Regalia and some change: Why Rob shouldn't take pictures with wine

Okay! I'm back! But I'm not doing catchup! I'm actually (well, I'm actuallement actually listening to some mad Jonas Kaufmann, who is just plain straight-up wonderful) going to go ahead and do a real update of something that recently happened! And it will be about this mysterious Regalia thing!

What is Regalia? Well, see, one of the things that I've learned since coming to France is that there is a verb specifically for really enjoying food- namely, "se regaler de (quelque chose)." So that's actually where the name of the blog comes from- I live in Combs la Ville, and there's some nifty grafitti near the house that says "Combs L'Asil," so with the verb and the tag, I figured I'd use that as a groovy blog name. As a result, there will hopefully be fairly regular blog posts regarding Regalia, AKA food I make. Because everyone likes a food blog, right?

Anyway, I went to Stephen's place tonight to meet up with him and Laura (a friend of his from Egypt), and there, we made crêpes! Not crépes, which I know is how most of you Americans (yes I'll be super patronizing right now and use the second person for Americans even though it should be the plural first person in my case, but whatever) pronounce it. And they were delicious. And there was much wine, which is likely influencing this post. But to greater things!

We started out with some standard dinner crêpes- a 1:1:1:1 cup of milk:cup of flour:egg:pinch of salt batter whisked well and poured thinly into a skillet. As for a filling, we used some goat cheese (so delicious), some beef, some chopped ham, some carmelized onions, some apples, some spinach, and some sautéed mushrooms. We all thought they were phenomenal, but between the super-long commute (there was a fight at Villeneuve St. Georges that delayed us quite a bit) and the massive amounts of stuff I was hauling (about 750 g flour, 2 L milk, 1 kg white sugar, some brown sugar, vanilla, other spices, and 3 bottles of wine), I did not have the presence of mind to take pictures of that. Sad Rob and sad you, because they were freaking delicious. Huh. I have the presence of mind not to swear right now. I guess I'm growing up. Best get to a tea party with Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam. That's right. Tony Abbott gets referenced here. You should read him. He's fun. But I continue to digress habitually. ON TO DESSERT!~

Yes. Then we finished dinner, took a break, and moved onto dessert. For that, we added some sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon to the batter recipe to sweeten it up a bit (and perhaps too much- the wine resulted in me adding a bit too much vanilla, which I'm sure Dad will call a great heresy, but it was seriously a ton of vanilla). Then, I made a nice banana thing that Bev showed me a while ago- basically, it's Banana's Foster without the flambé part. You sauté the halved bananas in some butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla, and just let them get tender. We put them in our crêpes, and I did have the presence of mind here to get some pictures! Such as THIS!

New meaning to my usual nanners posting.

And of course, Stephen did a great job of mixing the batter, which was probably too sweet (my fault, since I added some of the sugar and stuff), but still delicious.

Stephen gives a firm stir.

And Laura made a freaking phenomenal chocolate sauce out of the cocoa powder that I brought. Seriously. It was delicious, and not cake-town. But were there a cake, it would totally be cake-town. And there she is now!

Oh God the chocolate.

And there she is again!

The delicious chocolate. And Stephen with a spatula.

And since I have no filter on whether or not I post a picture regardless of its quality (ain't wine great?), here's one of me and Laura mixing stuff! (Also, thanks to Stephen for taking the pictures of me on this one!)

Who's that in that blue shirt posting on this blog?

Whisking the bajeezus out of that batter.

And yes, there was wine. And then I took the Noctilien home, and got here, and proceeded to post this. Now I will sleep and hopefully make a pie for Bev and her daughter tomorrow morning before heading off to Munich for New Year's.

Why, yes, there will be pictures of that pie. And possibly more catchup. Hopefully more catchup- I'm woefully behind.

More Catchup! Meeting more assistants!

Okay, so more catchup to give me lots more posts so you aren't wading through one huge one to find things you're looking for.

