Happy Birthday, Sabine!

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I can’t believe how the days are flying by here…and how quickly the Holidays are sneaking up! So, for all my die-hard readers out there (and I know there are oh-so-many of you), here’s this weeks installment of new adventures from my Pyrenees home.

Tuesday night meant the much welcome return of Christine’s parents. Mamie and Papi, as the girls call them, are so sweet and adorable. I feel like I inherited a third set of grandparents with the family. We had boudin blanc for dinner, which is a poultry based sausage, with caramelized apples and endives. For dessert, Christine made an amazing cake that she insisted was “rate”, or a failure. It was ground up almonds and phyllo pastry and vanilla custard, but since it didn’t look like the picture in Elle magazine, it’s apparently not a keeper. However, we sure didn’t leave any of it sitting around, either.

I got up fairly early on Wednesday, my day off, to begin the nearly all-day process of making American Christmas Cookies for my kids at Clermont. I was making Chocolate Snowflakes, those puffy things you roll in powdered sugar so that they crack and the chocolate shows through. Extremely yummy and extremely messy to make. I made the dough in the morning so that it could chill the required 3 hours, and then started baking my 120 required cookies in the afternoon. So, with powdered sugar flying everywhere and random chocolate smears decorating my ensemble, I turned out those little disks of Americana with nary a grumble….ok, maybe a few. They all turned out well though, and Elsa declared them “super bon”, so I can’t ask for much more approval. She wants her mom to make them for Christmas. I was also competing all day with the head splitting noise of the plumber who came to work on the studio. Really all that’s left now is the furniture…I can’t wait!

Wednesday night was another “Assistant Dinner” chez Helen. I made a Gouda and mushroom chowder that was very good, if I do say so myself. So good, in fact, that Georg declared me “marry-able” for my cooking aptitude. You can tell we’re all becoming French, because we each brought a loaf of bread to the dinner. After we ate, Helen and Reiko and I got to talking about how fetching Johnny Depp looks with eyeliner, and Helen decided to see how it would look on Georg. The final result was very rock star, and if that didn’t give us enough to tease him about, the fact that he told us that in German, gloves literally translates to “hand shoes” certainly made up the difference! Helen also played us a charming assortment of Christmas music that topped the charts in England but apparently never crossed the pond. She said the part in Love Actually about the number one Christmas song is genuine.

Thursday, I found myself wondering if my kids at Clermont could possible be any cuter or sweeter. I think the answer is no. The absolutely loved the cookies I made them, which made me happy. With my 6emes, I talked about the American flag. The French aren’t nearly as attached to their flag as we are to ours, so the idea of having one in every classroom and a Pledge of Allegiance was very strange to them. They also had a hard time swallowing the idea that you’re supposed to ceremoniously burn a flag that touches the ground. With my 4emes, I did my comic book lesson, and just like last week I was pleasantly surprised by the creative things they came up with.

This was the last time before break I was going to see my 3emes, because they’re doing a “stage”, or internship, next week. We talked about the Holidays and how they’re celebrated differently in France and the US. Here, the traditional Christmas menu includes foie gras, oysters, champagne, and a “buche de noel” for dessert. The buche is a cake in the form of a jellyroll. Traditionally, it’s chocolate and cream, but you can find all kinds of other flavors as well. The French don’t really have Christmas songs, and they don’t usually leave cookies for Santa, either. However, crèches and manger scenes are much bigger here than in the US. People buy “santons”, which are the little figures, to decorate their homes.

Since Christmas songs are kind of a novelty for French kids, I gave them a sheet with the words to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, “Jingle Bells,” and “Rudolph”. To teach them the tune, I sang a line, and then we sang it together. After I sang the first line of “Santa Claus”, the entire room burst out into applause, and my students started telling me “Mais vous chantez vachement bien, Kathryn!” (You sing really well). I blushed a lot, but it was so sweet of them. When we finished, Thomas asked me if I would sing again, so I sang “O Holy Night” for them, since it’s my favorite Christmas song. What I didn’t know was that Thomas was recording it on his cell phone…goodness only knows what he’ll do with that. Still, it was soo sweet and adorable that they seemed to enjoy the songs. They told me I should go on “Star Academy”, which is the French equivalent of American Idol. Mathieu asked me if I was staying at the Canterot’s house for Christmas, and I told them I was going home, to which they responded “but you’re coming back, right?” I was trying to hold back tears after that one.

