The Honeymoon, 1998

I need to explain. This post is an excerpt from a little thing I worked on a couple of years ago. I was trying to put together a memoir, a memento of our marriage and France and how the two go together. We had just moved to France when I started this project, an adjunct of my blog that you've all been so kind and generous to share with me over these four years.

 

Lately things have been changing, shifting, and I have been trying to keep up. I continue to spend my time surrounded by words, dreaming up stories and making friends out of thin air; contemplating, reading, piecing bits together and searching, searching, turning the thing around and upside down, looking for the perfect combination. But things happen, time passes. It is important to revisit the past, to read those old words and ideas, to conjure the newness that must be left behind in order to move forward. 

Thank you for indulging me. Back we go...

The Honeymoon

Marriage is one of those things I’d never seen done well. Maybe you’re like me and you haven’t really either. Or then again, maybe you’re one of those lucky people that I pray my children are among who grew up with married love all around you, so thick and rich, such a part of you you never even noticed. 

You can’t really see marriage done well in popular culture. They usually stop at the marriage part leaving us to believe that love, real love, the kind that can only be built through years of give and take, excavation and discovery, trial and error and the shared making of a life, is supposed to magically just happen after we’ve seen the credits roll or read ‘The End’. 

I confess in all honesty that while I loved Paul when I said yes, I will marry you, and I loved him when I nearly bounded down the Texas hill country aisle to him with a smile plastered a mile wide on my face and a feeling of true bliss and wonder at what we were doing, I wasn’t really ‘in love’ with him until we’d spent some time together as a married couple. A done deal.

And so when I say that we fell in love on our honeymoon, it is true. We are still falling in love, on the good days of this marriage, over fifteen years later. Falling in love is all of the parts that come after. And it’s the crux of our French story too. The honeymoon is never over. 

We arrived on a Sunday afternoon, numb from exhaustion, husband and wife for less than 36 hours. Our luggage bumped through the empty streets of Meyrargues; the flutter of a lace curtain, a baby’s cry and the deafening scratch of cicadas our only greeting. I looked over at my new husband and wondered, ‘What in all hell have I done?’

Shutters were drawn, the village locked up tight. A depressingly gray multi-window apartment block at the edge of the village stared blankly. Nothing moved except for a clutch of adolescent boys wheeling around on bikes. One with a scooter zipped around the younger ones, the mosquito whine serrating the quiet of the sleeping Sunday village.

Now I know why. Nothing happens on Sunday afternoons in tiny southern French villages. People repose after a long lunch. Life quietly plays out behind shuttered windows and doors. You are seriously SOL if you happen to arrive in a tiny, French village like say, Meryrargues, jet-lagged, overwhelmed, newly married, over-packed and starving as I did on the first real day of my marriage. It did not bode well. 

I can see her, my 26 year-old self, wrestling with that overstuffed suitcase with no fancy wheels or swivel pull handle through that dreary napping village. I want to tell her of the story that will follow. I want to tell her it will be fine.

More than fine, you’ll see. You’ll end up falling even more in love. Not just with Paul, but with a country and its way of life. Its food. You will become one of the people who wouldn’t dream of going out on a Sunday afternoon. Who might even flick the lace curtains to see who it could be passing by, out and about at this hour, and on a Sunday? Eating will become your favorite past time. Reposing behind shutters closed to the afternoon, your favorite time of day.

You will be utterly besotted.

Don’t worry, I want to tell her. It will all be more than okay.

(to be continued...)

The Honeymoon, 1998

I need to explain. This post is an excerpt from a little thing I worked on a couple of years ago. I was trying to put together a memoir, a memento of our marriage and France and how the two go together. We had just moved to France when I started this project, an adjunct of my blog that you've all been so kind and generous to share with me over these four years.

 

Lately things have been changing, shifting, and I have been trying to keep up. I continue to spend my time surrounded by words, dreaming up stories and making friends out of thin air; contemplating, reading, piecing bits together and searching, searching, turning the thing around and upside down in search of the perfect combination. But things happen, time passes. And it is important to revisit the past, to read those old words and ideas, to conjure the newness that must be left behind in order to move forward. 

Thank you for indulging me. Back we go...

The Honeymoon

Marriage is one of those things I’d never seen done well. Maybe you’re like me and you haven’t really either. Or then again, maybe you’re one of those lucky people that I pray my children are among who grew up with married love all around you, so thick and rich, such a part of you you never even noticed. 

You can’t really see marriage done well in popular culture. They usually stop at the marriage part leaving us to believe that love, real love, the kind that can only be built through years of give and take, excavation and discovery, trial and error and the shared making of a life, is supposed to magically just happen after we’ve seen the credits roll or read ‘The End’. 

I confess in all honesty that while I loved Paul when I said yes, I will marry you, and I loved him when I nearly bounded down the Texas hill country aisle to him with a smile plastered a mile wide on my face and a feeling of true bliss and wonder at what we were doing, I wasn’t really ‘in love’ with him until we’d spent some time together as a married couple. A done deal.

And so when I say that we fell in love on our honeymoon, it is true. We are still falling in love, on the good days of this marriage, over fifteen years later. Falling in love is all of the parts that come after. And it’s the crux of our French story too. The honeymoon is never over. 

