It's Snowing in France! What's for dinner?

It's snowing in the South of France...

 The kids are thrilled. School came to a halt today, and we went to pick them up in first thick rain, sleet, and finally snow. So what's for dinner? I don't feel like cooking. As I thought about my previous post, where do cooks come from, I remembered we use to come from Switzerland. Well, coming from there is a stretch, we lived there for three years. Once winter rolled around in Nyon, Switzerland, our weekly staple was raclette. So tonight, that's our choice. 

Luckily,  we were just given a beautiful raclette machine from our French friends, Lena and Patrice Arnera! Tonight, we will put it to good use.

 
 What is raclette? It's easy as pie, and very convenient to fix. It provides our bellies with good food consisting of potatoes, melted cheese and various meats.

The name "raclette" (pronounced ruck-lett in English or rah-klett in its native French) refers to a meal and to a type of cheese with the same name. The traditional dish can be described as melted cheese eaten with boiled (or roasted) potatoes with small gherkins and pickled onions. Modern electrical appliances that are used to make the dish are called raclette grills, mine, featured below.

With the tradition originating in Switzerland, Raclette, the meal, is one of Switzerland's best loved national dishes and is very popular in other parts of Europe such as France and Germany.

Tip: Not too keen on the stinky cheese? Try Raclette with Cheddar. Nothing is better (in my opinion) than melted cheddar cheese over potatoes. If you want a veggie raclette, try slicing zuchinni, red peppers, and strips of  asparagus just warming them up on the top tray, instead of meat. Use your imagination and enjoy. Raclette machines can be bought online or found in high end kitchen stores such as "Sur La Table" or "William Sanoma." If you are overseas, you can find them at most any applicance stores such as Darty or Conforama.
Bon App!

Seattle or The French Riviera?

 I continually ask myself, "Where do cooks come from?" Are their finished products  part of their past, their culture, or souvenirs from places they lived or visited? Do they collect recipes like we buy postcards, and stuff them virtually inside their souls? Today was that case in point.

Where are we? Location Description: Wet, Dark, Gray, Low ceilings, 40 degrees, January. Could be Seattle? It's France, specifically the Cannes region. The weather, the emotions,  brought us right back to the Sound...  Puget Sound that is. Who says one can't find salmon elsewhere? The Atlantic Ocean has one species versus the endless variety of our Pacific. But when it is fresh, it is beautiful. This 10lb Atlantic Salmon was bought right here, at our market. The Price? About the same as Seattle, $28.   So it does rain in the sister-city of Hollywood, but it only rains 60 days a year versus 300 days (Seattle). When it rains it pours and it releases a chef's emotions, and they create, like an artist would paint. They dig inside their soul, and take what they experienced, where they visited, where they lived and then, they add their cutlure to give it one last spin.   This baby was cooked on the weber charcoal grill, stuffed with his culture,  herbs from France, and  served next to a side of Basmati rice, a recipe from his Armenian side. Tonight we will drink. We will eat Salmon. And we will remember from where this cook comes.

Hitchcock?

I went to the store Habitat which is the cheap version of Crate and Barrel and I saw these freaky clocks. I just found them very odd and, well, freaky. Additionally, this print of the nuclear waste plant was just, as well, Odd!

How in the hell do we get out?

You see, he did it again. He is my husband, Henri. He is French. Living in France and being French has its advantages. Okay, he can't play the "I've got a cute accent" like he did in America, but for him, it means, he gets away with stuff. You see, there is a secret code between the French that 1) You need to know the rules (and) 2) If you know the rules, you can break them with logic.

