France - Cachou Lajaunie

One day in the supermarket I saw these on the shelf next to the cashier.

These look somewhat fancy, yet classic. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't have time to Google Translate it because I was on the line at the cashier, and it was my turn in 5 seconds after I saw this Cachou Lajaunie.

There's no English or Dutch translation on the packaging. Well, might as well try these. Recently I've been having troubles keeping myself focused for 1.5 hours non-stop in class. Delicious or horrible-tasting, this little peep will be useful.

I opened the package at home and gave these pastilles a try.

The flavour was so similar to what we call Pagoda Pastilles in Indonesia, with stronger cooling effect and perhaps less sugar. It's definitely licorice, but it's so different from the dropjes I had in the Netherlands, so there has to be something in it. My Italian friend really liked it. As for me, I' not really a big fan of these pastilles but these keep me awake in class.

Thanks to Wikipedia and Google Chrome's page translation function, I managed to find out the ingredients: licorice, sugar, starch, lactose, flavored gelatin powder, catechu, iris powder, mastic ressin, essence of peppermint.

Well, the peppermint explains the cooling effect. I'm not sure what iris powder tastes like by itself, but catechu? Cachou? Never heard of it before!

Thanks to this, I did a little research on cachou. Almost all professors who taught me said not to trust Wikipedia, but somehow my gut feeling says 95% of what's written on Wikipedia is correct. Well, it always never hurts to start from Wikipedia and then go on with a more refined research.

So, according to Wikipedia, cachou or catechu is an extract of Acacia that can be used as food additives to provide astringent sensation from tannin, or to provide colour. Catechu, in Indonesian, is also known as gambir. I don't think I've ever heard gambir used as food additives in Indonesia. More like it's a traditional cure for toothache.

I checked on Malaysian Wikipedia on gambir sarawak (still the same catechu) that catechu can also be used as anesthetics (which means eating this will result in less headache during calculation class for me? LOL). But apparently, in Malaysia and Indonesia, catechu is also a cure for early ejaculation. Actually, the moment I searched for gambir sarawak, the first few search results gave me "early ejaculation cure". Seems like this plant has a lot of functions.

By the way, I just realized how nice it is to understand a lot of languages. There are just search results you can read when you type the keywords in languages other than English :D

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France - University Cafetaria Food

Another thing I love about France is the awesome university cafetaria lunch menu. There is no other choice than the 3.10-euro 3-course meal, but for 3.10 euros I really think these meals are simply too awesome.

Amazingly, some people still express their insatisfaction towards the lunch meals. Ok, the veggies tend to be overcooked, but I think for most part the dishes are great. I've had far worse meals back when I was living in a dorm in Singapore. Overcooked veggies? Check. Veeery tiny portion of meat? Check. And the soups were as plain as they could be. And back then, we only had a microwave. We shared a common fridge, with a lot of fridge thieves that made you practically couldn't store anything delicious in the fridge for more than half a day (my friend's birthday cake was munched by unknown someone after leaving it for 1 hour in the fridge and the leftover pieces were left in the fridge). I'm not trying to complain about how sad my food history during the 6 years of middle school and high school was, but my point is, sometimes you'd just have to be more appreciative of things. I guess I learned it the hard way.

Well, back to the topic. Basically, you will get 1 dish with a type of carbohydrate (potatoes, pasta, couscous, rice or whatever is available on that day), vegetables (boiled green beans, legumes or sometimes ratatouille), and a type of meat (normally they offer 3 choices of meat). What's fancy is that the menu changes every day.

Cordon bleu and ham with sauteed potato and vegetable, with a mousse dessert and apple sauce

Bread and butter is free, and so is water (you can drink tap water in France).

Then you can get 2 side dishes of any types: salad, pâté, quiche, apple pie, soup, yoghurt, fruit or packaged desserts. You can choose any of the two, and if you get an extra item, you pay 40 cents. Sometimes I would get two appetizers instead of 1 appetizer and 1 dessert, and at times I would get 2 desserts instead. Well, it's good to try everything :)

Roasted chicken with rice and mixed vegetables, with pâté and vanilla pudding

White fish in cream with rice and ratatouille, with quiche and salad

Beef steak with green beans and pasta, with smoked duck salad and apple pie

Beef with couscous and green peas, with salad and terrine

Beef with white part of leek and couscous, vegetable soup and salad

Chicken with rice and sauteed vegetable, with quiche and camembert salad

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France - Arab Markets

I'm sorry I haven't been able to update this blog. There are just way too many things to do. Sometimes I would go back from school with headaches; having a lecture that goes for 3 hours with only 1 short break after 1.5 hours is enough to make my head goes at supersaturated state. Oh, and that's only half of a day's worth of school.

Ok, enough of self-complaining. This time I'll tell more about my encounter with Arab Market.

