Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce that I got a kick ass stage. After calling the restaurant twice to fix my meeting with the chef, I was able to make an appointment through some guy who assured me that the chef would be able to meet me Friday between 3 and 3:30.

I show up at 3 to find the chef in street clothes standing the doorway of an empty restaurant chatting with the bartender. I introduce myself and she says, “No one told me you were coming! It’s a good thing you caught me.” I couldn’t be annoyed with the telephone guy, however, because the chef is awesome. She quickly signed my papers and then took me on a tour of the kitchen. It didn’t take long and it won’t be hard for me to remember where things are because it is a teeny-tiny, little space. Very small. I will become really close with these people, whether I want to or not. Still, the chef rocked. She said there is a locker room, but since it will be all guys, her and me, I should change in the bathroom and leave my stuff in her office. I am kind of grateful for that, since I am not quite ready to change in front of strange French men. Not that I am a prude (I totally am, who am I kidding?) but the least they could do is buy me a drink first. So the real reason the chef rocks is that she is putting my hands in the pudding straight away. She said, “So you’ll be here three months? Okay, here’s how it will go: one month in each section: cold stuff (desserts and appetizers), meat, and then fish. The first fifteen days of each month, we’ll ease you into the menu by having you do day prep (9-6) and then the last fifteen days you’ll do service.” How awesome is that? I expected to spend some time obligatorily peeling vegetables, but, no, I’ll be right in there with ‘em from the beginning! Plus, I won’t be working the normal, ungodly restaurant hours. They’ll only have me on about eight hours a day, and no work on weekends. Hey, I’m not getting paid, so…

Despite my excitement, there is something bothering me. My shoulder. I pinched a nerve in it (I think) when I was in London, and it is killing me. Literally, it hurts so bad I am going insane. Shannon gave me some pills she had that are 800 mg of Ibuprofen, and even that only slightly numbed the dull, incessant ache on my left side from my jaw to my fingertips. I know I should probably see a doctor (it’s been two weeks) but doctors in Paris are scary. Do you think I could get by in the kitchen if I just chopped the whole damn thing off?

I talked to my old school tonight. Katie, who I used to work with, had been trying to call me and she finally got through. To be honest, I didn't really want to talk to them because I miss it all so much. I want to be far away from a veal loin and what to do with celery root. But then again, I haven't heard that accent in a long time. Such easy laughs. Such friendly people. Katie passed the phone to everyone on campus: I talked to kids, teachers, administrators, secretaries. She and my co-teacher, Susan, have been re-hired for the fall, even though their contracts are month-by-month. Things are getting rebuilt. The camp Katie and I ran together last summer is up and running and has 60 kids. Apparently, no one is mowing their lawns in Lakeview because no one lives in Lakeview, really, and rats are having a field day. It's putting people off their snowballs, if you know what I mean (and you only know what I mean if you've lived there).

I want to go home, home the way it was last August 25th.

Me: Let's just go to this cafe right here.

Male Greek Friend: No, we can't go there.

Me: Why not?

Male Greek Friend: There's a baby in there.

Me: We can't go to this cafe because there is a child inside?

Male Greek Friend: No. I don't like it. Find another one.

Talk about your 180 degree differences. Where did my life go?

Everything is all roses, despite the guilty feeling I had all day. I didn’t tell anyone what happened in my stage meeting because I felt like I had stabbed Brian in the back. He really had been talking about going to another restaurant where the staff all spoke English, but what if I “stole” his internship? That’s a shitty thing to do, but I did it anyway, heartless wench that I am.

Sitting in demo, the superior cuisine chef walks in points at me and gives me a thumbs up. Already??! I’m in at Les Bouquinistes! Wow! Hooray! And then I realized that the whole class saw this exchange and that everyone knew what it meant. The questions would be coming…I would have to admit where I was going in front of Brian. I had been kind of hoping that he would never find out. He did find out after class. I could see a flicker of disappointment (and was that rage?) cross his face, and then he seemed really excited for me, although I still feel guilty and have a slight inclination to sleep with one eye open. Serves me right.

In other rosy news, our Superior Class dinner was tonight and was absolutely gorgeous. Every level has a dinner, and ours went from bad (Basic dinner food was not good), to really great (everyone raved about the yummy food at the Intermediate dinner)), to undeniably superb. We gathered at 7:30 at Ledoyen, a classic, three Michelin-starred restaurant that’s tucked away in a park on the Champs Elysees. It is Paris’s answer to Tavern on the Green. The outside of the place was so incredible; I was excited as soon as we stepped out of the cab. We had their reception room on the ground floor, and it was draped in gold from top to bottom. We had an open bar aperitif (champagne all around) with fois gras on raisin brioche and little tapanade squares. The we sat and had a lovely dinner: an amuse bouche of melon gelée with prociutto, a first course of smoked salmon on a purée of horseradish potatoes (sounds weird, but was totally delicious), a main dish of filo dough wrapped four-spice chicken with chanterelle mushrooms, a palate cleanser of lemon-thyme crème with pink grapefruit, and a dessert of a modern fraisier, kind of like a strawberry mousse, and then coffee and little petit fours of homemade lemon marshmallows, vanilla macaroons, mini strawberry tarts, and nougat. They had very nice wine picks, whose names I cannot recall because they flowed so steadily. The dinner did lack certain finesses and touches that I would expect from 3-stars, but it was kind of like a banquet, not a regular restaurant experience. I had a fabulous dinner and really enjoyed being so chic with my classmates. It made me kind of sad at the end of the night that school is quickly coming to a close. This has been such an intense experience and I have met so many amazing people, how can I say goodbye?

