foodie

Mystery Guest went fishing last week and brought back this beautiful rainbow trout! It was 30cm long and went straight from the river to my plate! Lucky me he doesn't like fish :-) I decided to post about it partly to show him how cool his catch was and partly inspired by These Days in a French Life and "meet your meat" in March. I didn't really meet this fish while he was still alive but it was the first time I've ever had to cut a whole fish apart to cook it. (Thankfully Mystery Guest gutted the poor thing first, I'm not sure if I could handle doing that...) So I did my best and decided to steam it in the oven with some olive oil and sea salt. I didn't have time that day to eat it but the next day I cut up the meat into small chunks and mixed them with pasta, a little creme fraiche (straight from the market!) and lots and lots of lemon juice - YUM!

My other culinary challenge this week was an attempt to try to reproduce the AMAZING pizza we had in Venice. The difference with this pizza was the huge fluffy crust. This was not a dense, boring pizza crust, this was crusty on the outside, light and delicious on the inside... When I tried it in Venice I decided it had to be a focaccia dough that they used... so I turned to my wonderful cookbook and looked up their *best* recipe.

It was very simple to follow, the only problem was of course the waiting - as you would with all yeast breads and the very very sticky dough! But it rose beautifully and I let it cool for a bit while waiting for Mystery Guest and the pizza toppings.

Here is the finished product. I put the toppings on after the dough was already baked and just let them sit under the broiler for 5 minutes to get all melty and gooey.

I have to say for a 1st attempt this was very very close to what we had in Venice and delicious! I can't wait to try again soon :-)

Plus the cool thing is that it was way cheap to make, I'd say about 4euros for the whole pizza... just time consuming but hey what better way to procrastinate?

PACsed

Well Mystery Guest and I have taken that leap, we are now PACSed! We had dropped off all of the paperwork (birth certificates, certificates that we are not pacsed already, that we are not brother and sister etc...) and then we got a letter for our appointment.

So this morning we showed up at the Tribunal and the lady showed us everything, went over the paperwork, had us sign 2 things and we were done! 10 minutes, easy-peasy!

His mom surprised us with a lovely bouquet of flowers and took a couple pictures. Then we headed back to Caen because afterall it was a school day :-) Then this evening we headed out to a little dinner, at Buffalo Grill bien sur! Yum, I started with a little Sheriff Bubbly (ie Kir Royale) and then moved on to some ribs baby! Yum yum!

Here are a few pictures of the day.

(note to self: even if you want to look cute, wearing a skirt when the wind is blowing at 110km per hour is a baaaad idea!)

me on tv...

Wow 3 blog posts in one day! Guess that's what happens when you hole yourself up with the intention of studying all day! :-)

I volunteered to help represent the English Department at the Salon de l'Etudiant back in January and ended up on a *very* local TV station. They finally posted the clip, so for your viewing pleasure (and my shame...) here it is! I'm about 5 minutes into the clip...

Les Infos du 25 janvier 2008 - cityzen
Salon de l'étudiant et des métiers au Parc des Expositions de Caen, conférence sur les conséquences comportementales liées aux jeux vidéos à l'Université de Caen, lecture publique au Théâtre d'Hérouville St Clair

Mots-clés : tv télévision television télé caen hérouville cityzen citizen citysen citisen

Video de cityzentv

lazy venice recap

Ok, I made this instead :-)



Highlights:
-the best (and cheapest!) coffee I've ever had! duo cappuccini!
-helping a random lady out carrying some boxes on the vaporetto and learning that she works for a local museum, got us a behind the scenes tour!
-amazing pizza, am going to try to make my version at home. I think they used focaccia bread as a crust...
-ahhh the gondola, expensive but so worth it!


(the music used is "Escape from Venice" from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade... little Easter Egg there for you, there is a picture of the outside of the church (San Barnaba) where they find the knight's tomb in...!)

Venice Day 1

Ok ok I figured I should just sit down and write this otherwise I'd regret it later :-)

So after a long drive over to Beauvais we had extra time before the flight so we ducked into town to see the cathedral, too bad outside of downtown Beauvais is stinky! I swear we decided it smelled like a mix of old dog poo and cooked kidneys (that last part was added by Mystery Guest, I have never smelled kidneys cooking...). But anyway it was a nice cathedral and sure beat sitting around the airport for any longer than you have to!

