Eureka! I have found it!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the French love their little individual plastic dessert cups. Be it chocolate mousse, crême caramel, fromage blanc, or yogurt, a French person will almost always take the time after a meal to indulge in some sort of creamy single-serving dessert (or at least a fruit purée like applesauce). As one might imagine, French supermarkets devote a remarkable amount of shelf space to these items, which usually come in two or four-packs, sometimes in glass or ceramic pots instead of plastic.

But despite the French love of creamy sweets, I found myself wanting when it came to Greek-style yogurt. While the battle for Greek-style yogurt market supremacy continues to rage between FAGE, Chobani, and Oikos in the US, the French seem disinterested. I asked the French about it: they said it wasn't popular here by any means. I couldn't even find a lonely attempt at Greek yogurt on a dairy aisle shelf.

Until now!

There, mixed in with all the boring regular yogurts, I saw it! Eureka! I found it! FAGE in France! At 1,50€ a pop, it wasn't cheap, but I was willing to consider it if I was desperate for that creamy, tangy, protein-rich filling that I sometimes just crave...

But then, more delight - Monoprix makes it own Greek-style yogurt! A four-pack for 1,61€ is a no-brainer!

The catch-phrase under the title instructed me to "make my spoon into an airplane and fly to Greece" - so that's just what I did!

I'll never go hungry for want of a creamy, sugar-free, protein-rich dessert again!

Un Weekend en Alsace : Strasbourg

Thanks to our ever-generous study abroad program, my fellow CUPA students and I spent the weekend in Alsace. Those of you who remember your European history will remember that this region has passed back and forth between French and German hands over the past few centuries. It's a region still known for its white wines (more on that in my next post!), German-sounding Alsatian dialect, and hearty German-influenced food, among other things.

As you stroll through the charming streets of maisons aux colombages under signs with the old names for guilds (corporations in French), you might think you'd crossed the border into Germany...

ESPECIALLY if you wandered into the area known as (somewhat contradictorily) "La Petite France"...

Strudel and pretzels (known as "bretzels" in France) abound - even a bretzel crocodile!

Three of us stopped into a cute little restaurant, tucked away behind a large wooden door on a side street.

We were offered a little appetizer of head cheese (read description at your own discretion!), so I amused myself with spoonfuls of the strong mustard from the little ceramic jar on our table. S. ordered this little fella...

...and ordered this feuilleté with Munster cheese and choucroute (sauerkraut), after double-checking with the waitress that it was vegetarian...

...but S. double-checked the sauce for me and confirmed my fears: the sauce was definitively beef-based! I let the waitress know, but she seemed unconcerned: as long as a sauce doesn't have chunks of meat in it, and just has beef broth à la base, it's considered vegetarian in Alsace! Ça me fait chier!!!

Still, I tried not to let the fact that I had ingested cow distract me from enjoying Strasbourg. We met up with the rest of the group in front of the cathedral - one of the most intricately-decorated Gothic cathedrals I've ever seen!

Lucky puppy - touch his nose!

Astronomical clock! We missed the big show at noon, but we still got to see the 1pm.

We then continued our walking tour out in town...

The skinniest house in all of Strasbourg:

Look what we found: the best of pretzels and donuts, all rolled into one! I'm kind of surprised the Americans didn't think of this one first...

Aaaand...if you're wondering if a Nutella-filled beignet is a good idea, just look at how many were left by the time we got there:

S. tries on some traditional Alsatian garb...well, sort of...

~

Oh hey, it's me in my 10euro hat, checking out vintage cameras at a flea market! [Photo cred. to Miss S.]

Now, my story gets interesting...all of CUPA had reservations for dinner at a highly-recommended restaurant, Au Tire-Bouchon:

Pleasant enough interior, and there was both red and white wine on every table. Our large group was scattered amongst several tables throughout the restaurant, and S. and I just happened to sit with the directrice of our program!

As we were a group of about forty, we had ordered our food beforehand through CUPA. Since there's usually only one vegetarian option on the list, my decisions were quite easy! The first course (for me) was a lovely and typically-French plate of crudités: carrottes rapées (grated carrot salad), beet salad, and celeri remoulade (celery root grated in a creamy mayonnaise-y sauce). Delicious and refreshing.

All I knew about my next course was that it was supposed to be some sort of "assiette de légumes" (vegetable plate) - that's what I had selected from the group menu. But what I got was this:

A tureen (there's never been a more appropriate occasion to use that word) of bibeleskaas (the Alsatian version of fromage blanc - literally "white cheese," is the yogurt-like substance lacking yogurt's bacteria cultures that French eat either savory or sweet), garnished with raw onions, AND an almost-empty plate with four little mounds of parsley, chopped onions, chives, and minced garlic.

WHAT!?

Everyone at my table stared at this strange offering and wondered what I should do with it. Was something else still coming? Was I supposed to add the toppings to the bibeleskaas, or mix them on the plate?

In my head, I was also wondering, Will I be able to digest that amount of un-cultured dairy product without extreme discomfort?

Madame la directrice stopped a passing waiter to ask for an explanation for my bizarre dishes. The waiter assured us that some sautéed potatoes were coming.

While I wasn't exactly keen on the thought of eating simple carbohydrates with a mound of dairy that would surely upset my intestines, I was willing to do it for the sake of the cultural experience...

