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.

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Dutch Beer

For those of you who know me, you know that two of my favourite things are watching hockey and drinking beer. These things are not easily done while living in France, but luckily they coincided this past Saturday night. I have purchased the NHL TV package and I can watch the games through Apple TV, but because of the time difference, it's hard to watch the games live. A 7:00pm start in Boston means that I have to watch the game at 1:00am. I can always watch the game the next morning but it's not the same. On weekends and holidays there are afternoon games that I can watch live and luckily the Bruins played an afternoon game this weekend.

I can often be heard complaining about the poor selection of quality beers offered at my local grocery store. A Dutch co-worker of Lori's heard these complaints and came to my rescue. On a trip back to the Netherlands, she bought a dozen beers for me. They were excellent. I have over looked Dutch beers in the past, but I won't do that anymore.

Good beer and a Bruin win made for a great night.

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Torremolinos

We have just returned from a weekend away in sunny, southern Spain. Most of the time when we travel, we like to get out and explore the local area and discover new things, but this weekend was about rest. Lori has been busy since her return in August and she just wanted to lay by a pool and read. We stayed in Torremolinos, which is on the Costa del Sol, west of Malaga. The beach and the town were beautiful and I recommend it to everyone.

The hotel was not great and I wouldn't recommend it, but it served it's purpose. We had the Mediterranean in front of us and the mountains behind us.

We did get out though. Every morning we would walk along the beach and every evening we would walk along the promenade.

The hotel was all-inclusive so the food was provided. It was OK, but it was geared towards the British tourists, which is fine, but not what I wanted to eat while in Spain. We went for a walk on the first night and I spotted a restaurant that was full of locals. I figured that had to be a good sign and it was. The seafood was so good and so fresh, we ended up eating lunch there everyday. The tuna steak was my favourite.

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VOstF

Lori and I are big movie fans so we really enjoy this time of year. All the movie studios seem to hold onto their best movies until Oscar season. Such a relief after the cheesy, super-hero and teen vampire movies you have endure during the summer.

We should really use the opportunity to watch the movies in French in order to improve our oral comprehension, but I hate watching dubbed movies. It doesn't matter what language it's in, I would prefer to read the sub-titles instead of watching a movie where the dialogue doesn't match the image.
When we look for movies to watch, we always look for VOstF which stands for, version originale sous-titres français. This means the original language is spoken and french sub-titles are used. It's kind of fun to read along and see how certain idioms and phrases are translated.

Of course, my favorite part of going to see a movie in Paris is being able to get a decent beer before the show.

Lori has holidays that she needs to use up, so she took Friday afternoon off and we went to see The Judge with Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall. Excellent movie, by the way. I highly recommend it. The theatre is in a shopping mall where Lori works and as we wandered through the mall, I was shocked to see Christmas items in the stores. I had always assumed starting the Christmas season early was a North American tradition, but not so. In fact, it's easier to put out Christmas stuff early here because they don't have to wait for Halloween to be over. Some of the Christmas markets are starting to set up their stall as well. At least they weren't playing Christmas music.

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