The flight went so smoothly! The whole trip actually, it was as if it were perfectly timed just for us. We arrived in the airport outside of Venice and there was a bus waiting for our flight to take us downtown, we jumped on and 40 minutes later we were in Venice. The vaporetto line we needed to catch left from the bus stop and so we called our B&B and arranged for a pick up at our vaporetto stop Saint Stae 20 minutes later. While we stood infront of a church waiting for the pick-up you could see down little alleyways and in the quiet February night there was hardly a soul around. I really understood why Venice is such a sought after location for movies and the setting of books. The mystery, the fog and the low lights just all add to the atmosphere. It's great mid-week in the off season, like you've stepped back in time!

The man met us after we had only been waiting about 10 minutes and showed us to our cute little room, gave us directions to local restaurants and supermarkets and wished us a pleasant stay (in a mis-mash of Italian, French and random English). If you ever need a place in Venice let me know, this place was awesome and a great deal!

We decided to stay in after the traveling and head to bed early. It was so strange not to hear any cars or mopeds, just quiet, so quiet!

chez les ch'tis

Ok, I still have a ton I want to write about Venice but I've been busy at work the last two days, so I'll hopefully get to it soon...

In the meantime Mystery Guest and I went to go see Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis tonight after some friends highly recommended it and it rocked!! I loved loved it! After I got more used to the accent it was hilarious and not just a movie that used some loose story line to put in a million bad jokes, but really cute.

Makes me want to go to Lille... maybe... :-)

i'm back!

I'm back with a million pictures and stories, but right now its time to get unpacked and grab some fresh food at the market :-)

i'm off!

Off to Venice today! Cross your fingers for ontime flights and decent weather for me! :-)

busy bee

I feel like writing something witty and highly entertaining but alas no little anecdotes come to mind.

Things are going well. I'm working on my 2nd memoire, getting the outline all planned out, should start writing soon-ish. It's hard to stay motivated but this is my last year and I want it done and over with!

Work is going well and since Thursday I've been on vacation. We leave Tuesday to go to Venice for 3 days. I have been itching to go for a while and about 2 months ago I realized that we both had the same February vacation and the tickets were way cheap after Carnival is over! So 2 RyanAir tickets were bought and we're off on an adventure!

Currently out at Mystery Guest's house, we're just chilling, eating brioche, watching Lost and getting our PACs papers in order. They are all set to go, we just need to drop them off at the Tribunal and ask for a rendez-vous!

Another big trip is on the horizon, Mom gave us our graduation presents early (his L3 (BA) and my Masters2 are finishing up this year!) and we're off to the US for 24 days in August!!! We're researching rental car prices and are going to do a big massive road trip. I'm so excited!!

2008 is going to be a good year, I can feel it :-)

walking tongue?

On all the bus/tram stops in Caen there is this ad plastered everywhere, I couldn't find it on google images but the one we have actually has this little tongue that has its own elephant-like feet. It is too weird and creepy... I'll have to see if i can take a picture of it, has anyone else seen it??

In other news Mystery Guest and I went to see National Treasure: the Book of Secrets. I loved loved it!! It had the same spirit of the Indiana Jones movies with the historical suspense of the DaVinci Code (book, not movie!). I thought it was excellent.

Junebug

Just got back from Juno, I loved, loved it! Thanks Sam for the recommendation. Plus the music rocks :-)

yes!!!

Karina 1, French bank 1

I had to stop by my bank today to set up an international transfer of 27.40CHF to Switzerland to pay for my birth certificate. For the first time ever my lets-charge-for-every-simple-thing bank was nice and transfered it with no fee! The fee was 14euros and would have been almost as much as the transfer itself!!

I didn't even ask, that was the best part, the girl just told me, no problem I talked to your banker and he said it wasn't worth charging you, we put it down as free...

Happy dance as I left the bank :-) God that feels good!

v-day

Happy Valentine's Day!! Nevermind the commercial broo-haha of this holiday, money does not have to be spent to send out some big hugs and kisses to those you love!

