like the Europeans themselves) tend to hate Americans: it wouldn’t accept my cards. So I got in a long, sweaty line, waiting to talk to a real person. And thirty minutes (that could have been better spent washing up in the toilette) later, I had an expensive ticket to the middle of nowhere, SW France.

I ate my cheese, slept, and did what I could on my computer before my (and my computer’s) batteries ran out (gripe: thanks to installing Vista, my battery life was about a third of what it usually was—call me old fashioned, but I’ve gone back to XP). One transfer and seven hours later, I had arrived. There was no one awaiting me, even though I had called ahead to let them know when I’d be arriving. I did the embarrassing thing of walking up to a strange car, thinking that the lady was smiling at me, thinking that my ride had arrived. It wasn’t my ride.

Vincent Pozzer, of the middle generation (actually, I think there's a great grandchild out there), pulled up fifteen minutes later, helped me with my bags, and apologized for showing up late. We went through the usual pleasantries, and he pulled a cold, organic, Bavarian beer out of the glove box. We clinked the bottles and toasted to good health; he had already started on his own bottle. Things would be different out here in the country.

It was about 10pm when we arrived to the farm, “Crozefond,” and the sun would keep the sky lit until around 1130. I dropped off my bags in the caravane, a dusty, cobwebby old RV, where I’d be staying for the month. I met Claudette, better known as Mami (grandma), and Gilbert, aka Papi, whose name I didn’t even learn til days later. We ate dinner, together with their granddaughter Matilde, who’s one of the few not to live on the farm. I said my bonnes nuits, and headed to unpack my bags. It was only thanks to Mami’s flashlight that I was able to get anything done—there wasn’t any electricity feeding into my place until we ran the extension cord two days later. It was an inexplicably excellent evening in all, and I went to bed, unpacked, and with sweet dreams.

Sunday, June 10

the big apple

A few (too many, as usual) words on New York, while the memory is still fresh stale in my mind. The week passed like a summer thunderstorm. As it approached, I was a bit apprehensive of being back in the city, perhaps nervous that I’d feel out of place, maybe just worried about how the reunions would go. I love thunderstorms, especially with empty hands and pockets, getting drenched with abandon. I got to see nearly everyone I have been close to in the city, and the mood had hardly changed. Sure, there are those who have drifted away, some seemingly for good. But I was truly thrilled with the way the whole trip went.

I got to meet my new roommates and sublettors, as I found them online while in Morocco, and never got to meet anyone beyond a few emails. Despite the fact that one’s a vegan, another a vegetarian, and a third will only go as far as fish, they’re really a great group of people, and I’m glad I have cool people taking care of the place while I’m gone. The two in my room even went to the hours-long task of scrubbing down the kitchen and getting rid of the remains of myriad poisoned mouse bodies.

I love the city. Of course, I had no real responsibilities, no work, and no hardcore deadlines (the fee to change my flight date was somehow just $50), so a good time was to be expected. My friends who cook poked me, reminding me how hard it will be to come back to civilization and settle down. Another friend gave me a too-honest opinion of my blog (boring), which will hopefully keep me on my toes, and at least start categorizing posts as boring vs. exciting, etc…

I ate (this part is important) at Spicy+Tasty (Szechuan out in Flushing), Han Bat (Korean in k-town), Trestle (Swiss guy who’s doing really fun food in Chelsea), Resto (twice—Belgian beer/resto in Murray Hill), and in an unnamed Peruvian restaurant in Elmhurst (my part of queens), among others. All of the mentioned meals were awesome, and there are pictures in my album. The best meals, of course, were home cooked between Jasper, Kat, and I, dripping with sweat all the while, since both days we cooked were ridiculously hot/humid. Highlights included a pig head/foot terrine I made, Kat's strawberry tart-turned strawberries and cream, and pig skin tacos.

Moma had some awesome stuff going on, and I’m glad I made it before the exhibits closed (Comic Abstraction closed the next day). I paid full admission for 45 minutes to run through the museum before it closed, and I found it worth every penny. The Comic exhibit was a fun surprise I wasn’t expecting—I was supposedly here to just to see Richard Serra's mind-fing-blowing sculptures. Scurrying from floor to floor, the goofy smile on my face remained.

My visit was none too short or long. I made the best of it, and after an afternoon at Moma and catching up over a beer, I was back as my sweaty self, running to make it to the airport on time for my flight to France.