Cooking like a local: Leek soup, Croziflette and ground hog

 

If you want to look French, forget the beret and stripped shirt. Instead carry around a basket with a couple of leeks poking out the top. This time of year, THAT is French! So, when I walked home from the store with leeks poking out of my bag, I felt so legit!

This week was a leek soup kind of a week. I got some sort of lovely eye infection-sore throat combo, Pierce was welcoming in two shiny new k-9’s (making him wake up every day at 4 am) and Benjin seriously injured his back so that he had to remain horizontal. So, it felt good to soothe our sorrows with warm, creamy leek soup...plus, it was nice to be able to tell Gideon honestly that there were no onions in it… (just leeks…haha).

The week wasn’t all bad. It started off warm enough for me to take Pierce on a trip to the zoo while Gideon was in school. The zoo has been closed for the past month for maintenance and a good amount of maintenance was still going on while we were there. This included a team of men from Portugal who were polishing the sea lion’s aquarium. One of them adored Pierce and stopped to chat with us. He told us how much he missed having kids that little and then explained about how he was in France for this polishing job, but normally he worked on restoring antiques. He talked about how cool it was to see the other members of his team scuba dive to clean the inside of the tank and how sometimes they left the animals in while they were polishing. It was so fun to get the inside scoop on a job that I had never thought about: aquarium polishing… what a neat profession!

In addition to chatting with the kind Portuguese tank cleaner, Pierce was very enamored by the Llamas which he kept insisting were “goats” and the penguins which were right up by the glass and just Pierce’s size. It was adorable! That evening I went for a parent-teacher conference at Gideon’s school and got to hear his teacher’s perspective on how Gideon is doing. It was so nice to hear how well she knows Gideon and how she sees how hard he is trying. From there we met up with Benjin to go buy crèche pieces from a store downtown before the big winter sale ended and to do one of the walks from my book. Unfortunately, coming out of the metro Benjin picked up Pierce and SNAP! he had killer pain in his back. He tried to walk it off and we still got to see the Abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Prés (an old Abbey started in the 500’s) and buy our crèche pieces, but by the time we stopped at Pierre Herme for a patisserie treat to celebrate the good report of Gideon’s teacher, Benjin’s back had really had it. We hobbled home, but from then on out he had to lay flat.

On Wednesday I took the boys to the library mostly to get out of the house so that Benjin could rest. Pierce loves going to the library because it is one of the few places closes enough that I will let him walk the whole way. In the afternoon, I took the boys on the metro to the Menagerie (at Jardin des Plants). The animals were all super active especially these crazy parrots who were putting on a total show doing flips on the roof of their cage.

Friday was Ground Hogs Day (which I appreciate most people don’t care about), but my family has a tradition of making a jello ground hog and slapping it with spoons before we eat it. So, this year I tried to make one, but I couldn't find any flavored jello. So, I bought what they had (which was unflavored gelatin in thin sheets) and tried to flavor it with juice, but I must have messed up the ratio because it never set up. So, instead we went with our back up plan and had our first ever groundhog flan!

By Saturday Benjin was feeling well enough that he wanted to brave an outing. So, we rode the bus to the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. There was a pretty big renovation project going on, but it was still beautiful. It is a park that has been around for at least 150 years and has really cool rock outcroppings due to the fact that it was built in an old rock quarry. It was fun to explore and let the boys run wild. 

A few other highlights from the week include experiencing disgruntled French citizens in action when we showed up at Gideon's school to be welcomed by banners and petitions. Apparently they are closing down some of the classes next year and upping the number of kids in each class. The parents were not happy. And lastly, we have been wanting to learn how to make Croziflette for a while. So, this week we gave it a try and the number one thing we learned is that it takes a whole lot of cheese! My favorite part Croziflette is that the little chopped up noodles you use for it are called "Crozets" and I grew up in a tiny town in Virginia called "Crozet!" Eating it gave me a little boost of small town pride!! 

This week we are grateful for healthy backs, good school teachers, goats, crozet noodles, early springs and of course leeks!

Bisous!

La Famille Facer