The reason (see, managed to start a sentence without "so." Dr. Carroll would be proud.) that I'm here in France at all is to be an assistant de langues vivantes- in my case, English (there are Spanish, German, and probably others out there, but I haven't really seen any of them, and since I don't speak Spanish or German, it would be interesting anyway). I work in a few schools down in Orly with a wonderful English teacher that I follow around to several classes. (As an aside (as if you should be surprised that I would put an aside in parentheses, but this one is actually reasonably important, aside (badum ching) from the parentheticals within wherein I explain why an aside should not be surprising, but I digress), this situation is not a usual one for assistants; they usually work in a few schools and go into the individual classes at those schools and work with lots of teachers teaching English. In my case, I go around a few schools with this dedicated English teacher where she teaches all the English that the kids learn. Basically, it works great for me because she does most of the lesson planning and knows what she wants me to do, but I don't get as much contact with as many teachers.) And after that long aside, let's keep going! I work in primary school (teaching CP through CM2, so ages 6-11); I know mostly primary assistants, because that's with whom our training sessions were. Yeah, that's right. Proper grammar gets confusing. That said, I do know some lycée (high school) assistants, and they're really cool. Mainly, I know the inimitable Grace and Stephen. They're the ones with whom I've been spending the most time, especially over the holidays since they actually stayed in Europe. Anyway, to the first meeting!

On one of the first days I was here, we got together at this great little Basque place called Glandines over by Place d'Italie. The portions were... generous, and the food was reasonably cheap for a Parisian dinner. And we got pictures afterwards! And here they are! (See? I can do non-convoluted if need be. But it's a blog, and why would you make anything simple on a blog?)

And because I'm such a socially inept kind of guy, I got to meet more assistants through Grace! Like Johanna! Johanna is pretty groovy- she spent a year teaching English in... Latin America. I am totally blanking on where- I think Honduras? But I have no real idea, and she'll probably beat me something furious for forgetting, and then the assistants will dock my pay and I'll be unable to purchase some of that sweet gruel at the orphanage. Mmm gruel. And with Johanna, we went to a nice little café near Belleville, and we got these sweet shots off the park nearby (where apparently you get solicited for coke at night, not that I would know from experience). And here are some of those views!

And then there's Suzie. But we'll talk about Suzie in the Nuit Blanche post. So I guess I'll leave you with some nice views of the Seine and me nomming a tuna sammich. Mainly because I'm a bit tired of blogging today (two long posts and negotiating photo sharing and all that takes a bit out of you), and because there's talk of fondue, and while my wallet says no, I think I'll overrule it this time. So to those pictures I promised!

Ah, the views of Paris.

Playing Catchup- First weeks in Paris

Okay, after a few days of spotty Wifi at the homestead, I'm back up and running on the blog. I'll get to the whole Regalia thing once I've gotten to that point in getting caught up on what I've been up to, since it took me so long to get a blog up, much less running. So, without too much further ado, here we go!

I got into Paris on September 22 and stayed in the Blue Planet Hostel near Gare de Lyon. The hostel was almost adequate for what I needed- that is, a place to stay while I found another place to live. The main advantage of the hostel was the fact that it was so cramped that you had no choice but to meet people. Other than that... you could get a coffee and a couple of cheap croissants for breakfast? So I guess there's that. They kicked you out from 10-3 to clean, the staff wasn't all that friendly, getting hot water took a really long time, Internet was 2 euros for 30 minutes (unless you tried to poach the wireless from the hotel across the street, as we did). A good thing about it was the fact that it was so cramped that you didn't have much choice but to meet people.

Of course, since I got in town around the time that the train strikes were starting, it wasn't too easy to get around, and since I didn't have a place to live yet, I couldn't get a bank account, which meant that getting a Navigo card would have been appropriately stupid. This, in turn, meant that I basically just went to the areas around my hostel, which weren't too terrible I guess?

On one of the early days, I made the trek out to Père Lachaise cemetery. Of course, for anyone who's been to Paris, you probably took the metro to Père Lachaise or were staying in the 20th close enough to get there easily. I... walked. Another point that I'm sure my parents and Amanda would point out is that I was not eating nearly enough- I lost about 20 pounds since I got here through eating less and just walking all over the place, which is great, but when you're eating half a cheap ham and cheese sandwich, a croissant, and a banana for a whole day and doing regular long walks, you might have some issues. Anyway, I made the walk to Père Lachaise and was appropriately exhausted by the time I got there. Still, I wanted to make it to at least one notable grave. And of course, there are many, like Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf, but really? Do I want to see all that after walking for about 45 minutes just to get there, to say nothing of negotiating finding the grave itself? No. No I do not. I most certainly do not. That hill when you get in there is steep after that much walking. Seriously. Go look at a map of Paris. I'll wait. Find Gare de Lyon and then find Père Lachaise. Walking all over that cemetery I did not wish to do. Buuuut I did, because I did have one grave I wanted to find. No, not Morrison or any of that sort. I'm not huge on The Doors, haven't read any Oscar Wilde, and just... no to Edith Piaf.



The grave! Also, hooray for the respectful solemnity of exclamation marks!