Et voila, so this is how he parks. Now, imagine and expat trying to park like this? First of all, the mere fact of touching another car in America usually means someone is going to call their insurance and/or lawyer and well,you know the rest. However here, as a French man, he looks around and follows logic. He tells himself, the NRJ Music awards, are in town  which means parking is tough.  So, he has squeezed into this tiny, tiny space and called it "his own."  I was dreading the fight on our way back to the car. I can't even believe he could get the car out! But, since he is French, there was no fight, he was just following rule 2 because he knew rule 1. (see above)

His logic was that he needed a parking spot. I asked him, "what happens if they said he scratched their car?" then what?" With that, he simply replied in a very French way, "They cant proove any-ting!"
Gotta love the rules and how the frogs break them here. That's the unfair advantage of an x-pat like me. I follow the rules to a T, worried I'm going to break some crazy law in a foreign country and be locked up in a small prison cell, forced to eat very bad croissants all day.

Hmmm.  I'm sure this happens everywhere, rule-breaking. What rules do you break where you live? You know what I'm talking about, the small rules, because you know you can get away with them because either you know the entire town, or the mayor or because of your nationality? I want to hear about them.

What's for dinner?

Long are the days where we can just get in the car and drive to Pizza Hut, or call it an Outback Night. Restaurants are very difficult here. Difficult for your wallet and difficult for your kids, well that is, if your kids make any type of noise and don't resemble little robotic chillins that just smile and say nothing.
A trip to the store can be quite a challenge for me. Posted are some of the choices we have. One, being brains of baby cow, the other being horse, trigger anyone? Next, we have something recognizable, but I make it rule to never eat anything that is looking at me, so I'm not fond of heads on animals or fish.


So what's for dinner? Well, glad you asked, I found two good American- style restaurants in the Nice/Cannes area. These will be my staples for those days that I pine for something familiar that just doesn't really exist here.

Zucchini Blossom

1283, avenue de la Plaine
Téléphone : 04 83 14 82 34
Contact : Responsable et Chef : M.GUISSART
They offer cobb salads, Caesar salads, quessadillas, and killer cheeseburgers,

Another one is: 

Blast, the American bar.

The best American Bar in Nice, France!

Well, I'm off to eat. Bon App

Out of Beans. Off to Starbucks? Nah, get out of town.

As Nomads, we live here and there, usually for three years sometimes less. Never-the-less, I always walk away with some part of that world inside me, and I carry on. I lived in Seattle for three years. The land of coffee on every corner and really, really good Asian food. Today I need both, but I'm in France. So what to do? I follow people. Today, I followed a group of Chinese tourists in Cannes to see where they ate. I practiced my broken Chinese, and greeted them saying things like: ni hao  (prounounced Nee How) and   xiei xie  (Shay Shay)
and they led me here. They probably had a deal with the tour operator, but I'm with them, and I'll have what they're having. They all sat down, and got the royal treatment. Soon, the restaurant was full, and one hour later, so was I.

Next, off to find the beans. Well there is no "Star Sucks" as they refer to it here,  not  in my region. There are no chains like "Sisters," or "Seattle's Best," but there are good beans. But where are they and who do you follow? Coffee drinkers all look the same. At first, we followed a group of Italians, but they just led us into the Gucci store. So with that, we left them at the door. We are still on the search for good beans. Once I find them, you'll hear the story. In the mean time, my husband has gotten us into a small pickle which I'll blog about soon.
In the meantime, a few Chinese words can get you a good meal.
http://www.minmm.com/minc/show_classes.php?id=100

The cone of shame

72 euros later, I have 3 meds and 1 offer to buy Benji, all from the vet.

Sick dog, new language

We brought the family over which includes our standard poodle Benji. He is very rare here, like walking a dinosaur on a leash. People follow us, ask for pictures, and have even stopped in mid traffic to see him. Today he has pink eye. Oh but crap, what is that in French? Sometimes you just wing alot of stuff. Speaking of winging, I miss hot wings. What do you miss where you live?

Some people choose it, some people don't. My ride.

Some people choose to quit it all and live their dream. They move. They find jobs. They live their dream.
Others, are nomadic. Circumstances of the economy? I would say perhaps, but we have turned down "just jobs," for better ones that just happen to be out of our comfort zone. This is our ride.