Avocado tartare

9 days until I'm back living la vie parisienne.. if only for a week, it's better than nothing. I can't wait for our (Me + Regis) cooking lessons at Arômes et Saveurs (http://www.saveurs-aromes.com/). I believe we're going March 15th, my last evening in Paris.

The menu:

Tartare d'avocat au crabe et agrumes
Khoresh d'agneau à l'orange et aux pistaches
Crème de riz, sauce acidulée à l'hibiscus et gingembre

My translation:

Avocado tartare with crab and citrus fruit
Orange Persian lamb stew with pistachios
Creamed rice, sour hisbiscus and ginger sauce

Who knows if those are anywhere near correct, or what exactley they are.. but it should be fun getting taught how to make some delicious recipies and then getting to eat them, too. I hope Regis will wear his new apron I got him for Valentine's day, complete with pink hearts. The website does say, 'Bring your own apron!' I'll take a picture if I can manage to convince him..

Reason #457 to keep French fiance

One thing that's good about having a french lover is their readiness to correct and aid you in writing a French paper. Or just the warm, gooey feeling of having someone tell you "I barely had to correct anything, out of 7 pages there were only 3 sentences I had trouble completely understanding!" and "Wow, you're French has improved." and "I didn't even know you knew such complex words!"

While I am delighted at the appraisal of my french work, I'm slightly alarmed that my verbal skills must be so poor he couldn't imagine I knew the words I do! In my defense, its hard when you're thinking completely in French to come up with particulary intelligent words all the time, shouldn't it be good enough that I don't need to think about things before I say them in French anymore? I think so.

Overall, I think I have quite the advantage in my 400 level french class. If I ever have a question I can go right to the source. Although Regis's language skills are not exactley Proust, and much more inclined to coding C++, it gets me by. Just another reason to keep a Frencie around for the long run. ;)

The horror...

I can't wait to be holding a warm nutella crepe from the crepe stand near St-Placide metro, walking up and down rue Rennes, dragging Regis into shops he'd rather die than walk into.

Making pasta and pesto all warm and cozy in Regis's apartment. Renting videos from the shady video machine at Kremlin-Bicetre. Not shopping at Leclerc at Kremlin-Bicetre until they fire the nazi store-clearer woman, who is so rude she should be fired on the spot.

Visiting Regis's mom and getting the "Comme tu es belle" speech everytime. Eating her lovely Gambas a la creme (Giant shrimp with bell peppers sauteed and then drenched in a delicious creme sauce). Making quesadillas for Regis and him making crepes in return.

Only 2 weeks to go and I'll be back where my heart never left. Oh how Paris brings out the cheesiness in me.

If only I didn't have so much due before I get to leave. But at least the majority of it will be over Thursday evening.. except for my Organizational Behavior exam next week. And then I'm home free, doing nothing but reading, cuddling, watching movies, cooking, and spending time with Regis's family. A perfect vacation.

Too much information

Overheard at Valentine's Day dinner with my parents:

Me: You have to look everyone in the eye when you clink glasses, otherwise it's seven years of bad sex!

Dad: Well, I've already had 27 years of bad sex.

Mom: [shoots the evil eye at my dad] I'll remember that later tonight.

So, in the past few months, ever since my dad blurted out that he and my mom had sex on their first date, I've reached a new level of openness with my parents about ma vie sexuelle. However, I think that was quite an overshare. But at least I've never been in the room next door to my parent while they're loudly getting to it like Regis. I never want to have to bang on the wall to get them to be a little more quiet.

St. Valentin de loin

The most wonderful day of the year is once again upon us. And by wonderful, I mean usually dissapointing because of the high expectations for a day full of romance.

Last year met the expectations, however. Régis took me to a comdedy show at Café Oscar, a little café-theatre near metro Grands Boulevards. The interior was cozy and dark with sparkly lights all over the ceiling. There were three different comedians, each cracking jokes on love and the opposite sex.

My favorite joke went something like this:

Girl: C'etait bien pour toi?

Guy: Oui, trop trop bien. Et pour toi?

