Wave the stick…

Today the class was a bit better and they worked a bit more efficiently. It had partly to do with me because at one stage I was like “f*** this” and told them that I don’t have a problem with people talking, as long as it doesn’t affect the work. If it does, tough shit, no more talking.

We did pain bresan (with the “gaude”, roasted maize flour), pain complet (made with the T150 and butter. I would eat this one with just some salted butter or schweineschmalz) and pain bio (made with bio flour and baguette concentrate which is roasted barley flour). Due to the class still being pretty slow, we have only done the shaping of small breads into boules and the larger ones into baguettes or batards.

For lunch we had a

Nicoise Salad

nicoise salad, but with tinned tuna, anchovies, thin slivers of tomato, slices of boiled potato, capers, olives, hard boiled eggs and  an awesome dressing. Main was some fish with beautifully cooked veg, potatoes, carrots and mange tout and some soft and extremely flavourful onions to garnish.

I ate some of the things that Marlene bought for me at Maison Pozzoli. The Framboisier was delishus!!

Framboisier

A base of sponge cake, with an almond mousse with pieces of raspberry and dried coconut, topped by another layer of sponge and then a thin layer of pink marzipan which was ever so slightly brulee’d.

The “charlotte” was similar except it contained a vanilla mousse and no marzipan on top and also came with a small macaroon on top J

There was another small item that I don’t know the name of but it was in a quenelle like shape and had a base of some sort of cake with chestnuts in it, topped by the chestnut cream and then some icing... very simplistic but all you need really.

As I’m typing this I’m having one of the beers that Marlene bought at the blueberry festival outside of St. Etienne.

Initially it tasted quite strong (its 8%) but after a while I can taste the slight acidity from the blueberries. In fact, since it was neither sweet nor dry, the acidity reminded me of a beer-ish wine if that’s easy to understand. Really pleasant once I was half way through...I think it needs to warm up in your mouth before you can get the full flavour of the blueberries. Def not a quaffing beer.

Maison Pozzoli

Around lunchtime I helped Fatiha put up some curtains, about 3m up, with only a 2m ladder...because of the rod and the fitting as well as the amount of space between the walls, I had to put one ring up, put the rod through and then thread the 2 curtains on and then put the other curtain ring in. The manual was in French so I just had to figure out how to put the bit in as it wasn’t like the one my dad has. Fatiha also had no spirit level so I had to use her judgement to line the rods up. All in all I was pretty chuffed with myself, considering the circumstances I was working under. It looked good and Fatiha was happy so I gave myself a pat on the back. I literally did give myself a pat on the back.

I met up with Marlene around 2pm and we went to Starbucks. It was my first time, and we both had white chocolate mochas which were nice, but very sweet “tres sucre” and we had a doughnut each and Marlene had a cinnamon roll too which tasted good too but was super sweet. She has a big sweet tooth so it was fine for her but I almost had a sugar coma. She also gave me some beer made from myrtilles (blueberries) which she bought for me at la fete myrtilles outside of St Etienne.

We then walked around and I went past Maison Pozzoli.....It’s a baker’s wet dream.

Maison Pozzoli, Lyon, France

The bread looks so SICK!!!! I am super stoked to get in there and start baking. Marlene insisted on buying me an assortment of some of her favourite viennoiserie including a framboisier, tarte citron, charlotte and something else... we then went to do some “leche vitrine” (lit. “lick windows”, it’s French for window shopping, because you are usually so close to what it is you want to buy that you can lick it).

only the good stuff !

So many people were out that I again asked “when the f*** do people work here?” It was probably around 4pm and there were hoards of people walking around and doing shopping.

Marlene had to leave to go to work around 5pm so we said goodbye and I walked back to Croix Rousse and on the way got a haircut. Like most things in France, you have to wait. So I waited for about 1 hour and just read in the salon. The guy did a really good job and it was a really good price compared to others that I saw (16Euros) and I spoke French with him and we told me about living in France and so it was cool to find out what people living in the city think about it.

As soon as I got home I had to leave for the couch surfing meeting so I managed to eat a kebab Jand then I headed down to meet Marion at the opera house in hotel de Ville. She had some friends from Italy and St. Etienne with her (Kristiana, Elisa, Julia, Fabio and Clement), Clement could very easily be the French doppelganger of François Roux [a high school friend]...I almost thought it was him and he even has similar mannerisms and movements. We took the metro to Saxe Gambetta and then met the other couch surfers at cafe de la Madeleine. I almost downed a pint of penache coz that is so delicious (a shandy pretty much, but the use a lemonade, not sprite).

the Italians...

We played some petanque (boules) and I got my ass handed to me hard-core...my team lost 14-2. The Italians had to leave around 10pm as some were leaving for Italy that night and the others had to go back to St. Etienne so I left soon afterwards. They were all from Florence, but studied in Bologna. I gave them some shit for not really being able to cook and I was like “what kind of Italian girl can’t cook?” but I was just joking so we laughed about it and discussed some specialities of Italy and I taught them some Xhosa too.