These were the panicked words uttered by my host mother tonight as my butter knife hovered tentatively over a wedge of Roquefort. Sensing that I was about to make a grave mistake, she took it upon herself to instruct me in the socially acceptable practices of French cheese-carving. Here is what I have learned.
If you have procured a triangular wedge of cheese from your local fromagerie, you must never commit the cardinal sin of cutting off the point. Rather, in order to maintain the integrity of the original triangle, you must slice elongated pieces from either side. This preserves the aesthetically pleasing aspect of the wedge and simultaneously ensures that a fraction of rind is removed with each subtraction.
If you are dealing with a rectangular cheese chunk, however, you should not assume that you have avoided defacing its shape with a blunt cut. Sectioning off a succession of rectangular pieces may seem harmless, but then one day you will be left with a piece that is almost entirely rind, and then, boy, won't you feel stupid. Best to avoid this whole debacle by cutting pieces at an angle, as well, to gradually do away with the rind in much the same way as the aforementioned triangle wedge method.
I have painstakingly created a comparison-contrast diagram for those of you who are visual learners.
So now you know.
Tonight at dinner I also broached the topic of what everyone in my host family does for a living, which according to Paul is usually very taboo but since I'm uncultured American swine I can get away with it. Dinner tonight was just me and my mom, so I also felt the need to fill awkward silences. Unfortunately none of the answers she gave me were easily comprehensible, and as such I still don't really know where any of them go when they bustle out the front door at 8am. I did manage to understand her explanation that my host dad is no longer employed for money, but is involved in some sort of charity work wherein he mediates on behalf of "the aged." Louise, I have confirmed, is a student of art (which was one of the possible disciplines I assigned her when my host dad told me on the first night that she studied something to do with "plastique"-- plastic surgery? plastics engineering? plastic art? the theory of brain plasticity?). My mom had a hard time describing the nature of the art, but she did say it had something to do with "storyboards and modern technology." ...Okay.
List of First Things of Paris that I did today:
-Consumed first bowl of French onion soup at a cafe. And at a mere $8 per cup, it only ate half my food budget for the week.
-Had my first takeout pizza slice for lunch. Conclusion: much like American pizza except there was much more ham. They really do love the ham.
-Made my first French friend! Kind of. Whilst standing in line for a crepe after Leetal's birthday celebration, a Parisian gal started talking to our group. She was very nice and after some slightly random conversation about winning the lottery and the plot details of the Lindsay Lohan movie Just My Luck, she gave us her phone number and we will (hopefully) be hanging out with her again. Then it was time to part and she gave us all the traditional French cheek-to-cheek air kisses, which was also
-My first "bises" with a French person! Now I truly belong.
We will end with some pictures from Leetal's birthday, wherein everyone else had wine but Evelyn and I had onion soup because we're cool. I was going to delete the second one and spare Evelyn the shame of her facial expression, but she laughed and wanted me to put it up, so I shall.
2 comments:
That soup looks tasty!
I don't see how leaving the whole rind behind is a problem. You don't want to eat it anyway, so when it is left by itself in one large chunk you can just toss it in the trash can. When each slice of cheese contains a small bit of rind, you dread getting to that last bite.
Oh and yes, I agree with Diane, I really want that soup.
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