Thursday, January 15, 2015

Eating snails

Today I'm off to see the Dali gallery. The main thing that I've been impressed with in my time in Paris has been my ability to find my way around. I totally have the metro sorted these days (sort of) and have been traveling all over the city without getting too lost at all. My biggest worry when I first got here was that I would spend my whole time having no clue where I am and not being able to ask for directions. So far this hasn't been a problem at all.

Yesterday I went on a walking food tour of the Right bank. We wondered round looking at markets and cheese stops, and then ended the tour with a tasting where we ate treats and drank a lot of wine before 11am.  After this I did a little bit of shopping. Everyone in Paris has beautiful black coats with fake fur collars, and I felt so very left out. I spent ages trying to decide the best design and carefully checked out all the coats of the girls I saw in the streets until I came up with my 'ideal coat' and then set about finding it. I doubt I'll take it off for a very long time. I walked down the street thinking to myself "look how Paris chic I am", and then tripped and nearly fell on the cobble stone sidewalk.

Last night I went out for dinner and had snails. They were delicious but I have a feeling that the herbs and butter they were smothered in was responsible for most of the taste. As a chef I've never had much of a problem with eating meat, as it has been a bit or a necessity when it comes to tasting and preparing different things. I always try to source ethical meat when I cook at home, going out of my way to find butchers that support local trade and that raise the animal in a kind way. So it has never bothered me. Snails however are my favourite bug. I know this sounds odd, but I really do like them. I once had an in joke with someone I dated about snails (its long and complicated so I wont bother going into it) and I always think of them every time I see a snail (yes I'm aware that this is very weirdly sentimental.) I felt a little bad eating these tiny little guys. I was also vaguely aware that I was the only girl in the restaurant covered in tattoos, eating snails alone, while writing in a notebook and drinking a lot of wine. Sometimes I get the feeling I could fit in in Paris very well. Other times not so much.


The street I'm living on I really love. I think its a little like the Fitzroy of Paris. There are lots of beautiful tiny shops everywhere down side alleys and a heap of bars that I have yet to discover. At night time restaurants fill the streets with their chairs facing out onto the walkway, while early in the morning stalls open up selling cheese, wine, bread, fish and fresh fruit. I have been walking up and down this street a couple of times a day to buy bread and berries and cakes.

I have an awful thing to admit. I have been buying one coffee a day from starbucks. I feel like its a really bad thing to do while you are in another country, and I really hate to support large chain stores in the hospitality industry..........but I am so very sick of drinking a short black everyday and just really really really wanted a soy latte. I wouldn't dare ask for this in a cafe, for fear of being kicked out!

Well I better run and go find the gallery. x

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