How to have a French dinner party

(All ideas are stolen from my host mother and the absolutely lovely soirée she had last saturday night with a few members of her family.)

The beginning: Champagne. I advise you to choose a champagne "brute", as opposed to "sec"  or "demi-sec". This is heartily confusing because "sec" in French means dry, but a champagne sec is much sweeter than a champagne brute. Go figure. In any case, buy a good bottle of champagne, pour everyone a flute, and do a "cliquer", a toast, to whatever you would like to toast. If you can't think of anything, "santé!" is always a good choice. To health.

Appetizers: NO guacamole please. In fact, it is very important that your appetizers be extremely light and small. A small pan of bite size cocktail treats and a glass of thin breadsticks should do the trick.

First course: Soup. Make enough so that everyone gets two nice spoonfuls, but not enough to fill them up. A nice creamy soup is a good choice, like a squash soup or something similar. Serve with a sliced baguette -- if you want to be really authentic, break it with your hands. To drink, red wine. (Make sure you've put it in a decanter beforehand so it's nice and smooth).

Main course: Everyone should be absolutely finished with the soup before you bring out the main dish. The dish I'm suggesting comes from the South of France and is a very traditional meal. It is comprised of three things: cooked apples, a fresh eggy pasta, and a duck confit (fairly rare in the middle, more well done on the edges). The duck is eaten with a kind of creamy sauce -- if I had to guess I would say it somehow involves dijon mustard. The three are mixed or not, according to your preference. The wine glasses are kept half full (generally speaking they are never filled entirely).Another basket of bread is usually appreciated.

Cheese course: No French meal is complete with a cheese course. You don't want to buy too many different types of cheese, so go for a nice good camembert (President brand is usually good) and a chevre (goat cheese). Pair it with a somewhat more firm bread, sliced this time.

Dessert: Before you bring out dessert, ask if anyone wants coffee, "un petit café". This is usually served AFTER the dessert. For this, why not a "fruits rouges" crumble -- literally means "red fruits", but usually refers to berries. Blackberries, rhubarb, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries -- you can buy them frozen. They are probably cooked with some sort of gelatin and a lot of sugar, and then sprinkled with a crumble and baked until the crumble is crunchy and slightly brown, and the fruits are warm.

Coffee: By which I mean ESPRESSO. The French do NOT drink regular coffee after dinner. They don't usually have decaf, either, but fortunately the caffeine of the café is counteracted by the wine. Drink slowly.

The evening is finished off by finishing the wine and having a bit of mineral water. Of course I shouldn't have to mention that conversation is the key to any dinner party. Don't have too many guests -- 7 is a good number -- so everyone can feel included and participate in the conversation. In a cross culture setting, you can easily talk about the culture differences and gently poke fun at the others.

(As you can see, it was a wonderful evening. I apologize for my lack of posting. I would bore you with the details, but suffice to say, I just don't have a lot of free time and this epidemic is about to get worse in the coming weeks. Apologies in advance. I'll do my best)>

August 18th, 2010

This morning, 6:04AM: The alarm goes off, gets snoozed. It goes off again, and I drag my carcass out of bed and into the shower, in a hazy of sleepiness.
6:38AM: I leave the house, noticing that my bike helmet has gone missing somehow -- probably left it at Raj's place.
6:49AM: I arrive at the hotel, lock the bike, and go inside to change, only to discover that I don't have my shirt or name tags or anything at all. I will get in big trouble if I go out there without it.
6:55AM: I arrive back home, sweating and panting, and get the shirt, and run back out the door.
7:01AM: After biking like a bat out of hell, I pull into the parking lot of the hotel and suddenly remember that the schedule, as last I saw it, has me working from 1800-2200 today. That would be 6PM-10PM, ie, I wasn't even supposed to be there in the first place. The air, suspiciously, turns blue.
7:06AM: Straggling home, I realize that I also have a dinner date tonight with our friend Nancy, who really helped Hilary and I out in getting started. The air turns even more blue. I also start to really wish this is a dream, and I'll look down and realize that I'm not wearing any pants, and in a flash of horror, wake up.
7:15ishAM: I finish straggling home, really sweaty now and still frustrated as hell, and get on the phone with the restaurant. Fortunately, it seems likely that I can get the shift covered.
7:36AM: Somewhat reassured, I decide that, since I am still barely awake, the best thing I can do now is fight back against the world by boldly going to bed.