So what grave was worth going- no, screw the leadup. I went to Gay-Lussac's grave. He was the only hard science person I could find on the map that I recognized. So hooray for gas laws. And hooray for his grave!

 

For the non French speakers, the tombstone says: "Joseph Gay-Lussac, Member of the Academy of the Sciences and all the learned societies of Europe, Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, Former Peer of France. Born at St. Leonard (Haute Vienne) 6 December 1778. Died in Paris 9 May 1850." All you really need to know? V1/T1=V2/T2. Also 42.

So after that I went back to the hostel. Oh! You want to see the wonderful view of Paris I had from my hostel? You do?

Oh, you don't?

Well too bad, because it's happening just happened (sorry, still figuring out the image insert mechanics here) anyway. (Has Rob become drunk with blogging power? Quite possibly. Perhaps he'll be cussing a swear or two later!)

Isn't that scenic? I mean, there's laundry and everything! Of course, ever the optimist, this was just more reason to get away from the hostel and see the city/find someplace else to live.

Basically, I wandered around the 12th a whole lot during those first few weeks. Made it over to the Bastille area where I got ripped off for a few euros, not that I'm still mildly bitter about that or anything. Not at all. But here are pictures of the general area where the little scammer was (i.e., the open air market near Bastille)!

There was also a lovely exposition on toilets! It was actually really informative and interesting and (most importantly at that point) free.

 

Free expositions=happy Rob at expositions. And here's the title card, which I'll translate below.

Translation time with old Rob! Who hopefully won't screw up and make an ass of himself (oh look he cussed a swear what a rebel)! Also I'm trying to get the photos in at this point and the blogspot image insert dealy is being difficult, so please excuse these early attempts. We'll see if I can't do better soon.

Anyhoo, translation!

Chiotissme! Photo exposition on toilets throughout the world. Presented by the SIAAP, in large format, open air, and free access. September 9- October 20 2010.

Toilets, a mirror of man

The 46 photographs presented (taken by 42 photographers in 31 countries!) accentuate the stakes represented by W.C.'s around the world. Why make gold toilets (in Hong Kong)? Why do the Taiwanese go in such large numbers to the Marton restaurant? Why did Andy Warhol have Eve Arnold photograph him seated on toilets? Toilets offer us something trivial and profoundly human, like this man photographed by Chris Maluszynski who waves an American flag the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration, like these floating toilets from Djakarta or these young Chechnians who play around the toilets of their refugee camp.

Toilet photography isn't a recent genre. Fifty years ago, Willy Ronis stopped before the Metro toilet lady, Robert Doisneau from his side had fun with these guys of Les Halles relieving themselves from the crowd of the belly of Paris.

Images of the past. Projects of the future on the other hand that these slabs of toilets produced by an African village that will well render services to its surroundings, or these toilets installed every 20 meters on a construction site in South Africa. Toilets (and the photographers) don't stop telling us something about ourselves.

Okay, that's a good start. I don't want to have too much more of a wall of text, since I'm actually getting to a point where I can start bringing in other people. So! Onward and upward!

And here are pictures of the grave!

Oh Bev- An overview

As a teacher in the Paris area, I basically could either live in Paris proper or in one of the suburbs. Frankly, I had initially not wanted to come to Paris (for reasons I'll explain in the forthcoming general updates post), but that's where they offered me a job, and it's been proving me wrong to a point thus far. However, since apartments are absurdly expensive in Paris (potentially my entire salary for a smallish studio once phone and utilities are accounted for), I opted to widen my search to the banlieues. Thankfully, I found something pretty quickly and am renting a room from an older (early 50s) French lady. She lives with her 18 year old daughter who is prepping to take her bac, and the rent was cheaper than anything I'd find in Paris- potentially cheaper than anything I could get even if I received CAF money (which I can't because it's a sublet).

Anyway, I moved in, and discovered that while my landlady- let's call her Bev to protect the innocent- has some... interesting views on some things. She really does mean well, but she'll occasionally say some things that I find absolutely ridiculous, and not just because I put a bit more faith in science than she does. That's what Oh Bev is all about- venting about things my landlady says and does. This is really me just venting, so please don't be offended, but if you are offended, please remember that it's just a blog and not that important in the grand scheme of things. I'm happy to hear opinions- just keep it civil in the comments and I'll try to do the same (outside of venting about Bev, of course).

