For Fruit Mongers and City Knaves: happy grinchmas

The last month has seen me largely radio silent. Rather than skim the Internet for hours sifting through Etsy, trolling Craigslist, and reading cooking blogs, I've spent my time on our couch in the room adjacent to mine, ancient laptop in lap, faithful (i.e. bored) dog licking my ankles, fingers occasionally pecking at a keyboard. I've considered myself a pretty good writer for most of my life, and certainly one of the most capable bullshitters on the block, but this was different. The job: a ONE PAGE statement of purpose. The demands: make it honest, personal, and meaningful.

Frankly, that seems a lot to ask. Two of those at once I can handle - but three? Hmmm. And one page? One page isn't in my repertoire. I have several virtues but brevity isn't one of them.

While in the agony-ridden throes of self-examination, old paper-reading, and general internal whinging and flogging, I did what I always do when it's not quite crunch time, and I turned to petty distraction. I put down my copies of Paradise Lost and turned to a book I wasn't sure I'd ever get to: A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. My friend Kate acquired this book while we were in Bordeaux and not wanting to bring it back to The Island with her, she offered it to me. As my bookshelves can attest, I am hardly someone who passes up a free read. My friend Pat gave me a veritable library of her precious English language books to peruse when she and my other friends left and I remained for The Loneliest Month In History and what will be forever known in my mind as 30 Bottles in 30 Days. (Ok. Not quite. At all. But at least 12.) I don't think I'm exaggerating when I state (now that it's been about a year and a half and people need not be retroactively concerned) that Pat's donations saved my emotional well being. Among the vast pile was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and I'm pretty sure it changed my life. Within minutes of finishing it I started my first re-read. And after I finished it again, I wrote Jonathan a letter. And then I sent it. This book is that amazing. Not to continue on this tangent, but if you haven't read it yet (Josh), I really REALLY urge you to.

So. Here I have this copy of A Year in Provence , winking at me with a promise of a good, fun, fling. There are two little Français on the cover - one sporting a kicky little scarf and a glass of vin rouge, and the other a hostile looking butcher with cleaver in hand. I can't remember the last book I read that didn't make me cry. But this book... this one might be the ticket. I read half of it in an evening. It's light, it's amusing, it's funny. It isn't cloyingly precious, and best of all, it's written in 1989. Mayle is describing a country that uses francs instead of euros and still has adorably cheap housing and donkey races. I've never been to Provence (for shame, I know.) but I can't help but admire some of Mayle's observations that ring equally true further west in la Gironde. I finished the second half the following night, and after turning off my lamp and pulling up the covers, I found myself missing France. Ugh. Thinking about all those moments I knew would be magically funny a year later, but really got my goat at the time.

I had a vision of Laura and I eating our evening soup in our winter coats, and my nose conjured the phantom scent of our rice socks cooking in the microwave. Yes. You read that correctly. When the temperature plummeted in early November and our landlady decided we could do a few more weeks without radiators, we resorted to Laura's ingenuity. No hot water bottles? Socks! Full of warm, uncooked rice! Fabulous.

I thought about the many old ladies I encountered at the market, elbowing me, shoving me, shouting me out of their path to cheap vegetables. I thought about a dachshund peeing daily on my bed spread and a teacher who told our students that my vegetarianism was a "character flaw." The time two of my kids got in a fight and one ended up in a trash can. My bed that smelled like death and/or mold. The many buses that never came, or came too early. Showing up to class only to find out it had been canceled and the teacher had *forgotten* to tell me. Oops!

Sure enough, these memories brought smiles to my face rather than the grimaces, sighs, and fervent swear words they once did. To celebrate time passing, I decided to recreate France. In ma kitch'n.

first I made crêpes:

then I got out the big guns:

[not peanut butter, friends. something infinitely better. SPECULOOS SPREAD. via Amsterdam. c/o the best platonic lover that ever lived. Randall.]

1 + 2 = so much more than 3.

you can keep your pumpkin pies, amurkiah.

Crêpes aren't necessarily "holiday food," I know. But to be honest, I don't really feel in my usual holiday spirits this year. I'm not quite at grinch-levels yet, but I've been looking at the giant gold reindeer and the white Christmas lights and the tinsel and the Santa suits and just thinking, oh god. Ick. And I think it's because I'm in a city that does not experience winter. Seriously. It was at least 75 degrees today and there are PARROTS gorging themselves in our persimmon tree.