I was asleep for a good three hours, a time filled with disturbing, strange, anxious dreams that I can't remember a lick of now. After that, I decided I could probably face the world again, and spent a low key time hanging out -- I also talked to my mom for a bit, which always helps.

We are now at one week until Asheville departure. I still haven't even thought about packing -- though I have thought about thinking about packing and I have thought about how I DON'T want to think about packing.

It's funny with a blog -- I'm not really sure how much I want to say here that doesn't involve me -- I guess I'm still old school in that I don't trust the internet one bit, and I don't want to compromise anyone -- and in some cases, I'm just not really sure how much information about what I think I want out there. I guess I assume that if you're a close friend, you'll know about it. And should I even bother hemming and hawing about it then? In any case, I just wanted to say that the big gaps and the "don't care to elaborates" will probably stick around for a bit, so don't feel left out, you probably aren't alone. E-mail me or something if you really care to know. I'll also keep my more scathing opinions of things to myself, because they don't do anyone any good and most of them are of the moment and become less true with time. I keep a policy of being kind and even over the internet -- what a thought -- I will keep that.

I'm sorry. I'm still tired. This past week wasn't very kind to me or my memory (as this morning will clearly attest). Also, at the moment, and quite unrelated, I really, really want to take out my contacts. However, I can't, because I'm at work, and I need to see for the rest of the week. I can't imagine sleeping for three hours with them in helps with that.

Yesterday was the first day all summer excepting our trip to Atlanta that Raj and I had the same day off, which was lovely. We spent most of it -- after sleeping as late as possible -- shopping. We ended up wandering around Lowe's for more than an hour with his roommate, looking at fridges and discussing the merits of stove tops and wall ovens. It was wonderful, in a strange kind of way. Some guy in one of those motorized carts stopped to chat with us for quite awhile -- he told me he had multiple sclerosis and also gave me some very kind compliments (and in very good taste), so that was cool. We then moved on to goodwill and spent at least another hour or two there. I picked up a few pieces that I really like, so that was nice. I also found this vintage book called "les rues de Paris", which is this little book that with maps of all the arrondissements, a directory of anything you want to find in Paris pretty much (like Churches, post offices, museums, hell, even a justice of the peace), and a giant pull out map. It's amazing. I saw it and I was like, MUST HAVE.

After another lovely dinner of spaghetti and red wine, cooked by Raj's roommate (who actually is in culinary school), I headed back home with a box fan and bookshelf in tow (the roommate has a car(!)). Of course then there was the debacle this morning, but we can just pretend that didn't happen, right?

In any case. I must move on, keep clicking, moving, and see where life brings me next.

Until next time.

EDIT,10:56PM: At which point I would like to say that there are very few problems that good wine, good food, good company, and good conversation can't fix. We met our friend Nancy and went to the fresh market, along the way trying to decide something to cook. I suggested feta cheese, and the menu exploded from there. We ended up making a fabulous Italian-ish dish, by sauteing mild italian sausage with onions, garlic, and olive oil, then separately sauteing roma and heirloom tomatoes with the same, and adding both to fettuccini and crumbling feta cheese over the top. We had yellow tomatoes and fresh mozzerella balls for the appetizers (served, if you wanted, on crackers), and paired it all with garlic bread and some good white wine (though we had half a glass of red to finish off the meal). We finished the whole evening with a mix of chocolate hazelnut and blackberry cabernet gelato, and I must say, it was probably one of the best evenings of food and conversation we've had all summer. It was incredibly good and incredibly fun, and after about two and a half glasses of wine, the world just doesn't seem so scary.

I suggest that recipe, by the way. It doesn't disappoint. If you need details, e-mail me.