Girl: Oh c'est pas grave..

Keep in mind there were exgerrated hand motions and the falsetto sigh of a girl unsatisfied. It was possibly my favorite joke because it was easy to understand! That night was one of my first breakthroughs with the French language. I actually understand jokes poking fun at the opposite sex in French!! The cocktails they serve were very tasty and fruity, too, although overpriced. But for an original Valentine's Day treat I'd say Régis did a great job last year. Not to mention the homecooked crepe meal afterwards.

This year, because I'm too far away and too broke to pop over to Paris for the weekend, I'm dining out with the folks. We're testing out a French restaurant here in Bloomington, Indiana called le petit café. I've dined there three times before and I've never been dissapointed. The potatoes are almost the best part of the meal. The only problem is that sometimes they just close for no reason. Which makes it that much more French, I believe.

I'm bringing the parents there tonight to decide if it would be a good place to host my graduation/engagement party this May. Régis is coming to the states for my graduation from Indiana University and my mom wants to plan a huge soirée to celebrate our engagement.

I also think she wants to celebrate the fact that I will have graduated from university without getting pregnant. The other day she said "Brandi, can you believe you've avoided ever having to worry about being pregnant while in school?". Well, considering the marvel of modern birth control, and the fact that it's been a part of my life since high school, I think somehow, I can believe it.

Un amour de Brandi

To begin a new blog about my life as the fiancée of a frenchie, I decided it was only appropriate to be entirely cliché. So I have added my favorite picture of the la tour eiffel.

In January 2006 I met Régis in the mall at les Halles outside le FNAC for our first date. In all my American glory I actually wore my mom's vintage cowboy boots tucked into jeans. Luckily, he overlooked my tendency to hop on the bandwagon of trends where I don't have to actually buy anything new. We went to all the typical 11eme hot spots, a Vietnamese restaurant where two can dine for less than 20 euros and an Egyptian hookah café. It was a particulary warm day for January and since Régis has a tendency to wear only a corduroy blazer even in dead winter, he needed someone to keep him warm when it turned cold in the evening. An american girl wearing a puffy coat was more than happy to help him and we shared our first embrace on rue de Belleville.

Not wanting the evening to end, we decided to meet up later at the Mix for Erasmus party. Haven for all American students studying abroad who have been told "everybody goes there" when in actuality, everyone who wants to end the night drunkenly making out goes there. But that's another story. So at Erasmus party, in all it's sweaty, body-swaying glory, we had our first kiss. All due to his inability to correctly pronounce English words.

The bet: If he could correctly pronounce 'deep-pan pizza' he would get a kiss. After a few (about 40) tries I decided it was close enough.

The next day we met at la tour eiffel where Régis waited over an hour for me, since I can never seem to figure out how long a metro trip actually takes. Isn't it supposed to be 2 minutes per stop? While waiting on his new foreign interest, he snapped this photo and sent it to me as a memoir of our date. He suprised me with ice skating on the eiffel tower. Although I'm a horrible ice skater and we were surrounded by 20 five year olds with their parents watching from the side, yelling "Fait attention, cheri!"... I'm going to have to say it was still somehow magical.

After that point we were inseperable for 3 months until I had to return to down-home Indiana to finish my last year of university. He spent last summer barbequing with my family in the mid-west and traveling with me to visit my brother in Florida (his first trip here ever). I returned to Paris for Christmas and New Year's Eve with his family, and the last day I was there he proposed.

I'll try to keep whining about the long distance to a minimum, but I do plan to chroncile the difficulty of a cross-cultural relationship with a sea in between.

Until, of course, I move back to Paris and become 'une petite femme francaise' [a little french wifey], as one of my french girlfriends suggested I was starting to resemble. I made quesadillas and guacamole (my specialties) for the fiancé's party and continued to make them throughout the night. She slipped over and whispered "Wow, Brandi, tous les amis de Régis doivent etre vraiment jaloux! Tu es la parfaite petite femme francaise." [All Regis friends are probably so jealous, you're the perfect lille french wife!] I'm not quite sure how I feel about that statement.