Thanks for the Valentine's Day wishes Mystery Guest, Mom and Dipshit, you guys rock!

xxoo

sew sew

Last night I finally decided to break out my new sewing machine that I got at Lidl for only 60e (+3 year warrenty!!) a few months ago. I hadn't had time to even take it out of the box, nor a small project I could play with. So I decided my new project would be to take off the annoying flappy end of my duvet cover that you're supposed to tuck under and put some snaps on to close it. I hate it when my blanket wiggies its way out of the cover and gets all messed up... me? OCD? never...

Anyway it was a fun little project to test out my kick-ass sewing machine! That thing is a beast and has so many functions! Lidl rocks my world! Yes I get excited over new duvet covers and sewing machines, who doesn't?

**End nerdy moment**

Paris

Yesterday I took the day and went to Paris to see my old college roomie Jiji and her hubby Mr. X ;-) They were just in Paris for a few days and since I hadn't seen her since her wedding 2 years ago I couldn't resist jumping on the train to spend the day hanging out and catching up.

We walked all over Paris since the weather was just stunning. Starting from Saint Lazare, through the Louvre and down to St Michel for lunch in a creperie.

Saw some military dudes and scoped out Sarko's house. Talk about some high security areas of Paris! His house is on the same strip as 3 or 4 embassies (including the American one).

Then they met up with some friends to go to the movies and I made my way back to Saint Lazare to meet up with another old college friend who recently moved to Paris. I hadn't seen him in about 6 years so that was fun to have a little coffee and a chat before catching my train.

Couldn't resist taking this picture on my way to the station tee hee.

Anyway you would think that was my adventure for the day... ohhhh noooo...

I decided to take the 5:30 train back to Caen. Got on and finally found a seat. Then the announcer came on and said there would be a short delay. We got underway at about 5:50. Then 5 minutes outside of Paris the train came to a screeching halt...

We hit a shopping cart, said the conductor.

Yup. Someone put a shopping cart on the rails and we ran over it. Apparently it got lodged under the train so they had to call the maintenance crew to get it off/out what have you. During this time there was a group of high school kiddies sitting right behind me that were hyperactive and playing with their phones. Yes, we all loved hearing horrible french hiphop on horrible cell phone speakers for hours on end. That was wonderful entertainment. Then since we were in the last car the area by the toilets became the smoking zone (yes, trains are now supposed to be smoke free...) but if only they were just smoking cigarettes...

They arrived 1 hour later. and at about 8:45 we got underway - again. Then someone had a "malaise" and the firemen had to come and take them to the hospital.

THEN we stopped at an unscheduled stop (Mantes la Jolie if you're interested, this is how far we were from Paris...) to check things again and lucky us the lovely SNCF people ::snicker snicker:: let us have some bottled water.

I got home and in bed at midnight, it should have been 7:40pm...

I'm pooped and going to go have a talk with the SNCF people this afternoon to see about getting my ticket reimbursed. That was insane to say the least!

***Edit*** Just got back from the SNCF boutique, apparently when it is not their fault (ie they did not put the shopping cart on the tracks) they do not reimburse the tickets. I'm so writing customer service. The least the could have done is kept some order in the train. ::fuming::

Rennes

Today was quite the adventure! I took the train up to Mystery Guest's house Thursday evening and early Friday morning we left to drive the 3 hours down to Rennes. We caught a beautiful sunrise over the water on the way out and had a spectacular view of sun through the frosted fields and low fog.

We made it down there without a problem and after a little hunting around and a quick call to Sam we found the American Presence Post in Rennes (like a mini-embassy). I had to go in person to get 2 different documents to get PACSed - yup yup Mr. Mystery Guest and I are gonna be civil-unionized baby :-) It was a piece of cake and I'm so glad that I went to Rennes instead of the mad-house that the American Embassy in Paris is.. yuck!

As soon as we could we shot out of town and to Merlin's forest. We tried to go to this great creperie nearby but it was closed, I think I shed a little tear.. So we went off to the forest. I just love that place, it is so beautiful and this is the 3rd time we've been there. Who says it rains 100% of the time in Brittany? Everytime we've been there we've had unbelieveable weather! The scenery is stunning and it was warm, sunny and no wind, felt like spring had sprung.

