Monday, August 27, 2012

Just a few little things…..posting some photos from the grocery store. I saw the butcher watching me as I took photos of food. Wonder what he thinks?  I saw the packages of gizzards (Lindsay is gagging again) and had to take them.  I mentioned that when we were in Angouleme we had dinner twice with Claire’s sister and her family.  One of the times we went to her house and she served a salad with fried gizzards on it.  I admit it was my first time trying them!  I’ve spent years teaching my children to be polite and eat what others serve.  I’ve told them they didn’t need to have seconds, but they must do the right thing and at least try things; so how can I do any less?  My nephew Craig (a chef) would be so proud of us expanding our palates!  I’m finding things that gross me out or I’ve never tried can be quite tasty.  I may not want a steady diet of gizzards , but they weren’t bad on a salad.  To know you can buy them pre-packaged made me laugh.  Now the other two photos I took for fun…..i don’t care how polite it would be I can’t wrap my mind around tripe.  It is made from the first three layers of a cow’s stomach….the rumen, the reticulum and the omasum.  Impressed aren’t you? Google is a wonderful thingJ  Or it can be made form the abomasum section but that contains a lot more glandular tissue…..okay, Lindsay is really gagging now!!!  So, I discovered that you can get it packaged too…..I WILL NOT be buying that!  Bradley told me that in Togo they get a lot of tripe to eat, plus cow’s skin.  I asked how that was since we make shoes and purses out of it…he said it’s extremely chewy!!  Bet he’s glad to be in France where an occasional rabbit eye might come along but now cow skin!!!  The last photo I just snapped because the item kind of grossed me out.  I’m not exactly sure what all was involved but it was gelatinous and had an egg involved.

Ross and I went to pick up our new “tall’ toilet Saturday and I got my first ride in his new car.  Very nice with lots of bells and whistles…I won’t mind travelling in it at all. I have gobs of leg room so that is a plus!  While at the store we noticed a new Japanese toilet.  Apparently Japanese toilets are the new thing here. Okay, it had a remote control armrest thing, I kid you not.  It plays music, it has a built in bidet and blowdryer….you hit a button to say if you’re male or female and it aims in the right places I guess. Then of all things it has a massaging seat-OKAY- I am not exactly sure when a massaging toilet seat would be necessary; with friends we jokingly said maybe to relax you enough to go and wiggle you enough…..but if my boys had a seat that had a heater, music, a mini shower, a blow dryer and a massager…they’d never leave the bathroom!  All this can be yours for only 800 euro.  All I could say was WOW!  We’ll be very happy with our plain , white taller one thank you.

I made an odd observation Saturday while out.  The week before it had been over 100 degrees and one week later it was in the 70’s; but the women still had their summer outfits going.  I will never understand women, especially my age wearing see through white clothing with patterned or dark colored bras and will especially never understand the white pants with the dark colored underwear of various styles.  That’s as far as I’m going in my description, but my goodness, in two hours I noticed at least five women like this!!!

We enjoyed a nice afternoon yesterday with lunch at a family’s house.  They are from the Philippines and came to France 17 years ago for work.  There is also an American couple at church who do Bible translation and the husband is away; so the wife and children along with her folks visiting from Texas were with us. Ahhhh, an all English afternoon and a lot of fun comparing adjustment stories upon our arrivals in France.  Starting to make friends is a nice thing.

I RSVP’d for our annual street picnic next Saturday. Hopefully it will give us a chance to meet some neighbors and introduce ourselves.

Today it’s a lovely mid 80’s day so I used it for a nice laundry day.  You can tell I’ve adjusted to some of my life here.  As I go to hang out my laundry to dry, I have a stick I always use to whack the spider webs from the line.  Well now, I’m so used to it all, as I shake the item before folding it to take in, if there is a little spider on a shirt I just flick it  with my finger. Never thought I would be able to do that….used to be it involved a scream and hopefully someone else to kill it.  Now, occasionally there is the mother of all spiders and those I won’t go near!!  Out comes my big stick and I beat the snot out of them, even if it involves re-washing the item.  Only Ross’ clothing goes on the back to lines nearer the bushes just in case of spider invasion.   My stuff goes on the front three lines, so hopefully there will never be a spider on my clothing!!

  Tomorrow I’m investigating another grocery store, the one called Gant Casino which we thought was a casino.  So, that should take a while as I like to browse every aisle of new stores.  It just fascinates me to see the different products and styles.  One last week was kind of nasty and I’m a big fan of clean especially where I buy my food; so we’ll see tomorrow.  I’ve been training myself to go shopping a couple times a week and getting most things fresh.  I don’t have storage space and it does taste better fresh. I’m just so used to my big American grocery trips and having a stockpile, this is very different for me.  I have to get bread everyday if we want to eat it as it goes stale; but it is so cheap and something everyone just gets daily here. Yes, I’m now the stereotype carrying my loaf of bread wrapped with a bit of paper at the center. There is freshly baked bread at the grocery store, but it is sooooo much better from the bakery in town.  We have two but I prefer the bread from one and the pastries from the other.  Of course it is August, so they’ve taken turns shutting for half a month each for holidays!

Next week school resumes, so people will be back from holidays and things will all be open again.  The bad part is traffic will be back as well.  My 15-20 minute commute to language school will now go to 30-40….oh well!

Off again….enjoy the gross photos!