I sat down with the Superior Cuisine chef today to discuss where I will do my internship after graduation. To be honest, I am only 50% sold on this internship idea. It’s great to have a Parisian restaurant on my resume, and learning in a real French kitchen is the best place to learn French cuisine. However, I am tired of Paris and I am really ready to go back to the US and start up my life again, whatever that means. With an internship, at least I have a plan through December. I have no plan for the US, as I continue to rely on other people (i.e. a boy) to act before I feel like I can. Whatever. I digress.

The meeting with the chef was not at all what I expected. Jamie had her meeting with the pastry chef yesterday and they had a ten-minute conversation about her future plans and goals for her internship before they even began discussing locations. My meeting was five minutes long: the chef looked at me and said, “Where do you want to go?” I started to describe my ideal place and he said, “Yeah, but where? Give me a name of a place.” So I did. Ever since my birthday dinner at Les Bouquinistes, I have thought about doing my “stage” there, specifically because the chef is a woman and she is very involved in the whole restaurant, not just the kitchen. These are two rare attributes in a French chef. The only problem is that I knew Brian was thinking about going there, too. They could have more than one, right? He had thought about other places as well, right? The chef wanted a name right then…so I gave it, feeling really guilty and slimy. He said that it was a good choice and that other students had gone there and had been very happy with their experiences. He has to call and see if they’d be willing to take me, which may take days. I hate waiting.

The Final Exam for Superior Cuisine is really pretty cool. We are given a list of ingredients (some mandatory, some facultatif) and then we have about two and a half weeks to come up with original recipes based on these ingredients. There must be the meat, plus three side dishes. Two of the sides must be “composed,” which means they should have more than two ingredients and have been manipulated in some way. For example: glazed potatoes=simple side; fennel flan=composed side. All sauce must be plated and the extra served in a separate dish. We will plate four plates for the jury instead of our usual one. I am very pleased with what we have been given to work with.

Drum roll, please!

And the dish will be…veal!

Here is the list we were given:

Must use:
Veal tenderloin
Poivrade (small purple) artichokes
Red peppers
Celery root

Will also have available:
Chicken breast
Caul Fat (don't ask)
Potatoes
Green beans
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Mushrooms
Zucchini
Basil
Flat-leaf parsley
Fresh orange juice
Lemons
Baby Spinach

Plus we will have all the things that are typically in our pantries at school. I have a few little ideas dancing around in my head, but if there is anyone out there who has input on what I should make, I’ll take it!
Sleepless nights, here I come…

What a sugary slap in the face. It was the first day of decorative sugar sculpting, and we made what I would call Easter bonnets. The French refer to them as “St. Catherine’s hats.” St. Catherine’s Day is in November, and it is a tradition that on this feast day all unmarried women over the age of 25 wear green and yellow hats to “put themselves out there” for potential suitors. I saw this feast day in action during my last stay here (lots of young women in hats being EXTREMELY intoxicated in the early afternoon), but as a 21 year-old, I paid little attention.

It was a little embarrassing that the chef asked all the unmarried women over 25 to raise their hands before he explained why we would learn to make hats.

It was downright mortifying when the 20 year-old French guy in practical looked at me and said, “Yeah, if I’m not married by the time I’m 27, then there’s got to be some kind of problem.” And the 18 year-old Greek guy replied, “I know. You have to ask yourself: was St. Catherine pretty?”

Ironically, or prodigiously, the chef declared my spinster hat the best in the class.

So France lost in a shoot out, due to the shocking and especially stupid antics of Zidane. Not much celebrating, just a lot of heads hung in shame. I am pretty disappointed, too. I wanted to see the city go up for grabs.

It was entertaining today to watch two of our chefs have a "case of the Mun-days." This morning, the superior cuisine chef seemed in a really foul mood but trying to hide it. He couldn't hide it when he put the boiling milk for a basil ice cream in the blender and turned it on without properly securing the cap. Milk and basil went everywhere, burning his arm a little as it flew. It's all about the basics, people. I thought it was really nice of him to say that the mishap never would have happened if his assistant, who had been five minutes late, had showed up on time. In pastry, we're working on molding chocolate. The chef was demonstrating more techniques today (which is equivalent to watching paint dry), and he was securing molded eggs to his sculpture base. He squeezed the pastry bag a little too hard and it exploded, sending a huge blob of perfectly tempered chocolate over the front of his pristine coat. He was cool about it, and we all got a small reprieve from the dullness as he went to change his coat.

