Jack Daniels and some other thoughts...

right outside our door...

IT'S NOT SCOTCH

IT'S NOT BOURBON

IT'S JACK

with a french translation appropriately placed in the lower left as well as describing what makes JD's so special...(the charcoal filtration method)

france has beautiful tomatos! ben and i can't get over it everytime we go to the store...even better than italy's, which we don't understand, since it's not like they'd have to travel very far to be beautiful there, too.

...bananas are expensive here...you know how they're like the cheapest fruit ever in the states? here, it's not unusual for them to be 2+ euros a kilo, which is like 1 euro a pound...so over $1.30/lb! but what do i know, with food prices rising, maybe they're no longer the 40-50cents/lb like i remember...

...the strawberries smell like candy, they are so sweet. and expensive, too...

...they really do eat baguettes all the time...we get one almost every night between the 4 of us and sometimes one is not enough...

...we make our coffee with a french press, and laurent (roomie) thought it was only for tea...we thought that was interesting...and it's not called a french press here, it's a "cafetière à piston..."

why does everything revolve around food?

(vegetarians-please skip this next section)

...we truely love foie gras, but ben's not real big on pâté....the difference, you may ask? foie gras is literally "fatty liver" made from force feeding usually geese or duck. when it's cooked up in a pan and served with meats ie steak, it's mouth-wateringly delicious. Pâté is a spread of finely chopped meat and fat-sometimes foie gras, sometimes other weird animal parts...tempting, i know, but ben prefers to raise his cholesteral other ways...

...we don't know why but fries really are better here!

...europeans don't seem to drink much water...probably cuz it's so dang hard to find a free, functioning bathroom...

...we eat late here...8pm at the earliest...we usually have to eat a late lunch or have a snack to make it that long! just adapting to the culture...

...anyways! life is great and i'm enjoying this go-round in france even more than last time thanks to my incredible, wonderful, loving husband and best friend.