And so we waited...and waited...and waited.

Finally, it became clear that the kitchen had forgotten about my sautéed potatoes; so I seized the opportunity to order an omelette. This beauty arrived:

A+ for presentation, no?

A lovely omelet aux herbes fines, garnished with purple basil and flanked by some sautéed carrot ribbons in butter.

I thus ended the evening as the very happy envy of every CUPA vegetarian.

~

Four of us spent the later part of the evening at L'Academie des Bières, where we sampled four varieties in 50cl glasses, and enjoyed the cozy pub atmosphere - what more could one want?

How to make a happy hippie in Paris

How do you make a hippie happy in Paris? Just send him/her to Naturalia, Paris's own chain of health food stores! Each store has the feel of a small independent health food store (like Rising Tide, the co-op my mom shopped at when I was a little kid on Long Island - also the site of my infamous "chocolate versus strawberry soy ice cream bar" indecision tantrum), but there are enough of them scattered throughout the city, so you really don't have to go out of your way to find one. For example, there's one right near my apartment, and one right near the CUPA program office!

I visited the latter the other day and picked up some grapefruit eucalyptus bubble bath (since I only have a bathtub here - no shower!), a jar of organic coconut oil (which I use as body lotion - nature's moisturizer, sans chemicals!), and a container of calcium-fortified oat milk (recommended to me by a friend in the States; I found it deliciously nutty and comforting). I was pleasantly surprised at the store to see everything in one would expect from a natural foods store in the States, plus a selection freshly-baked breads - including whole wheat, 5 grain, and even quinoa bread!

Supermarket Gazpacho...

...is actually good stuff.

Market Day in Fianar!

While you can’t walk 15 feet without running into something being sold on the street here, Tuesdays and Fridays are the big market days in Fianarantsoa. Ambinina, a Malagasy sociology student and intern at Ny Tanintsika, had offered to accompany us to this Friday’s market to help us and prevent us from getting ripped off or just generally confused. Prices are not listed, and the people selling produce often don’t speak much French and sometimes give prices in francs, which haven’t been in use since 2003, when the ariary was adopted [for reference, it’s about 1,800 ariary to the dollar, so as Americans we feel like big spenders here!]. Ambinina explained that to get the price in ariary you have to divide by 5; for example, something that costs 5,000 francs is really 1,000 ariary. And yet sometimes when you ask for a price, vendors will give you an outrageous number, assuming you know they’re talking about francs and not ariary! This explains a lot of our confusion at Tuesday’s market, before we had this information!
Friday was foggy and overcast, with intermittent drizzles; this may be the “dry season” in Madagascar, but it’s still wet and cold! I wore a sweatshirt AND a fleece jacket, along with jeans and my boyfriend’s winter socks. Not exactly your mental image of a perfect market day!
We climbed the hill, past the extensive area where secondhand clothes are sold on the street, to the top where produce and other foods are sold. Things familiar: tomatoes (1,200 ariary/kilo), lettuce, eggplant (1,600 ariary/kilo), zucchini, carrots (big fat orange ones, stalks still attached), green beans (haricots verts!), onions (2,000 ariary/kilo), garlic, potatoes, oranges (actually quite yellow), lemons (citron, very round and small), tangerines (1,000 ariary/kilo), herbs (rosemary and thyme), eggs (320 ariary/each). Things less familiar: live turkeys, ducks, and chickens lined up in neat rows right on the walkway, you’d think they’d peck at your ankles, their legs tied together with rope; cuts of meat hanging unrefrigerated and uncovered, flies buzzing around; ground manioc leaf (mounds of green paste; Ambinina said Malagasies eat it with pork); mysterious-looking root vegetables; dark wild honey sold out of old plastic Coca-cola bottles; tall piles of shrimp sitting out unchilled. And best of all: what I thought were little brown crayfish…which turned out to be grasshoppers! Ambinina said that this year there had been an infestation of them in one part of the country, but no matter – Malagasies eat them! This was especially funny to me, having just read a New York Times article that morning about how a massive grasshopper invasion in the US Midwest had called for one of the largest assemblies of insecticide-spraying planes to be deployed (see article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/10grasshopper.html?scp=1&sq=grasshoppers&st=cse). Now if only Americans would eat grasshoppers, this wouldn’t be a problem: no one would go hungry, AND we could spare the already-compromised environment the extra pesticides! It was one of those clear Western-world-versus-developing-world moments for me: when life gives Americans grasshoppers, they bring out the big guns, but when life gives Malagasies grasshoppers, they make snacks!
In addition to produce, we also decided to buy that other staple of the Malagasy diet (besides rice): beans. We found a man chatting on his cell phone selling them out of sacks: white beans, red beans, peanuts. Things like rice and beans bought at the open market and coconut oil (which is sold out of giant vats, used for cooking and for haircare) are bought with the Malagasy unit of measure called the kapoka. It’s a little metal cup that looks a lot like a tin can peeled of its label. We bought two kapoka of marbled red beans for 500 ariary/kapoka [see picture].
As we walked home, bags full of produce, we passed more people selling fruit and vegetables along the road, Francesca (who is Haitian) got really excited: one woman was selling not bananas, but plantains! That night we had an almost-authentic (Francesca wasn’t fully satisfied with the rice and beans, although I had no complaints!) Haitian dinner of rice and red beans and fried plantains. Yum!