Cooking with buttermilk

Today I'm going to talk a bit about cooking and food.

Last weekend I made pancakes for my host family, and they went over great!  For these pancakes I needed buttermilk (le lait fermenté), but not surprisingly I did not use the entire litre carton.  To prevent the rest from going to waste, I researched recipes that use buttermilk.  It occurred to me that buttermilk is also a particularly Southern ingredient, so I can kill two birds with one stone: not waste food and share a slice of Southern cooking with my French host family!  Or whole cake, even.

The recipe I decided on was lemon bundt cakes from Cook's Illustrated Magazine, the recipe for which I found online by searching for recipes that called for buttermilk and also sounded tasty.  I've never had a CI recipe turn out anything but spectacular, and this one was no exception!

Part one: I taught Isabelle a new word in French!  Sort of.  She wasn't sure whether "zester" (to zest) existed in French, and it indeed does.  I was correct; Larousse says so.  

The first thing you have to do for this recipe is zest three lemons.  In case you are unaware, zesting takes a long time.  Juicing can too, but did not due to a handy gadget Isabelle has!  I need to get me one.

Lemons look funny when they have only pith and no rind.  L-R, Super Juicer machine, last lemon half to be juiced, and 3 lemon's worth of zest. Whew.

Part two: do lots of mixing, preferably not by hand.

I did this part all by hand, resulting in stronger shoulder muscles, sugar and flour all over the table (I exaggerate, but it was more than should have been there), and butter and sugar that was quite creamy enough, thank you very much.

After the batter was entirely prepared, I greased the silicone mini-bundt molds (les moules) I found in the cupboard and started to fill them.

At this point I realized that mini-bundts were going to take forever.

Considering how much batter I had left over after filling the first six bundt molds, and how difficult it was not to make a mess, I decided to switch to a loaf pan for the rest of the dough (minus the other mini-bundt pan I'd already greased).  Into the oven they went!

Part three: Démouler!  That is, hope that you greased the molds enough that the cakes come out whole.

Part three was deemed a complete success, as the little buggers all came out perfect!

Please note that after making 12 mini-bundts, I did indeed put the rest of the dough into a loaf pan.

Part Four: Mmm, icing.

I didn't bake the loaf immediately due to time constraints, but I did mix together the icing and start the process  of putting the finishing touches on the mini-bundts.  Here's a picture of stage one of finishing touches:

Half of the glaze should be spread over the little buggers while still warm, so that it melts all pretty.

After about an hour, the second coating of icing should be added.  In these similar close-up photos, you can see the added "yum" acquired through this additional coating.

... those who look carefully enough may notice that not all of the mini-bundts survived that first hour.  They will not be forgotten.


After dinner, once I'd baked the loaf and it was démoulé (out of the pan), it was time to ice that bugger too!

After the first coat on the loaf.  The mini-bundt count is dwindling...

Once the second coat of icing was applied, and the bowl had been right cleaned out, I couldn't resist any further taste tests!  You don't know how close all those mini-bundts were to being goners.

Yummmmm...

Part Five: Hide the desserts in the microwave, or else the cat will eat them.


No, I am not joking about this.  Taigne has bizarre tastes for a cat, and loves to get into things.  Nevermind that she is immediately reprimanded when she gets on the table or countertops, she still gets into stuff.  A few days ago she broke into my marshmallow bag (Jetpuffs that I'd brought back from home for a future s'mores night) and nom'd on 13 of them.  Not one, not two, thirteen.  She pierced the bag in multiple places, and just went to town.  I guess she likes the texture?

I think you'll be safe in here, delicious dessert!

Fortunately, most people open the microwave door before turning it on, or else that knife would have caused some big sparks.

And thus ended, with many happy tummies, my adventure in making buttermilk bundt cakes.  It was quite a bit of work, but the result proved to be delicious and served many.  Until nextime, tschüs.

Bizarro world discovered at a Monoprix cash register!

In Monoprix this evening, I heard an interesting exchange.

I had been out browsing (didn't buy anything, so it wasn't really "shopping"), and stopped by Monoprix to buy a bottle of wine for a soirée.  I'd been in town a couple of hours, and by the time I selected my wine and got in line I was just sort of mindlessly waiting to get home, not really paying attention to anything.

Which is why I had to do a mental double take when I heard the two French girls switch from chatting in French to, "Are you paying or should I?" "I will pay." while their items - I noticed a 2-pack of Côte d'Or chocolate bars - were being rung up.  They then switched back into French for the rest of the exchange.