My lunch break Thursday turned out to be extremely interesting as well. Being the efficient multi-tasking dynamo that I am, I tried to finish up some Christmas shopping while I was out. I walked into a little store near the chateau and met Philip, a little old man who was determined to be my new best friend. When he found out I was from the states, he went on and on about how he’d been there in 1997 and how much he loved the West because of “Lucky Luke”, which is a French comic strip with a cowboy. He also told me all about his life in Pau, and how his mother now lived in the house of a famous Palois sculpture. As I was leaving, he gave me a postcard as a “souvenir to remember him by”, and said he hoped he’d see me again soon.

Friday night, I helped Patrick decorate the Christmas tree. As you can see, it’s rather large, but also artificial. However, for the year 2000, Patrick said they had a real tree that reached all the way to the ceiling. Friday night at dinner, the whole family finally got to meet Phillip, Sabine’s boyfriend that she met in the US this summer. He’s swiss-german, and he doesn’t speak much French. She doesn’t speak any German, so we’ve been speaking a lot of English around the house this weekend. He came from Switzerland for her birthday, and is staying til Tuesday. While we were decorating the tree, we listened to a traditional Basque choir. The songs are haunting and beautiful, and they had a little 13-year-old girl with a voice like an angel who sang with them.

Saturday was the big day….Sabine’s 20th birthday. I got up in the morning and started baking her birthday cake…a cinnamon crumb coffee cake that I hope lived up to the Starbucks expectations she had. The kitchen was a whirl of activity as Christine prepared canneles de Bordeaux and macarons, and Laurence made molleux au chocolat, all for the party that night. Canneles are made from a crepe-like batter with vanilla and rum, and then poured into special little molds. They’re chewy outside and custardy inside. Macarons are made of ground almonds. In the north, they have a crème filling, but in the southwest, they’re plain. Molleux au chocolat are little chocolate cakes with a liquidy chocolate center. Around 1:30, we had an aperitif of champagne by the fireplace and gave Sabine her presents. I’d gotten her a necklace, Elsa gave her a drawing of Bacci, but I think her most exciting gift was probably the new MacBook that her parents got her. Lunch was truly a southwest affair. It started off with foie gras and toast, and then we had roasted duck with caramelized figs and pasta brought straight from Italy. For dessert, there was my coffee cake, which turned out pretty well, although it was hard to get the candles to stay upright in the crumb topping, as you can see from the pictures.

Around 7 o’clock, preparations began in earnest for the party. And as you all know, if there’s one thing I absolutely love, it’s party preparations. So, I helped to put together smoked salmon blinis, stuff quail’s eggs, cut carrots, and set out glasses. I had no idea what to wear, so I asked Laurence, the fashionista of the family, to lend me a hand. Around 9 o’clock, the guests started arriving, and Christine, Patrick, and “les petites” left for dinner at a restaurant. So, with Jurancon and Bordeaux flowing around the table, and a flurry of “bisous” in all directions, we celebrated Sabine’s 20 years. Most of the people who came were friends of hers from high school. Everyone was very nice, and asked me lots of questions about what I thought of the University strikes, President Bush, the French culture, and the differences in pronunciation between “sheep” and “ship”. Bastian and his brother Arnaud came, and of course brought their appetites. Patrick had ordered a pate shaped like a duck, and Bastian was proud to say that he’s managed to eat “from the tail to the thighs.” The party went until 2 in the morning, when everyone left with another round of kisses. There were of course a ton of leftovers, but Charlene said not to worry…. we’d just invite Bastian over the next day.

So there you have it…I’m coming home in 6 days, and then I’ll be able to talk your ear off in person about my French holiday season. I can feel your excitement from clear across the ocean.

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Photos

Georg gets beautified
Helen puts her make-up artist skills to work

Le Sapin
The house is all decked out for Noel. Bacci keeps climbing in the tree

Happy Birthday, Sabine!
Opening presents

The Candle Fiasco
Crumb topping and b-day candles apparently don't mix

Joyeux Anniversaire
We all sang and Sabine blew out the candles that survived the transport to the table

Charlene and Me
Laurence dressed us both for the evening.

Sabine and Phillip
The birthday girl and her beau.

Comments

[gima]

oh that all sounds like too much fun! i loved the part about your singing to the class. the futons would be proud! also, my frist thought when you started talking about English Christmas songs was the Billy Mack hit in Love, Actually, and then you mentioned that... too funny! miss you and love you!