I know a guy named Brendanawicz...

Actually, his name is Greg. He wrote and performed this wonderful little ditty, "F*ck You Cheesecake Factory" after one of our lunch dates a few months ago. If you have ever eaten there, I'm sure you'll know the feeling. They should rename it "Palace of Glutton." Every time I listen to this song I can't help but giggle, so I decided it should be shared with the world.

**While hilarious, the song is also quite crass. If you're offended by toilet humor or obscenities, you might want to skip it.

Voici nous sommes!

Finally...we are here in France! And finally, a blog about it.

So, we have been here for just over a week now. I thought I'd post a little tour of our new surroundings. Welcome to Ferme de la Fromagerie, Chailly-en-Bière, France!

Driving from village to village in our area is very different from driving in the northeast US. Where we came from, the towns all ran right into one another. When you left one town, you were entering another. Here, you pass through the main center of the village and soon after, you will see a sign like this one...

This means you have left Chailly. You are no longer in Chailly, but you aren't anywhere else either! Now let's pull a U-turn, and pop back into town. It is a very basic village. From what I can see, there are a couple of restaurants, a church, salon, post office, a small store that I would only want to go to if I needed something in a pinch, and farms, lots of farms. There is also a cemetery in town that holds the graves of two well-known artists, Jean-François Millet and Théodore Rousseau. These were two of the leaders of the Barbizon school of painters in the 1800s, which was part of a movement towards realism in art. I know nothing about art history, so I'll leave it at that. Thanks Wikipedia. Millet spent some time in Chailly-en-Bière, and according to our landlady, the farm we now live on appears in his well-known painting "The Gleaners", now housed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and shown at the top of this entry.

From the center of town, turn down Rue de la Fromagerie, and follow its tall, labyrinthine walls all the way to the very last gate on the left, and voilà! La Ferme de la Fromagerie! This is what it is like to drive into our courtyard:





Pretty magical! Here's a small sample of photos from our new place...
Inside:
And outside:

Coco is really enjoying her new domain. She has been catching and eating flies and moths daily, and escaped from the apartment via the balcony within the first three days. Of course, she was too timid to actually go anywhere once she got down, so she just hid in some bushes. We've since blocked her escape route.

All in all, we have a wonderful place here. It's just what we wanted. A taste of country life, but not too far from the conveniences we're used to. We're only 10 minutes drive from Fontainebleau, a small city/big town with loads of restaurants, salons, banks, etc. Speaking of driving...I am now at a 95% confidence level when it comes to driving our car. I had never driven a manual before. Now I am rocking it (thanks Sherry, Ian, and Tom). If you were to continue down our street, those romantic, yet somewhat claustrophobia-inducing walls suddenly disappear, and you're left with nearly two miles of empty, clear country roads before you get to the next village (Perthes). That is where I have been practicing driving. It's really beautiful. There are even scarecrows in the fields! You can make out a couple of them in the photo above.

I'll post again soon with some more info about what we've been doing so far!

A bientôt!

If I can't drive to the grocery store...

Since I'm still in the process of learning to drive a car with a manual transmission (and learning what French road signs mean), I found myself in a bit of a situation when I got hungry for a snack. We had a fridge full of cheese, but no crackers, so I decided I would make my own. I did a quick search on "easy cracker recipe" and found a great, simple base recipe on recipetips.com. Since my package of herbs and spices hasn't arrived yet, I decided to mix in a healthy chunk of of a goat cheese that we had on hand, which had herbs de provence already mixed into it. I also reduced the salt a bit and used this amazing butter* that is sold here, which has sea salt crystals mixed in.


After I made the dough, I split it in half and rolled out two separate sheets of crackers. I placed thinly sliced tomatoes on top of one sheet, and left the other plain. Both crackers tasted great, but the tomato crackers didn't get as crisp as the plain, because of the liquid in the tomato. Next time I would puree the tomatoes and mix directly into the dough, in place of some of the water. Since I didn't have a rolling pin, I pressed the dough out using the back of a spoon. It resulted in an imperfect, bumpy look that has a lot more character than a store bought cracker.

I plan to experiment with this recipe a lot more. Next time I'll try using olive oil instead of butter, and adding in some freshly ground pepper. Another option would be to flavor the crackers with parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes, or even experiment with adding some canned beans or olives to the dough, or using different types of flour.

It's good to know that crackers are so easy to make. If you're feeling too lazy to leave the house, all you need is some flour, salt, and butter, and you can have yummy fresh baked crackers in 30 minutes! Bon appetit!

* I've had an equally delicious butter in Boston made by the Vermont Butter & Cheese Company. It is sold at Russo's.