Soup or Sidestroke?

A favorite activity is wandering into one of the many cooking stores. Here's one where Julia Child shopped, called Dehillerin. I considered buying this pot for a backyard swimming pool.

Speaking of Julia, we just learned that she & Paul lived right around the corner from our apartment, on rue de l'Université (or as she called it, roo de loo).

Parisian Salon

We'd heard of famous Parisian salons, but none of those imaginings of literary crowds and intellectual tussles prepared us for our adventure at a salon today....the Salon d'Agriculture.  For weeks we've been going eye-to-eye with a large brown-and-white speckled cow, her nostrils flaring, and identification tags dangling like long pierced earrings. She stares out from posters promoting the Salon that have been plastered around every metro and bus. Today we went to see what the hullabaloo was about. No intimate affair, since every French school child on vacation this week must've been there, with parents & grandparents in tow. We made our way inside and discovered aisle after aisle of livestock competitions, horticultural exhibits, and food stalls. It was the York Fair on steroids but no Zipper (unless you count the demo of the new European car that was spinning 360° while a line of people waited to be permitted to inside, where they'd scream until they tumbled out at the end, pale & disappointed that it was over). The French obviously deserve to take great pride in their food and land, but this annual event is a blatant trumpeting of national pride. And so our surprise to find a McDonald's prominently exhibiting. When McD's first opened here, it was an outrage.  Furious chefs & farmers protested; one even took a bulldozer to a storefront to make the objections known in a most unsubtle manner. And he immediately became a national hero. Fast forward 30 years later, and McD's are all around. They've managed to adapt to the local culture--and economy--by sourcing 75% of the food from French land. We hear the frites are really good. And now France is McD's largest market--outside of the U.S.  Mon dieu!

February (so far) in Paris

Hey Team,

I thought that I'd give Marjorie Rose the night off from our Sunday night blog. It has been cloudy and cold this week. We took advantage of the lack of rain to go to a bunch of marchés. We do this jointly...even figuring out how to get to the right location--typically by bus. Who knew I would actually enjoy taking the bus! We typically check out the market, go to café to take notes and debrief, then go back to buy stuff for dinner. Given this routine, we have not gone out to eat a whole lot.

I have enclosed a set of pictures of the market at rue Mouftard. This is an ancient street that has had a food market from the 14th century. The market is closed to traffic so you can walk among the stalls for the foods and cafes. At the bottom of the market what seemed like gypsies were playing music, dancing, and leading a sing-along. Sorry no pics of me and Marjorie Rose dancing....though that perhaps is us in the dim light of the picture watching from the cafe!

Finally, in a burst of non-marché activity, we went with Marjorie's cousin Emily to the Rodin museum and then later to dinner near the Eiffel Tower. The Tower is pretty amazing at night; on the hour the lights are accentuated by a blaze of sparking lights.
That is it for today,
Au revoir,
M&M