We arrived on a Sunday afternoon, numb from exhaustion, husband and wife for less than 36 hours. Our luggage bumped through the empty streets of Meyrargues; the flutter of a lace curtain, a baby’s cry and the deafening scratch of cicadas our only greeting. I looked over at my new husband and wondered, ‘What in all hell have I done?’

Shutters were drawn, the village locked up tight. A depressingly gray multi-window apartment block at the edge of the village stared blankly. Nothing moved except for a clutch of adolescent boys wheeling around on bikes. One with a scooter zipped around the younger ones, the mosquito whine serrating the quiet of the sleeping Sunday village.

Now I know why. Nothing happens on Sunday afternoons in tiny southern French villages. People repose after a long lunch. Life quietly plays out behind shuttered windows and doors. You are seriously SOL if you happen to arrive in a tiny, French village like say, Meryrargues, jet-lagged, overwhelmed, newly married, over-packed and starving as I did on the first real day of my marriage. It did not bode well. 

I can see her, my 26 year-old self, wrestling with that overstuffed suitcase with no fancy wheels or swivel pull handle through that dreary napping village. I want to tell her of the story that will follow. I want to tell her it will be fine.

More than fine, you’ll see. You’ll end up falling even more in love. Not just with Paul, but with a country and its way of life. Its food. You will become one of the people who wouldn’t dream of going out on a Sunday afternoon. Who might even flick the lace curtains to see who it could be passing by, out and about at this hour, and on a Sunday? Eating will become your favorite past time. Reposing behind shutters closed to the afternoon, your favorite time of day.

You will be utterly besotted.

Don’t worry, I want to tell her. It will all be more than okay.

(to be continued...)

Simple Sunday Lunch

Our lovely French friends, Les Bons Amis, came for lunch last Sunday. We always have a wonderful time with them, speaking Franglish that gets louder and louder and louder...

When we first moved here, I would fret. I worried over the menu, what to cook for a bona fide French couple who love to entertain and always pull off a long Sunday lunch with aplomb. The first time we had them over, about three years ago now!, I made hamburgers. It was a very messy, very American affair with too many sides and not enough flatware for a French family. They really do not eat things with their hands unless they're children or very relaxed and it's a galette or croissant or something stuck with a bamboo skewer for an apéro dinatoire. They certainly would never eat a big old thick and juicy American hamburger with gooey cheese with anything other than a fork and knife. And even then, it wouldn't be pretty. Of course, at McDo, more and more French will pick up a burger and go to town; but someone's house for Sunday lunch is NOT the same as McDo. (Shhh, they love McDonald's.)
 
Another time, I felt compelled to share something from home so I made cheese enchiladas from The Homesick Texan cookbook. (Dang, they're good!) They liked it, but its (mild) spiciness was far different from the cheese dishes they're used to like raclette, aligot, and tartiflette.

I've gotten the hang of it now though. Last week I crafted a menu that pleased both me and my French friends very much. I followed the rules of nibbly apéro, simple starter, main with a starch and one green side, salad, cheese, and then dessert. Of course there was champagne for the apéro, white wine with the starter, red with the main and then coffee after dessert.

We talked so long and the children played so well that we indulged in a second dessert of the seasonal galette des rois or king's cake. The traditional galette is a flaky pastry concoction filled with almond paste and baked until golden and puffed. The baker inserts a small figurine called a fève into the uncooked cake and the person that gets it (hopefully without biting into porcelain or plastic) is the king or queen. He or she gets to wear the golden paper crown that comes with every galette des rois around. The grocery store has a section during this season devoted entirely to galette. You can buy them in various forms: filled with apples, made with brioche dough instead of puff pastry, dotted with crystallized toothsome bits of sugar, studded with candied fruit, or filled with the delicious frangipane or almond paste. They are all delicious. I know this because this January we've tried one of each. For our Sunday lunch, we bought one from our favorite bakery along with four of their delicious and perfectly crusty, doughy baguettes called Petrisane. The Middlest's best friend, Petit Ami, found the fève and proudly donned the golden paper crown, proclaiming Ma Fille to be his queen.

{Galette des Rois, source}

If you'd like to have a nice, long Sunday lunch, you can't go wrong with this menu. Try it out on your friends, French or not, and enjoy the compliments. It should be duly noted that Ma Fille made the Raspberry Mousse entirely on her own and it was so delicious that Mme. Bonne Amie requested the recette.

Simple Sunday Lunch Menu, January

Apéro of crispy potato chips, dried fruit, and nuts, accompanied with proper fizzy Champagne
White Bean and Rosemary Soup
Herb-Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Potato Gratin and French Green Bean Salad
Green Salad with Dijon Vinaigrette
Three Cheeses: One each of hard, soft, spiced or Bleu
Raspberry Mousse with Whipped Cream
Wait, talk, laugh, repeat....
Galette des Rois

White Bean and Rosemary Soup (Barefoot Contessa)
Herb-Roasted Pork Tenderloin (Barefoot Contessa)
French Green Bean Salad (Jamie Oliver)
Raspberry Mousse, adapted from Blackberry Mousse from Jamie Oliver January issue