Yesterday I was way swamped with work tying up loose ends before my surgery. It didn't help that I had a conference call from 754 to 1030 last night...
FRG offered to make me dinner since I didn't even have time to go pick something up. Dinner consisted of potatoes broiled in spices that are from FRG's "prah vansss" and salad. If you can roll the S sound out really long when saying provence you get extra points from the French.
He also brought two kinds of cheese. One was Roquefort cheese, which I've had, and the other was Morbier, which FRG used to make when he lived in France. For the record, we americans do cheese wrong. It was in the wrong kind of plastic packaging and the sticker on the cheese, according to FRG, "is stupid and sucks". I guess in France the cheese is served in leather jackets with matching pants.
There was a very long explanation about the temperature at which you serve cheese, as well as how it's made. Morbier has this green stripe in it because back in the day farmers didn't have a big enough pot, or what ever you make cheese in, to make the whole cheese (I didn't know cheese had to be a certain size) so they would put some stuff (I didn't really understand the word) in to mark where the cheese was stopped so the next day they could make more. Making cheese is totally stressful. You have to press it, get the whey out, make some bacteria grow in it, and beat it to pieces with some metal blender thing, but if you beat it too much all the cheese goes down some drain thing. But it you beat it into too big of pieces it's "totally fucked up" as the FRG helpfully put it.
I disgraced myself by sticking a knife into the middle of the cheese and pulling a blob of it out to put on my baguette. FRG looked at me as if I had picked the cheese up with my toes and said I must never do that again, specific guidance being "You cut a whole slice, put it on your plate, and then you can spread it on your bread". Who knew... He also cautioned me not to eat the rind of the cheese. As if.
I was a little worried about the cheese because it smelled sort of like feet, and things that go into your body come out smelling at least 4 times as bad. I figured if the Morbier cheese made me fart they would have to block off my house as a toxic waste site.
He also brought prosciutto to go with the potatoes. I never had it before, and was not pleased to see that it looked like the skin that's peeled off of an infected blister. Gross. Also, the label on the package said "Boar's Head". It took about 5 minutes for FRG to convince me that was the brand name of the meat place and not where the meat came from (I have reasons to be suspicious - he told me about how in his village people drink blood from a pig right after it's been killed - "with spices" he said as if that makes drinking blood alright - you apparently have to share your blood with your neighbors and they share their blood with you when they kill a pig - I'm glad you can't raise pigs where I live).
After smelling the prosciutto and attempting numerous times to put it in my mouth, I finally ate a piece. It was like pig sushi. So gross. I told FRG "this tastes like raw bacon" and he said "that's essentially what it is". I almost puked.
He said I have to be more adventurous in eating if I expect him to continue cooking for me. So I plan to take him for sushi after I've recovered from my surgery. We'll see how he does with raw quail eggs.
Fair is fair, even when it comes to the french.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
French translation
While hanging out with my French rope gun (who would have imagined I would become friends with someone who is French, real French, not Canadian French, and worse, from southern France) I've had a few moments of confusion over his English. I've provided some translations of French English in case you decide to become friends with someone French who "speaks english".
While we were driving in the worst traffic ever on Saturday to go skiing, FRG was (oh wait, I just noticed, the abbreviation of french rope gun almost spells frog - I did NOT do that on purpose) telling me a story about getting in trouble in high school while taking some test they have to take to graduate. He didn't study for the exam, but he and his friend devised a little plan to pass the test. But, what I heard when he was telling the story, was "I was accused by my teacher of being a shit" (I can see that, he's french) and "she accused me of shitting with my friend" (okay, that sounded weird, even for french boys in boarding school). I finally figured out shitting was cheating. I have not corrected him on that word, and have encouraged him to tell that story to more people because it was so funny.
He was also telling me, after skiing that he was worried about his harm. He then went on for a few more minutes about his harm. I thought at first he might have been talking about how dangerous ski conditions were on Saturday (half the runs on the mountain were closed because of high winds, and I literally could not see more than 2 feet in front of me due to blowing snow while I was skiing). I finally realized he was talking about his arm. Which is interesting BECAUSE...
A few days previous he was showing me pictures of climbing areas in France and Washington State. In one of the pictures he said "Look, that is art lake". I thought that was a kind of stupid name for a lake, though it was very picturesque and had a nice reflection of flowers in it. So I said "Yes, I can see why someone would want to paint that, which is why it has that name I guess." He looked at me as though I was a moron (that happens a lot, especially in the gym when I am trying to learn proper footwork or how to use a gri-gri). Later, in another picture, I noticed that the lake was in the shape of a heart, and realized he had been saying "heart lake".
So I accused him of randomly leaving out or adding an H to words. He said that he doesn't like to say "arm" because "it sounds stupid, and is a stupid word". So he will add an H or extra vowels to words he doesn't like to make them "sound better". He also leaves off consonants on words. He refuses to say "th" and replaces it with either an F or an S sound. If I make fun of his pronunciation he asks me to say phrases in French. He especially likes my pronunciation of my cook ware, Le Crueset. When he says it it doesn't even sound like a word you could spell.
I guess I'm going to have to learn some French so FRG can write a blog making fun of me...
While we were driving in the worst traffic ever on Saturday to go skiing, FRG was (oh wait, I just noticed, the abbreviation of french rope gun almost spells frog - I did NOT do that on purpose) telling me a story about getting in trouble in high school while taking some test they have to take to graduate. He didn't study for the exam, but he and his friend devised a little plan to pass the test. But, what I heard when he was telling the story, was "I was accused by my teacher of being a shit" (I can see that, he's french) and "she accused me of shitting with my friend" (okay, that sounded weird, even for french boys in boarding school). I finally figured out shitting was cheating. I have not corrected him on that word, and have encouraged him to tell that story to more people because it was so funny.
He was also telling me, after skiing that he was worried about his harm. He then went on for a few more minutes about his harm. I thought at first he might have been talking about how dangerous ski conditions were on Saturday (half the runs on the mountain were closed because of high winds, and I literally could not see more than 2 feet in front of me due to blowing snow while I was skiing). I finally realized he was talking about his arm. Which is interesting BECAUSE...
A few days previous he was showing me pictures of climbing areas in France and Washington State. In one of the pictures he said "Look, that is art lake". I thought that was a kind of stupid name for a lake, though it was very picturesque and had a nice reflection of flowers in it. So I said "Yes, I can see why someone would want to paint that, which is why it has that name I guess." He looked at me as though I was a moron (that happens a lot, especially in the gym when I am trying to learn proper footwork or how to use a gri-gri). Later, in another picture, I noticed that the lake was in the shape of a heart, and realized he had been saying "heart lake".
So I accused him of randomly leaving out or adding an H to words. He said that he doesn't like to say "arm" because "it sounds stupid, and is a stupid word". So he will add an H or extra vowels to words he doesn't like to make them "sound better". He also leaves off consonants on words. He refuses to say "th" and replaces it with either an F or an S sound. If I make fun of his pronunciation he asks me to say phrases in French. He especially likes my pronunciation of my cook ware, Le Crueset. When he says it it doesn't even sound like a word you could spell.
I guess I'm going to have to learn some French so FRG can write a blog making fun of me...
my quit smoking program
So I will hopefully quit smoking starting this thursday, when I show up at the hospital at 530 am to get my uterus cut out. Fun.
Don't recommend that as a quit smoking program for everyone, but getting rid of the curse and a nasty nicotine habit all on the same day seemed like a good idea to me.
Don't recommend that as a quit smoking program for everyone, but getting rid of the curse and a nasty nicotine habit all on the same day seemed like a good idea to me.
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