Bunnies for sale. Skinless, bone in.

This is not something you would see in the United States. This huge sign was on the main square in Hyeres for several days featured a dead rabbit. The word France is strategically placed over its head but you can see it's once fuzzy little body there in its entirety. Hence the word entier.

Architecture in Hyeres.

The old town, built in the god-knows-whens, is very fortress like. Small streets, thick thick walls, lots of stone, tiny windows. As the city grew, the architecture changed. The styles get more and more modern in rings around the old fortified city. The top picture is a residence a few block outside the old walls. The bottom picture is a relatively new structure built to match the part of the city it's in. It is lovely and I never realized that it was new until Loralyn pointed it out to me. 

Ratatouille.

Assemble the ingredients.

Remove skin from peppers and tomatoes. The process of charring the skins off the peppers was not as easy as you'd imagine.

Girolles fried in butter. I could say saute but, well, really, they're fried. They're delicious.

Drain everything. Not sure why, it's a rule. But I added the juice to the sauce anyway.

Caramelize the tomato paste and add red wine once that's done.

Add tomato sauce or in this case crushed tomatoes. Not something we have in the US, at least not this product which tasted like ripe raw tomatoes.

Et voila. Ratatouille.

August 25 to September 25, 2010

I had to fly to Cincinnati to catch my flight to Paris. 

The flight from Chicago to Cincinnati was remarkable in as much as I was able to listen to the history of the education of the daughter of the woman across the aisle from me for the entire flight. She was only getting to 4th grade when we landed but what a fascinating adventure! It started in pre-school with Mrs Carthy. I know it was Mrs Carthy because she repeated it about 40 times. She told the story of the sparkling, lovely, creative, talented daughter with ADHD, or maybe she said HGTV, but I do know that every time she referred to her daughter she said, "my delightful, adorable, smart daughter with HGTV." As it turns out this same daughter is also hyperkinetic and apparently never stops talking or moving. This came as no shock to me because her mother also was unable to stop talking. But we hit a glitch in 3rd grade, which is why we were only in 4th when we finally landed. In 3rd grade, the teacher of this amazing, thrilling, genius (and we know that Jesus gives us all genius capabilities we just have to uncover them because she explained that in detail to the poor woman she was talking to) daughter's new teacher felt that the children should adjust to her teaching style rather than the other way around. Can you imagine? I recall when Sr Quinta adjusted to my learning style. It involved a metal ruler.

Just about this time I started weaving a rope out of my socks and looking for something strong enough to hold my weight. 

Right now I am in the Delta Skymiles lounge which is sort of a waste of time since it is 4 miles from my gate and it's too early to drink and it's filled with people, most of whom are on the phone talking really loudly and there are a lot of children behaving as one might expect children to behave in the presence of free cookies and coca cola. Gasbag on his phone next to me is "looking to implement fillers for management monitoring systems for the check piece of the cycle so it becomes a system of continuous improvement, does that make sense? Well to be quite honest with you . . . where are my goddam socks when I need them?

I just repeated some idiotic thing he said (You're going to have the opportunity to define asset management under the umbrella) a little too loudly and in a silly voice and he looked at me. I think I'll go sit at the gate.

The thing is

Foued's anger was misplaced. He was ruining his own life by taking it out on the one person who took care of him. He not only lost his job, Jean-Yves gave him a room in which to live, got him a bank account and forced him to manage his money and treated him like family. Now that was gone. Foued was homeless, illegal, apparently, and jobless. And it was all my fault.

So I made the decision.

I stopped the project. I liked the walls the way they were. I didn't want the beams to be painted. I liked the crumbling plaster ceiling (this, in retrospect was a mistake) and I told them to leave the walls. The contractor was very gracious. The workers I am am sure thought I was nuts. I am sort of. But what I didn't realize, couldn't realize was that Foued would be out of a job. Not permanently since there was work waiting for him but this job was over. He had been promised, say, 500 euros for the work and he was only going to get 50. He could not understand this. He had been promised 500. He was furious. Oddly, not with me but with the contractor. He took a hammer and began to chop out the wall he had completed. He was forcibly restrained and ejected from the apartment. Not while I was there thank God. In fact, I had no idea this had happened. I was out quaffing beers with Loralyn who was neglecting her children.


But Foued was furious. He stalked the contractor and spit in his wife's face. He came to my door and harangued me in French I could not understand, spitting (accidently) through his braces as he passionately told me a story I did not comprehend. He began to stalk me in the small town. Sitting in a bistro to have a beer was frightening for me. Walking down the small unfamiliar streets at night was horrifying. Everything echoes, there are not a lot of lights. 

Walls I like.

I walked back to my new apartment. Foued was busy finishing the wall without the stones. He immediately explained to me that we had to chisel out that old concrete and replace it. Ca fait moche - that's ugly. My French isn't that good, and neither is his. I listened, he repeated, he is patient. I want to understand. I think, OK, maybe he's right, though I don't like the idea of painting the old puitres, the beams, blue. That about makes me nuts. I mean no disrespect, to him or to Pavel. But I know what I like and what they are saying is not it. I ask if I might take some time to think about it. This is difficult for them because the meter is ticking. They have other work to do and this job can't wait for a lot of contemplation. I have the weekend. Later I decide not to re-do any of it. Pavel is gracious and he is after all French (though really he is Polish and I cannot understand him either). He doesn't care. Foued thinks I'm nuts.