Gingerbread Man

Want to know what a sack of s#&t looks like? It looks like Benjamin. So he was finally back at work today...that’s like a week and a half. And turns out he wasn’t sick but fell down the stairs or whatever and hurt his knee. Shit, I’ve worked with sprained ankles and after dentist’s appointments and stuff before...I don’t let small things hold me back.

Man he was slooooooow. And he was making mistakes. And pissing Alexandre off which is never a good thing. Like for the poolish he just weighed off the water, yeast and flour together but didn’t mix it. Wtf? And forgot to shape epis at the normal time so they weren’t ready when one usual customer came for them.

Other than that it was a pretty standard day. Oh and baguette with jambon cru and Roquefort ftw. J

I didn’t sleep at all last night. Apart from a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon I didn’t really sleep. I stayed awake talking to Magen. She’s a girl that studied with Nicholas, my brother, and we never really spoke before but since about 2 months ago we started talking every day and now she is just part of my life. I literally stayed up until my alarm went off to get up. And even then I didn’t want to stop talking to her. It’s really amazing when you meet someone that you can have endless conversations with.

I think if it wasn’t for her company, Lyon would’ve made me miserable by now. She makes me more aware of my actions and beliefs and stimulates me intellectually and challenges me constantly. Every day brings us closer and I can’t wait to get to hang out with her in Dec when she is down to visit.

So even though I didn’t sleep, I had a coffee and a croissant with frangipani and just owned today. I was on the oven and was pumping stuff out left and right. Sack of s#&t was slow again, nothing new there. I can see he really pisses Alex off as well...

I made my brioche recipe yesterday and shaped it today so we’ll get to do a taste comparison tomorrow. Now I just want to make ginger beer!!!

Ah and we made gingerbread houses today and started cutting out gingerbread men...the recipe was a nice end product, with Alexandre adding some minced dried orange peel which really lifted the flavour. Although my favourite is still the German lebkuchen.

Nothing beats that...I could eat it until I enter a food coma.

It was really cool to see how the houses got made and I helped put together the chimneys. We used melted isomalt as the glue. It works like sugar but doesn’t crystallise; oh and it burns like sugar too. F*** me I had forgotten what that felt like. So there was a lot of swearing going on...and if you ever watch peoples reaction when there’s sudden pain they always swear in a native language... lately I swear in French but that time I was swearing in English and Afrikaans J even tried teaching Alexandre some words but French people struggle with the hard, guttural sounds..

Anyway, so 60 houses down, now we just need to do 40 more and make the bigger houses. But as for gingerbread men, we cut out about 50...and we need 600. So it’s over 200kg of dough we need to make; that’s a lot of gingerbread men.

Marlene…

Today was pretty chilled, woke up around 10...then lounged around and then got ready to leave just before 12. I walked down to Hotel Deville to meet Marlene as I wanted to show her the falafel place that Pierre and I went to but we couldn’t find it...I had the right address and even double checked on faecesbook ( I did that on purpose ! ) and Google, but there was nothing where it should have been. We walked around for about 15 min before I got extremely irritated with the situation and wanted to kick the shit out of something.

We decided to just go find somewhere else to eat...on walking back I nearly shat myself as someone had a stuffed real/fake white cobra in a warning pose, ready to strike in a window display... I almost jumped into the road both times I walked past. F!@# that thing scared me...I think the only thing that can really dissipate my aggression is fear J

Anyway, we found a restaurant in the place des terreux called “Opus” (place de terreux is where the Bartholdi statue is, the guy that designed the statue of liberty).

Marlene ordered a bottle of Badoit which is the only eau gazeuze (sparkling water) that is available in 1ltr (btw, here as in most of Europe, they use cl [centilitre] as a liquid measurement, 1 cl = 10ml) which was flippen good.  It has a very vine carbonation which gives it a much smoother mouth feel and doesn’t make you feel as bloated as most sparkling waters do.

Marlene ordered tagliatelle au trios fromages (tagliatelle with 3 cheeses) which tasted to me like cream with some chevre...couldn’t really taste any other cheese although she said she could taste some sort of Roquefort sauce. I had the plat du jour which was a chicken thigh and leg roasted in the oven, with a salad and chips (the special was with fuscilli but I didn’t feel like pasta). The chicken was nicely cooked and came with some julienne peppers which were sweetened by being charred, the smokey sweetness of the peppers gave the chicken an almost barbeque flavour to it.

Afterwards we went to the Häagen-Dazs store and I got caramel beurre sale (salted butter caramel) and Marlene got banoffee....mine was soooo good. That was actually my first time having Häagen-Dazs

We then just walked around until Marlene had to go to work and then I walked back home, passing some stores which were like Biggie Best, trying to find some linen for mom but all I could find were curtains and towels and stuff...flippen expensive. Some of them around 100 euros.

When I got home I showered and then went to chill at the Basillique (Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière )lookout point to read a book and snack on a baguette. It was around 6pm and the sun was still shining brightly. I watched as people came and went, some reading, groups of girls laughing and chatting, even an old couple sitting down to enjoy the sight and some guy with a push scooter just chilling there having a beer. Its amazing how people will walk past and stop to admire the view of the city...I suppose you could compare it to capetonians enjoying the view of Table Mountain on the way home from work. People would literally walk past, stop for a few minutes and then continue. Even at night, people gather there and chill, bathed in the bright light of a few lights behind the plaza.