How Sweet It Is: Syrup Reconsidered

Before I moved to France, when I heard the word syrup I thought of breakfast pancakes or cough medicine. But here, sweet, flavored syrups are one of life’s little pleasures. They are everywhere and added to everything–wine, sparkling water, beer, warm drinks and even champagne.

Stop by the beverage aisle of any supermarché and you’ll be confronted with row after row of the stuff. They’re much like the syrups you find in American coffee shops for flavoring Italian sodas or lattes, but here the selection and availability are unbeatable. Litchi, mango-passion-pear, mint, peach iced tea, cinnamon, grenadine. The syrups are so popular that there are 3 brands of cherry at my Carrefour–thrifty store brand, mid-range, and one with packaging and a price tag verging on luxurious.

But what kind of Poivron?

I’ve had a hard time finding much in the way of spicey food here in France. Aside from harissa at the kebob stands, it’s tough to find anything with much of a kick. I’ve bought peppers at the markets a couple of times now looking for that familiar burn, but to no avail. And since they call peppers by different names here, I couldn’t even figure out what I was buying.

Then I saw this today on my Epicurious. (Yes, I know 2 posts in 2 days about Epicurious, but what can you do).

I thought I was getting a jalapeno or serrano chile, but it turns out I was getting an anaheim chile.  Next time, I’ll know to add more and I’ll throw in the seeds too which are the part of the chile that packs the most punch.

Thought I’d share in case any of our loyal readers happen to be shopping for peppers in a foreign language.

Kyle’s May Challenge Recap

What was I thinking?

I’m not saying it was awful, but I imagine this is what it’s like to use the Internet in a country with heavy amounts of censorship (China? Singapore? Cuba?). Then again, the communist approach to the Internet was not without it’s benefits.

Seasonal Food Finder

Just a quick post about a cool feature on Epicurious.com

Here in Toulon, it’s easy to figure out what is in season.  There’s a farmers market 6 days a week here.  Every time I walk through the market, there’s one item that seems to be at every stand.  Whatever it is will be cheap and beautiful.  By the next week, it might be hard to find anyone selling that vegetable at all. 

In American grocery stores, finding what’s in season can be a little trickier- since the produce section at Safeway sells basically the same items year round. If it’s not in season, they’ll truck it in from somewhere it is or find a green house or warehouse that still has it. America might be defined by the availability of tomatoes in December or Pumpkins in July.  Still, your best value and best quality can be had by knowing what is at it’s peak.

A lot of food websites will suggest general things like “Summer means Strawberries”, but the US is just too big for that kind of broad advice. Summer might mean strawberries in California, but it probably means something else entirely in Maine.

Enter my new favorite seasonal veggie finder. I love it.  Thought I’d share.

Pop Chef

The apartment Kyle and I are sharing here in Toulon does not have a microwave or even an oven. Though it’s been a bit of a challenge getting by on two burners, it’s also forced us to be creative with our cooking. Part of the fun has been learning to adapt old favorites. Lately, the subject of our experimentation has been the humble popcorn.

Anne’s May Challenge Recap

It’s now Sunday evening and I’m just hours away from ending my media fast. While I have to admit that I did cheat some, I mostly kept to French media for the week.

It’s a digital camera with a built-in compass

Ever since I discovered that Google Photos will display my photos as points on a Google Map, I’ve been fascinated by the possibilities.  I love the idea that I can view my photos from college as a map of the college’s campus. I could browse by dorm instead of by date.  I could browse through photos from an old road trip by looking at the route.  In fact, since the photos are tagged with a date and time and a location, Google should be able to tell me what the route was automatically.  How cool is that? What a great way to look at photos from a vacation or compare different hiking routes for a day trip.

The only problem is that it’s really tricky to go through and manually tag photos with exact gps coordinates.  But I’m convinced that this is a technical challenge someone should be able to solve.  And, finally, a couple of solutions are appearing on the market.

DJ Anne. En francais.

American French classes all have the same basic soundtrack. A little Edith Piaf, some Maurice Chevalier, and one or two MC Solaar songs thrown in as an acknowledgement of the French hip hop scene. I had a high school French teacher that got us all humming along to Boris Vian’s “J’suis snob,” but mostly we hear pretty cliche stuff. Don’t get me wrong–I love the classics as much (maybe more) than the next person. But it’s always fun to add something else to the rotation.

So with that in mind, I thought I’d share some of my new French favorites in honor of this week’s French media kick.

Should I Really Pay for Software?

When Anne and I were in Budapest last month, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the budget hotel we’d chosen not only offered free wifi, but had a computer set up for guests to use.  An even bigger surprise- the computer was set up with Linux.

I’d never used Linux before, but I had some important fantasy baseball transactions to make so I gritted my teeth and dove in.  And it wasn’t so bad.

Kyle’s Challenge Update #1

I’m headed out to a party soon which means my day in the vicinity of a computer is just about done.

1 day down. so far, so good.