suck and blow...a la francais

I think that everyone remembers that daring game played whilst we were 14-18 (ok 22)…suck and blow…the game where if you are lucky enough to pass the card to a cute boy that has no lung capacity you might get a chaste kiss…well I just encountered the equivalent recently at a little get together.

Let me just set the scene: an incredible apartment in Le Marais an incredibly trendy and chic area, a bunch of friends clad in classic Parisian garb drinking a white wine or a vodka cocktail, chatting and grooving to some music in the background…the more vodka cocktails consumed lead to some interesting discoveries on my part.

All of a sudden I hear the strains of Austrian Waltz music and see people sitting on the ground, their legs wrapped one around another swaying with their arms held aloft in the air…then un deux trois Paul runs across the apartment living room and dives headlong into the sea of waving arms, they catch him and roll him off to the side in preparation to the next person waiting to plunge to their death or just fall and have a minor concussion. This is a drinking tradition in the Southwest of France. Hmmm.

We continue chatting, and then I’m being grabbed by a friend and he is trying to force an ice-cube into my mouth with his tongue. My normal reaction, was screaming, pushing and spitting the ice-cube onto the floor staring wild-eyed at my friend…”What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks-was that?”

Because…

a. My boyfriend, and your best friend is right behind me…

b. And..whaaat???!!!!

Everyone started laughing at my ignorance of the fun game they call, “Passe le glaçon” or “Thrust the ice-cube into everyones mouth before it melts”. Voila…the French version of “Suck and Blow” everyone…hazah.

To put this into perspective, French people are shocked by Booty dancing, yet shoving an ice-cube with your tongue into your friends girlfriends mouth…totally acceptable and played by thirteen year olds. Hmmm.

hail to the king...'s cake

Jean-David and I were invited over to a friends house to partake in the mid-winter tradition Galette des rois which translates to “Kings Cake”. This year I was prepared to partake in this French holiday tradition, armed with the knowledge of what is expected in such a circumstance.

This tradition, as many French ones are, is based around food. In this case a flaky, buttery cake filled with sweet almond paté and one ceramic toy hidden in the cake. When you buy the cake it comes with two paper crowns….hence it’s name….King’s Cake. When everyone is settled with a glass of hard cider in hand (the beverage served with King’s cake….because let’s be honest, after age 10 this cake tradition is boring without a little bit of booze) then the fun begins! The eldest person is sent to cut the cake while the youngest person gets under the table and dictates who gets which piece. After the mortification of squeezing yourself underneath a small coffee table in a 150square foot space crammed with 8 people you are allowed to eat your cake.

If by chance you are the lucky one that has almost broken your tooth on the ceramic gizmo hidden in the cake you are the King! Or the Queen! So now, your knees are sore, you may have broken a tooth and the game isn’t over yet! You get to choose from the group of people your crush and crown them your king or queen. As a 24 year old the prospect of choosing a king doesn’t scare me, but imagining myself at 6 years old in front of a cafeteria filled with mean children pointing to my crush dredges up old elementary school dramas of hiding in the bathroom because Colin Sternagal was teasing me for having a crush on a certain Luke Hammond.

Thankfully this year I was spared from crouching under a table and sadly once more I didn’t chip a tooth and become Queen for a day…but I guess I can wait another year to try again. OR I can just buy a cake for myself and eat it all…then guess who wins…Hail to the Queen-I-ate-an-entire-cake-to-myself…

moveable feast

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Yes I did it. I quoted Ernest Hemingway from one of his great oeuvres ‘A moveable feast’. Can you blame me? Well you shouldn’t. Ernie and I have oodles in common. Though my best friend isn’t Gertrude Stein, and I’m not pal-ing around with the sparkling writers of yesteryear, he and I have an eerily similar back-story.

Finally having read this tale of the brilliant, unknown ex-pat who was hungry for life-experience, beauty and above all a crisp white wine and a flakey croissant, I feel that I too may take my place as a brilliant, unknown ex-pat who is hungry for this seasons Louis Vuitton…I’m drinking crisp white wine right now…and a seasoning of all Paris has to offer.

I suppose that I am technically not an ex-pat, but I think that is just a question of time. And while I am not subsisting only upon my music making, I am here to diversify my perspective and soak up the richness of culture that has been touched by thousands of artists, musicians, and poets unknown or famous. The thought that they rambled up and down the same boulevards that I ramble down reflecting upon their art as they watched the summer sun glint of the Seine is magical. Undoubtedly they were thinking of Cezanne and not of Vogue, The September issue 2010.

I used to want to be French. This was a wish that started blossoming in my heart after living in Paris in 2006. Really, the only reason to be French, other than not having to undergo all the hoop-jumping for Social Security, or being a natural size two, is to be fluent in their beautiful language. But allo…anyone can learn to speak a language, but to be a natural speaker of the sumptuous English language is a true gift.

