Eli tours Aix

Today was our first real day of working vacation. That is, Ally went to the archive and I worked on my summer project. Mary and Christopher ended up taking Eli around Aix some more. Some highlights included St.-Sauveur and the Cours Mirabeau. Eli saw lots of dogs and was walked around by an elderly French woman. No one quite understands why.

There was a very violent thunderstorm in the afternoon, so Ally got soaked on her way back from the archive. Mary and Christopher had it even worse: they had planned to go to Cézanne's studio, which is a little outside town. They got drenched waiting for the bus and, thanks to Rick Steves, saw it pass by the stop. Rick had them waiting in the wrong place, although to be fair a brochure and the studio's website also contained the error. Anyway, it was a less than ideal day to visit the studio of the original "painter of light."

For dinner we made couscous with vegetables and, for the carnivores, chicken. We used a bag of frozen vegetables selected especially for couscous. Ally and I are very good at reading instructions in French; however, this one had us arguing as to how we could possibly fulfill the instructions and create something edible. The instructions had us dumping the frozen vegetables and (frozen) sauce into a pot of boiling water. You have probably already spotted the problem. This is a very dodgy way to make a sauce, since you absolutely need to know how much water is going to be introduced. And since the sauce seemed to be merely frozen, not dehydrated, the correct amount is probably close to zero and would probably be made up by the ice in the bag. If you followed the instructions as written, you would get a thin vegetable soup. The right way to do this, as frequenters of the singles aisle at American grocery stores know, is to include packets of frozen sauce with the vegetables, and thaw those packets separately. We conclude that this product is flawed in theory and unworkable in practice, and therefore will not be buying it again. Nonetheless, we came up with a pretty good meal.

This reminds me of a French couple in Nice who befriended us. They were educated professionals who had us over for dinner a couple of times. Their cooking was quite accomplished. But they confessed that they did not like to make pasta, and thus did not serve it, because it was so difficult. What was so difficult? Boiling the noodles to the correct firmness. Yes, the mysteries of hot water defeated them. For that matter, it seems to us that French people normally boil and drain rice instead of cooking by the absorption method. So perhaps there is actually less to boiling than we think, and French home chefs simply accept inferior results.