Afterwards we went in search of a geo-cache in the forest near Fougeres. It was just one of those magical days of sunshine after a long grey winter (which according to the Groundhog is not over yet!)

Since we couldn't get our crepes in Brittany we stopped by a fantastic creperie in Caen - le Vieux Pommier if anyone is interested. It is teeny-tiny with about 20 seats and one woman who runs the whole show. She's the waitress, the chef and the dishwasher and believe me it is impressive to see her work (always smiling) when the restaurant is packed! Today we called at 6:30 to see if we could make a reservation and when she asked what time and I asked when they would open she said anytime, I can open now! So we were the only ones in there for the first half of our meal.

It was a fantastic day, got a seemingly paperwork headache out of the way and got to enjoy the sunshine, the adventure of a road trip and great company for the rest! ;-)

as french as apple pie

Tried making a new kind of apple pie, inspired by Mystery Guest's mom I added a wash of watered down apricot jam over the top as a kind of glaze :-) The recipe is on my other blog, I have yet to try it but it looks yummy!

Is it just me or does this scare the beejeezers out of anyone else?? Yikes.

In France they always crack up when they hear about the Republican canidate, you would too if your reference was this... McFry anyone?

chandeleur

Today, Feb 2nd is the Chandeleur, or Candlemas in English. You're supposed to eat crêpes and the main tradition is to flip it over with a coin (a Louis d'or) in your hand to have prosperity for the rest of the year. His mom has an original gold coin that was her dads. Here is the back, you can see the date, it says 1859.

On the front is Napoléon III. Here it is next to a penny for comparison.

Here I am trying to flip the crêpe with the coin in one hand... this one sadly ended up on the floor but I perfected my crêpe flipping talent and the next one was perfect ;-) Money for me this year!

And here is Mystery Guest, I think having French blood helps, that and years of practice!

movies...

Ok 2 very very different movies, but 2 thumbs up from MilkJam! :-)

job hunting

So along with the stress of exams, preparing lessons, writing another thesis blah blah I need to look for a job for next year...

The internet can be a wonderful thing, so I thought if there is anyone out there who knows of a job in the Basse-Normandie region (Cherbourg/Caen) please feel free to get in touch with me ;-)

Hey it never hurts to put a little self-publicity out there!!



In the meantime... I swear I'd pay someone to correct my 200 Econ student's exams!! :-)

weekend in the countryside

Sunrise...

Sunset...

Beautiful eh?

me? procrastinate? never...

... That and I made some fondants au chocolat :-) miiiiiam...!

Aussie in Caen!

Breaking News! Aussie Takes Caen!

My friend Louise came in on Saturday after an extremely looooong and painful flight. She was an assistant here a few years ago so she got to re-discover Caen. We spent a great few days just relaxing and hanging out, its great to have such an easy houseguest! No need to translate or play tourist with, but just hang out, eat cheese from the marche and kick back.

Good thing because I was still half jetlagged myself!

More to come... right now its freezing so I'm going to hibernate under the covers :-)

thirt? shong?

My roomie just got back from the sales and showed me this hilarious find she snagged... I just about peed my pants, I've never seen anything like it! Have you? Apparently her boyfriend just couldn't handle the crazyness that this "thirt" or "shong" is...

I think you have to be a girl to realize the totally practical nature of this... er... what should we call it?

But god does it look funny! :-)

artsy-fartsy

I was going through a few of the Australia photos today and I found this one that I looooove. With my sexy new camera you can do 'color-select' pictures. So I selected that ruby red of the hibiscus tea in the morning sun. Awesome isn't it?

Oz (brief) recap

There is just too much to say. I had a fantastic time on Kangaroo Island with my family where we saw (and held!!) some fantastic wildlife. Then I went to Sydney with my sister and met up with my friend Louise for 3 days before starting my 48 hour trip home. I'm back now and there are 1000 pictures to sort through and lazy me is leaving you with these few images that sum things up nicely ;-)

Happy New Year! 2008

(why did I forget that for the next few weeks I'll be wishing that to all the Frenchies? forgot about that custom...)