Let's go with some starter examples of some notable Oh Bev moments from the past few months:

- Bev believes that vaccines are among the worst things ever. She has gone so far as to say that they're the mistake of the century. She backs this up by mentioning some studies she's read and referring to other (probably more respected) studies as "propoganda." She prefers not to consider that the "propoganda" might be more respected because it's more scientifically sound, because there's a big pharmaco-medical mafia that controls all publications. This was an early discussion, wherein she also said that...

-She believes that AIDS is not caused by HIV. As evidence, she mentioned those who are seropositive for HIV but never develop AIDS. According to her, we are told that HIV causes AIDS (and that we should take vaccines) because the medical establishment is only in it for the money and doesn't really care about people. As a chemist and hopefully future doctor, I had a bit of righteous anger over this.

-Bev takes a looooong time to sit down for dinner. A fresh example of this is last night- I ended up making her dinner, pictures of which will be posted later tonight. (Part of our understanding as landlady/renter is that we'll make each other food every once in a while and share a meal. How Rockwellian.) When I was maybe... 2 or 3 minutes from being done cooking, she asked if I wanted some small thing before the meal. I made the mistake of accepting, and she proceeded to spend about 10 minutes preparing the darned thing, took about 10 minutes to get everything together, and another 10 minutes to FREAKING SIT DOWN. In retrospect, I should have kept the food on the stove a bit longer and just let her get situated first, but there were pots on the table to serve from, and she kept on going. THEN she started on the small thing she prepared, and when we got to the meal, she made a few comments about how it would have been better warmer. Yeah. Sorry about that wall of text. That one still grinds my gears a lot more because it happened so recently. It's also unfortunately what an Oh Bev post in the future might end up being like. This one's got more abbreviated ones because it's 3 months worth.

-Bev seems to believe in feng shui but keeps a remarkably cramped kitchen. Including two plants, which seems like it might negate all the cleanliness she tries for by having people wear slippers/house shoes when they come in.

-Bev is an anti-capitalist who believes that we should standardize labor costs across Europe. Seems to me like that might cause some problems with inflation, but I'm no economist- then, neither is she.

-Bev has expressed that she wishes the world was run by a group of (let's see if I can remember the exact quote) "people with great spirits," who would tell us how to run our lives and be happy.

-Bev thinks that "pensée cause." As context, I mentioned that, given my family's history of cancer and my rather extensive work with some carcinogens in the lab, I will quite possibly die of cancer. She said that thinking that would cause cancer just as well as the other factors.

The list on her... unconventional views on medicine and science goes on a bit. As I say, she really does mean well, and she really is a pretty solid landlady. I've just had to learn to nod and smile a bit rather than let myself get sucked into an hour long discussion where I don't get to say much (she's a bit of a chatter- I've tried the interruption technique that I've heard is necessary in France, but she'll have none of it and gets offended before she interrupts me again).

That ended up being a bit longer than I'd hoped. I'll try to tone down the ranting a bit, because no one wants to read that much negativity, and I'm in France! There are better things to hear about! Like the Regalia post that'll be coming out later. If Flickr will load my pictures.

Took me long enough

Hey everybody!

I know it only took me 3 months and a day to get to this point, but I've finally started a blog! For those of you who found this through Lord knows what means, let me tell you a bit about myself, in a handy bullet form (because nobody loves walls of texts)

-I'm Rob! Hopefully you'll figure that out from something like the signature at the end, but I'm not 100% on that yet. We'll find out, right?
-I went to Davidson College (go 'Cats) and majored in chemistry with a minor in French.
-I'm currently making wonderful use of that chemistry degree by working as an English language assistant in France. I'll actually be using it next year, most likely in an MD/PhD program.
-I tend to write long and rambling messages with lots of expletives. I think that the former would be appropriate for this, while the latter might offend some family that might end up reading it. We'll see what happens.

... There probably should be more that I can say about myself, but it's not coming to me off the top of my head. Oh! I teach in Orly and live in Combs-la-Ville. Yes, I could have gone back and added that as a bullet, but I'd rather not start copping out and editing my posts as I go. Hooray for stream of consciousness, yeah?

So, here's what I'm hoping to use this blog to do, with their labels in parentheses (okay that I went back and edited to say. Yay inconsistency?):

-Update people on my life and travels (General updates)
-Show food that I made and maybe get some recipes (Regalia)
-Vent against my landlady (Oh Bev)

More labels may arise as time goes by, but that seems like a first start until that point at which Sam starts playing. Also, that whole thing about rambling posts? Not a lie, and they tend to be peppered with references.

Anyway, I think that will do as a first post. I'm going to post again shortly with a better overview of what I've been up to and what the whole Oh Bev thing is all about.

Onwards and upwards!