I think all three of us were surprised when, after handing them their receipt, the cashier said, "Have a good evening" in English instead of "au revoir."  It was like I'd walked into bizarro world for that brief moment!  Made me smile.

All three of these people were young French women, probably between 18-21 years old.  I almost had to stop myself from bursting into their (now French) conversation and saying, "Hey, do any of you want an English tutor?

But seriously, though, if you know of anyone (12+) in Dijon who wants an English tutor, let me know.  I'm looking for students.

Grammatical Oddities

Sara and I recently swapped activities – her pronunciation games for my “Cooler Than Me” worksheet – and it was a fabulous exchange.  Doing the activities with my secondes made me reflect on some (of the many) odd things about the English language.  And while I’m at it, I’ll bring up two points about French that have been bugging me recently.

Point A: English!
As Sara so aptly explained in her blog post, one of the pronunciation activities involves identifying which word, from a group of words with the same vowels, has a different pronunciation.  When correcting the exercise in class, I make sure to point out vocab words they may not know, and other important pronunciation details.  In particular, I’ve been writing these two pairs of words on the board because they’re confusing, and rather annoying now that I think about it.  Man, I’m glad I’m not learning ESL.  Here we go:

Note: for the reference of these three pictures, equality means similar pronunciation.

"when you see 'kn' in English, the 'k' is silent," so they're pronounced the same. Okay, I can handle this!

But of course it's not that simple:

"I see 'kn,' so I know the 'k' is silent.  Okay!  But, wait, this time they're not pronounced the same? Quoi??"

By this time I've written this up on the board:

At this point in the class, sometimes I feel obligated to apologize for my maternal language, because she is a fickle thing.

Ehh???  I know that English is, shall we say, a melting pot language and having such a vibrant vocabulary at our fingertips is wonderful (note: article is a bit waffling), but come on guys.  Sigh.

Point B: French!
Oftentimes, when I ask a French person about grammar, he or she responds back with sincere sympathy and perhaps even an apology for the terribly complicated manner in which their language is structured (frequently phrased along the lines of, “la grammaire française, elle est n’importe quoi!”).  But they’re still darn proud of la langue française!!  These comments always make me giggle on the inside, because it’s pretty much the same thing that I tell my students when I explain instances like now vs. know and new vs. knew.

Moving on, here are the two points of French grammar that earned themselves multiple eye rolls from me within the past week.  Bear with me as I explain the context of my frustration.

1. If you want to tell someone you’re heading to the bathroom/restroom/WC/washroom/loo/toilet (did I forget any, guys?) in French, you should say, “Je vais aux toilettes.” Literally, “I go to the toilets.”  Plural.  I assumed that if there is only one toilet to go to, you would change the word “toilet” to singular and work the preposition agreement from there, i.e. “je vais à la toilette.”  You know, logic and all that jazz.
   
   There is only one bathroom in the apartment, so I had taken to correcting myself from “ aux toilettes” to “à la toilette.” Over the weekend Isabelle pointed it out and corrected me: no matter the number of toilets, you are always heading to the toilets, not the toilet.  Hrumph.  Just to make sure it wasn’t a Dijon thing, I confirmed it with my friend Aliette.  She confirmed “aux…s,” adding that even with synonyms it is always plural (aux WCs, aux cabinets) except with “au petit coin.”  Pas logique.
2. French nouns all have a gender: masculine or feminine (unlike English, whose nouns are considered all masculine and unlike German, which also has neuter nouns).  You have to make sure that any adjectives you use agree with the gender of their nouns, which can sometimes be tedious to remember.  e.g. – “card” is feminine: une carte.  “That is a pretty card” could be expressed as elle est une belle carte, or shortened to “It (the card) is pretty” in elle est belle.

Something that I likely learned in FR3105/3106 but had since forgotten was that you want want to say “it’s pretty,” all bets are off and the adjective is always masculine, no matter what the gender of the noun.  Because there is a specific, prolific, everyday phrase used for “it’s” – c’est.

Say what?  C’est beau even though elle est belle.

Isabelle showed me a card she was going to mail, and when I said “c’est belle” she laughed amusedly.  I thought it might be a “her accent is amusing” or “her French is so good now!” laugh, but that was only wishful thinking.  In reality, it was a “the basic mistakes she makes in French are adorable” laugh.

*shakes fist at French grammar, but only half-heartedly and with an eye roll*

Hey kids, don’t be *that* kid

Today I want to ramble on talk about sick days and the woes of grading (aka, don’t be *that* kid).

