Entre le Mistral

Le Mistral, the cold wind that blows down from the North, has arrived. Our afternoons are still sunny and warm, but mornings and nights here are pretty cold. The funny thing is that it happened so suddenly--Sunday was warm and Monday was freezing. A nice thing about the cold weather though is the change in food. Monday night I showed up late to dinner at the Daniels' because my class with Pélopidas lasts until 7:30--when dinner starts, and it's a twenty to twenty-five minute walk, although I was able to make it in about seventeen. Mme Daniel was serving raclette...which is basically cheese you melt yourself and pour over potatoes, and it's usually eaten with meat. I tried to explain this to Chloe, and she said it sounded disgusting, but it's actually delicious. There's a special device called an appareil à raclette, or just a raclette, and it has slots for each person's spatula of cheese, which you dump (I guess I could choose more appetizing diction...) on your potatoes after it's melted and bubbling. When we got home, I was telling Renaud about it, and he stopped me mid-sentence to lead me into the kitchen to show us a raclette sitting in a box on the shelf. It's hilarious because there are so few cooking utensils here, and Renaud always eats really basic food, but then he's got a raclette. We may do that for our next soirée.

The next night, we went back to the Daniel's for a soirée d'oenologie. I ended up not signing up for the wine-tasting class because I found out this outing was already included in our program fee, and I'm glad I didn't since most of what he told us was pretty basic. I'm sure the trip to vineyard would be cool, but it didn't seem the best way to spend 130 euro. It was half the V-i-F group, plus Mme Scott and her partner. It was fun--we had a rosé with the tapenade, a red wine with coq au vin, et then a rosé à boules (bubbles) with pears cooked in wine served with cream made with leaves from Mme Daniel's garden.