New Tastes & Old Tastes

This week, we discovered a couple of new favorites and re-discovered a couple of old ones. On Tuesday, I took another cooking class. I wasn't sure I was going to go again, but I had fun and it's a great way to get a better understanding of the French culture. The focus of the class was a dessert called gateau merveilleux. It's made with meringue and whipped cream. It was very good, but a little complicated for me. I think I will just buy it from my local patisserie.

What I really enjoyed was the cheese served at lunch. It's called tete de moine and it's delicious. It's very similar to cheddar but I think it's better than cheddar. The name translates to monk's head because you shave the cheese like the monks shave their head. A special tool called a girolle has been created to do this.

This past Thursday was the third Thursday of November which means it was Beaujolais Nouveau Day. Beaujolais Nouveau is a fresh wine that was made from this years harvest. Legend has it, the workers in the vineyard would rush to make a wine that could be enjoyed at the end of the harvest. Then it started to be sold outside the vineyard and eventually there was a race to see who could get it to Paris first. Now, it's released at 1 minute past midnight on the third Thursday of November. I waited until my morning shopping trip at 9:00am to buy mine. It was pretty good. Definitely not as subtle as most French wine, but it had a nice fruity taste.

On Saturday, Lori and I went to La Defense to see a movie and do some shopping. The Christmas Market opened a couple of days earlier so we decided to wander through. We stumbled onto the Quebec booth (there was no stumbling, I knew exactly where I was going) and we got to enjoy a couple of familiar things we love. For Lori it was poutine

and for me it was beer.

All in all, it was a pretty good week. Tomorrow we are off to Berlin. Lori has a conference to attend and I'm tagging along. I won't see much of her until Friday afternoon so I'll be exploring on my own. It's the first time either of us has been to the German capital, so we are looking forward to it.

db