Sick Days:
So over the weekend I finally succumbed to the stomach virus (j’ai chopé la gastro) that has been recently present in Dijon and in my host family.  Apparently my host family shares everything, including illnesses, because this is the second sickness I’ve caught from them (by my best guess).  I say “from” them because I see them getting sick, think, “whew, I need to make sure I’m wash my hands compulsively, because I’m lucky that’s not me right now!” and then get sick 3-4 days later.  Woo.  But maybe it’s not from the fam at all, who knows.

Anyway, gastros tend to be 24-hour sicknesses, and this was no exception.  In hindsight I could feel it coming on (the tripe, with its weird-smelling sauce, was especially unsettling), but to be honest it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

That said… when a sickness hits you Sunday evening and is pretty much gone before Monday’s dinner, how do you convince people that you were actually sick if they didn’t see you in those critical 18 hours (most of which were spent trying to sleep)?  I’m not one to cry wolf, and I was apparently still slightly pale today – I was certainly still tired – so it didn’t appear that I was making it up.  And I wasn’t.  But the thought crossed my mind: what if people were skeptical that I’d actually been sick?
Luckily I didn’t have to deal with this, and I hope you do not either.

Grading, a language teacher’s stress/anti-stress:
At Carnot, Kirsty and I often see teachers grading copies (homework exercises) that the students have recently turned it.  Oftentimes, the stack of papers “to grade” is very tall, in the multiple inches range.  Understandably, the profs sometimes get overwhelmed.  Also understandably, the students aren’t perfect.  That’s why they’re in class, to learn!

However, when a student doesn’t try or didn’t focus well, it is immediately obvious and the results are horrendous.  So in addition to having tons of papers to grade, these papers are often disappointing and/or frustrating, aka stressful.  One teacher, Fabienne, has repeatedly said that grading her copies messes with her English, because after you see sentences like “I live in Dijon since eight years” for hours upon end, you start to second guess your own English.

Therefore we now come to the anti-stress aka  humor part of this blog post: in order to keep sane, said teachers have to look at the silver lining, which is that some of the sentences the students come up with are hilarious.  I shudder to think what kind of fun my French teachers had with my own “copies”/homework, but there’s no sense worrying about it now.

In particular, we (Fabienne, Kirsty and I) found the following example quite funny: a  student wrote a sentence in which she wanted to use the word “fruitful.”  Instead, however, she used “to bear fruit.” Given the phrase "bear fruit" and our punchy mood, this image is what my mind jumped to straight away:

Er... yum?  Or ow?

…and to illustrate why this was not the correct phrase/word, Fabienne let me draw that on the girl's paper.  Yup.

So please, people, whenever you take a language class, please engage your brain during homework so that you make fewer mistakes, because a) it’s kinder toward your teachers, b) it’s kinder toward your grade and c) it prevents your teachers from laughing at you as much.

Settled back in Dijon: part of the family

While it was hard for me to leave my friends on New Years day to fly back to France, it was comforting to immediately settle back life in Dijon without any problems except fatigue.  Not that it's terribly surprising after three months, but Dijon can now without a doubt be called one of my homes, and returning after two weeks at home home helped prove it.

Fortunately, my two weeks away didn't change the great dynamic I have with my host family.  Isabelle and Annabelle both remarked that "tu n'as pas changé du tout!" (you haven't changed a bit!), which is good considering I was only away for 10 days!  But it's still nice to hear that I fit into their family's life smoothly in 2011 just like in 2010.

Case in point: at the end of dinner tonight, Isabelle, Paul and I started discussing animal sounds.  And by "discussing," I mean imitating each animal to hear what the different calls sound like in both French and English.  While I already knew some of the differences, it's always fun to talk about this sort of thing, and the imitations kept us laughing for quite a while.

If you, too, are interested in learning what different cultures call the sounds that animals make, I found a great table put together by a professor at the University of Adelaide.  You can find his table here.  My two favorite animals sounds in French are definitely ducks - "coin coin" instead of "quack quack" - and a cat's purr - "ronron" in French.  The "r" is hard to say correctly, but it sounds extremely similar to the real sound!

Isabelle and Paul were both surprisingly adept at making animal sounds/calls.  I particularly enjoyed Isabelle's imitation of a goat, and they liked my imitation of a cock crowing.  Previously, I had not spent much time thinking about a goat's bleat sounds different than that of a sheep, but they definitely do.

If I haven't told you in person, Bonne Année and Happy New Year!  May 2011 be a productive and enjoyable year for everyone.