I made this really lovely dish of red mullet with "crispy potato scales." It's accompanied by steamed zucchini and carrots, a broccoli flan, and a citrus butter sauce. It tastes good, and looks pretty, too. I have to say that I got a nice compliment from the chef today. He was grading my plate and making his comments and summed everything up with, "Good work, good technique." That's what we like to hear: I'm getting the techniques.

We all know how much I like markets. I got up at 4:30 to go meet
the bus, as it was our turn as Superior students to go to Rungis. Rungis is the
wholesale market for restaurants and food sellers that is just outside
of Paris. It's the largest market in the world at a whopping 232
hectares or almost 574 acres. There are lots of other fun facts and
figures about it and you can find them all at
www.rungisinternational.com.

When we got there, we were already too late to see the fish
market, which was a bummer. We did get to see three of the meat
pavilions, the cheese building (yum!), the produce pavilions, and the
cut flower building.It was a lot of fun, even though we had to get up
in the middle of the night to go and wear paper coats and hats as
protective measures for the food. All the workers were in a really
great mood and were still cheering and honking their fork lift horns
over France's victory. I was dying over the products- everything was
so fresh and beautiful. Although I would hate the pressure and the
math involved with being a buyer for a restaurant, it would be pretty
cool to really shop at this place.

After coming home and taking a nap, I went back to school to see a
demonstration by guest chef William Ledeuil from a very good and
reputable restaurant in Paris called Ze Kitchen Galerie. He is all
about modern food that is so Asian fusion it is almost completely
Asian. It was fun to watch someone cook who is a huge success and who
ritualistically throws all the staunch French food rules and
conventions out the window. He used all kinds of products that I
didn't know or have ever used. I am very inspired to go to the Asian
market and try some of his ideas. He has written a cookbook, which is
only available in French, that is absolutely gorgeous. It will be
mine.

After watching the fun, non-French cooking, Jen and I
decided to continue the non-French trend and went out for Korean food.
Somedays, it's pretty fun to do only food stuff.

Vive la France! Now France is going to the World Cup final and I am SO excited! When I got into the tournament, I never dreamed that France would be in the final, and now the craziness is here. After the game, the Parisians showed their excitement by yelling "Allez Les Bleus!" in the streets and honking their horns. The guys in the photo are showing their joi de vivre by hijacking a garbage truck and dancing on the back of it.

Holy crap is it ever hot! I left ten minutes late for school this morning because I didn’t want to move from in front of my fan. It registered at 34 degrees at lunchtime, a whopping 93 to you and me. The air conditioning at school, as well as most places in Paris, is pretty much non-existent. The temperature of the kitchen during pastry today was 38, or 100 to you and me, and we had no burners or oven on. I would love it to be 85 tomorrow. 85 would be wonderful.

So as a kind of artistic preparation for the upcoming chocolate and sugar sculptures, we made marzipan animals. They’re pretty dumb looking, and I was in no mood to work on them this afternoon, but we actually had a lot of fun. We were like a bunch of little kids, adding detail and accessories to our chicks and frogs. I can only hope that chocolate sculpture is this entertaining.

On my walk to school today, I noticed that my bank was closed. This was unusual, because it’s not a holiday by any means and there were no announced strikes. Upon further inspection, I learned that my bank will be closed until September 2nd. There are other branches of this bank, but the way my bank works is that I can withdraw money from other branches ATM’s, but my account is with the Convention branch, so I can’t transfer money between accounts or anything. I wonder if automatic withdrawals are still okay…I may need to check and see if my rent got paid. This may pose a problem. In the US, this would never happen, and if it did, a mailing or seven would have been sent out months ago alerting customers of the change. Not in France. Bonnes vacances Société Générale!

Today was a lovely day by the Seine. We planned a picnic/barbecue, and thanks to Kobi's grill and Michael's skill, I had the best burger in Paris. Unofficially, it was a fourth of July event ( and by unofficially, I mean I am the only one who considered it so), and it was so awesome to relax in the hot sun and enjoy good food and friends. Think of me this 4th, and know I wish I were there with you, lighting off fireworks and eating ice cream with a wooden spoon/paddle.

What a day for World Cup Soccer! I was so wrong on both my predictions for the games, and my predication for the final is also gone. It’s anyone’s guess at this point.

I watched the England/Portugal game at the Auld Alliance Pub in the Marais. There was a huge group of us from school, including Iceni and Henry. It was really helpful to have them there to translate and explain the English cheers. It was such a fun game, until the shootout. How terribly disappointing, although I can’t say it was their best-played game.

I was scheduled to baby-sit at 8 pm, and the game ended at 7:45. I have never crossed Paris in such short a time. I need to learn to say no, though. How could I watch that match alone, confined in someone else’s apartment? It was unreal- France completely dominated Brazil. What the hell happened to Brazil? I, and so many others, are in complete shock over the win. It’s kind of interesting to watch a France game alone in apartment, because it’s clear that everyone everywhere is watching the exact same thing. When a good play happens, or a bad call, the whole city reacts and you can hear the collective roar. It’s pretty amazing.