In short, or rather, shorter than Hemingway’s 126 pages, the reason that American’s decide to pick-up-sticks and pack off to ‘gay Paree’ is to be an American in Paris. Comme ça you can get away with cultural murder. I can pick and choose, the things I love-not about the States are left behind, and the things I love, with an exception of all my chères amis, I use liberally all the time (American honesty anyone?!). The question “why have I moved to France” can really be summed up in two words; l’amour et la musique.

Or:

1. love
2. music
3. wine (red, white and rosé)
4. food
5. fashion

That’s five, but you get the drift.

kebab and couture

Can you imagine anything more lovely than sipping scalding tea, eating small tangy Clementine oranges alternated by stolen bites of a sumptuous café éclair or a densely chocolatey-tarte aux chocolat, listening to Mozart playing in the background as you spend your sunny solitary Saturday afternoon reading a comforting novel?

Did I mention that this charming afternoon is taking place at 115 Avenue de Clichy, 5^th floor chez Jean-David Levy et Lauren Van Kempen?

This makes it all the more perfect.

Finally, after 6 months of apartment searching and then waiting we have arrived in our blissful Parisian apartment. 30 square meters (300 square ft?), a teeny-tiny one-bedroom with a galley kitchen and lots of personality (mainly in the form of our rather camping-esque bathroom) I couldn’t be more thrilled.

When our landlady finally said that the apartment was ready for us… …I jumped up and down with glee. Two days later, fingers sore from using steel wool and a variety of cleaning products, plus a wrecked back from humping 100-pound suitcases up our 5 flights of stairs, the realization that we could feel the metro passing underneath our building, compacted with our shower which distinctly resembles a telephone booth was enough to dampen my enthusiasm a tiny bit.

Having escaped the deathly solitude of the 16^th arrondisement we are situated in the cusp of a brilliantly chic area and the land of halal butcher shops, kebab stands, cheap shoes and the Walmart’s of Paris. Welcome to the 17^th arrondisment. A stones throw away from Montmartre and literally 5 flights away from a kebab restaurant (our neighbor…did I mention that?), but hey it’s not everyday that you can buy a pair of shoes and a lemon tart for the same price.

However, turn the corner and you are in the bourgeois-bohème chic-ity-chic center of the 17^th…this we call Batignolles or in lay-men’s terms, “Price-yyy!” Or to get a little earthy, “that’s where all the white people be at”.

In this dichotomous world we live in, we have already established rituals…Rue des moines is the big market street where we buy our Sunday chicken and go to market, to market to buy our groceries just like the faux-bourgeios we are, and Rue Legendre is where we go Sunday nights to buy our pizza’s from Domino’s Pizza just like the American I am…

All that being said…Bienvenue…wilkommen, welcome and won’t you be my neighbor? We have a very supple floor just begging to be slept upon…so buy your plane tickets and start using the stair-master.

Food! Glorious Food!

Food! Glorious food! I love food. And that fact is now more excruciatingly evident than ever before. The reason? Well I’ll let you guess. It starts with a ‘d’ ends with a ‘t’ and there is an ‘ie’ in-between it. I’ve never liked dieting because I like eating. But because I like eating, I am now dieting. Fascinating how that works.

In France, the temptations are great. If you’re hungry or lusting after a freshly baked baguette you might as well stay inside munching on celery, because baby, this town is full of freshly-baked-baguette-carrying-Frenchies wafting the delicious smell into your nostrils.

Walking around Saint Germain or le Marais is torture. Everyone is eating and drinking, diving into their plates of golden crisp French-fries accompanied by a pan-fried sumptuous-semi-bleeding steak and a bottle of a rounded Bordeaux. Aaand if you’re really naughty you follow up your already calorie packed lunch with a plate of profiteroles (or bourbon vanilla ice cream filled cream-puffs) drizzled with warm dark hot chocolate. Excusez-moi but I am drooling.

One of the French dieting standards is quinoa. Hmm. No longer drooling.

The woman who says, “Oh, I just love quinoa! It is so versatile. Healthy too!” is dead on the inside and has chalk for taste buds. I’m going to go out on a limb and declare that there is no enticing way to prepare quinoa. I’ve made it like a risotto, put it in salads, substituted it for couscous like a tabuli and yet, it is still reminiscent of being force-fed a plate of hair.

All jokes aside ladies: if you were confronted in a restaurant and were given the specials, one being a tagliatelle in a white wine sauce with chanterelle mushrooms or anything with quinoa in it…which would you choose?

Hello! Heart-attack-on-a-plate-s’il-te-plait!

As my mothers hairdresser once said, “I’d rather be fat and eat my cheesecake.”

And as I say, “I wish I could eat everything and be a size 0.”

And as the world tells me, “That is impossible, suck it up and eat your quinoa.”