Afterwards, I had a lovely French lunch in St. Germain (the best quiche lorraine I've ever had, but I was also cold and it was hot). Then Olivia and I headed out towards St. Germaine to walk around and try to find one of the famous (Laduree) macaron places, but we were sidetracked by a giant parade-style protest! We couldn't tell what they were mad about or trying to change, but their posters proclaimed that they were vegan...very angry vegans...so our walk was basically just trying to avoid them. We ended up at Pierre Herme, a different famous macaron place (famous for weird flavors, like fois gras!) I got three flavors: salted caramel, rose and raspberry, and creme brulee (vanilla and caramel). Rose was my favorite. It was lovely eating them on the steps of the Saint Sulpice* in the last of the day's sunlight. The fountain is frozen over, and there were kids climbing onto it and slipping around...it was lovely.
Then, Olivia and I went back to her homestay (her family is just lovely!) and decided to make soup for dinner (the kids and her friend from Cooper Union were joining us). We decided on Butternut squash soup, because that sounded warm and delicious, and also because she SWORE by this apple and squash soup recipe from MarthaStewart.com (hm). I carefully google translated all of the different vegetables and spices we would need, and we headed to the local Monoprix. The weird thing was, there was squash and it had the same name as what I had written down, but it wasn't butternut. We went for it anyway, but we had to go to another market for onions (where of course, they had butternut squash!). Also, halfway through cooking we realized 1) we had a lot more ingredients than the recipe called for and 2) we had a lot more people coming than we expected, so we decided to forgo proportions and just mix up everything we purchased, putting spices in last.
Remind me not to do that again.
Not that it was bad, it just tasted like water when we tried it! I had to tell Olivia that we didn't even have ANY salt in this whole VAT of soup, so we'd need a ton, but she was upset that it didn't taste butternutty. It turns out, there was actually a different recipe she followed before, so that's why it tasted different (besides the whole mystery squash ordeal). We experimented a bit and added more things as we immersion-blended, and finally after a good dose of (homemade from the tree!) olive oil and creme fraiche, it tasted great! Soup + some salad + a teensy bit of veal +oranges with cinnamon sprinkled on top = a fantastic (healthy) dinner! The kids were teenagers and really nice too.
The next day, the three of us went to the Musee D'Orsay just for about an hour, and I got to see the simply amazing collection of Toulouse-Lautrec work. His drawings are just so cool--and is it bad that I want all of the can-can dancers outfits? There were also the REALLY cool diorama things? You look through a small window into these impossibly intricate little worlds, forests and shipping ports and more abstract things. Really incredible. Then a glass of wine in the 6th at a place called La Palette, which had these funny old mirrors, 1920s style mosaics, and then oil paintings all over. Fun weekend!
*Have I mentioned how much I love the Saint Sulpice? So much! My embarrassing admission is that I just started reading the Da Vinci Code again, even though one of my professors just bashed it for being so geographically (and historically, I assume) incorrect. It takes place in the church! But I am too ashamed to carry it around.
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