My friend who had been in Paris for 4 weeks for internship told me about the Arab Market. Generally, they sell cheap clothes, fresh fruits and vegetables, and sometimes meat and even food.  I'm not really sure of the schedule of the market, but when we tried to ask one of the vendors what time they close, we almost couldn't get the answer. It was a funny moment: we tried to ask in English, he doesn't understand at all and kept mistaking for "when will the grilled chicken be ready", and then in the end we resorted to Google Translate on our smart phones. Can't thank Google enough for this. In the end we found out that the market closes at 1 pm.

It's always nice to have this kind of fresh market around :)

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France - McDonald's menu is SUPER FANCY

When burgers are too mainstream, we go for baguettes. The normal burgers still exist in McDonald's in Paris but why not try something that only exist in Paris? Well, I decided to get le petite McBaguette.

And what they mean by petite (small) is... REALLY PETITE. The whole baguette fits into my palm, so I would say it's like 10cm x 10cm. It's smaller than the size of a postcard. Yup. It's yummy, ,though. The beef flavour was strong, and the baguette is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside..

Why did I get such a small baguette for lunch? It's because the McCafe right next to the entrance looks enticing. They sell macarons, chou and other fancy cakes. I got the chou sans créme (chou without cream) and the pistachio macaron.

The macaron was so-so. It's a little too cold when served, so the cream filling was a little too hard, and the shell was a little too moist.

On the other hand, the chou was really good:

The moment I bit the chou, the dough kind of slowly melted in my mouth. It's really fluffy. I think I might prefer a chou without the cream filling.

Well, it's fancy and it's nice, and it also comes with a pricey bill (for a McDonald's standard). The whole thing costed me like 5 euros, and my stomach was not in particular full enough. Normally I could get a meal for 5 euros and feel very stuffed.

But it's the quality vs. the quantity.

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France - La Laitière (feuilleté de mousse)

I've been rather busy with exploring Paris lately. And also with class, of course. We attend class from 9 to 5, with 1.5 hour lunch break in between (I love the long lunch break). I feel that there's always something to write on my blog about Paris or the food every single day to the point that I don't know where to start.

Ok, so let's start with this.

The first French supermarket I explored was Franprix because we met nice a corridor mate who showed us the way there. The thing that surprised me the most about French supermarket is the unreasonable length of chilled desserts section. When I was in the Netherlands, the refrigerated section was filled with cheese and ham and perhaps bacon, and tons of yogurt. In ireland, refrigerated section is not the most prominent section.

I decided to get this Nestle dessert because, well, it's Nestle, so it's bound to be good when it comes to something milky (this is my risk reduction strategy, by the way; it's not fool proof but it works most of the time).

Do I understand anything said? NOPE. My knowledge in French is like zero. ZERO. Well, ok, I can say merci, ça combien (I don't even know if I spell this right), s'il vous plaît, pardon, excusez-moi. But that's it.

It's funny how I understand what the ingredients are from the Dutch version (the second paragraph). I can't believe how much Dutch I learned just from going to the supermarket and the open market,. My pronunciation might be off (my Dutch friends would sometimes laugh whenever I tried to say something in Dutch but nevertheless I never give up practicing) but at the very least I understand what they are.

The appearance might not be the best because the top of the mousse was flattened by the seal but this means nothing. This dessert is... superb. Superb. There are thin, crispy layers of chocolate in the middle. It's a well-balanced mix of smooth and crispy textures. And the cocoa flavour is just nice: not too bitter, not too sweet, not too overpowering.

I can't lose weight in France.

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France - Marron Crêpe

In France, marron (chestnut) paste is often used in desserts. I had a nice marron crêpe from a shop.

For 5 euros *cries*

Well, I got it from a restaurant in Montemartre, close to la Basilique du Sacré Cour. It's a tourist attraction, so it's bound to be expensive.

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France - Paris in 1 Day

I went around the touristic areas of Paris the day after I landed my feet at the dorm. It was a really tiring trip, and I had a really good sleep after that (my roommate said my phone kept ringing but I remained peacefully asleep).

So first we bought NaviGo and a monthly pass for all transportation means within Zone 1 through Zone 4 in Paris (because our school is in Massy, which is in Zone 4).

This thing costs us quite a fortune: 102.30 euros. However, this pass includes the tram, train, metro and bus rides, so we want to make sure we made a good use of this pass.

So first, we started with the closest to our dorm at Cité Universitaire: Saint-Michel.

This was the fountain of Saint-Michel (Fontaine Saint Michel), and I'm pretty sure this is not the famous Saint-Michel that my friends who visited France was talking about. Well, it's not that cold anymore and it is supposed to be a fountain, but I see no water coming out from any statues. Maybe it's really supposed to look like this? LOL

We walked over to see Notre Dame de Paris. It's not a really long walk, especially when you are travelling with good companions :)

The scenes around Notre Dame was really beautiful. We were also lucky that it was nice and sunny on this particular Sunday.

We walked a little closer to see more details of the fantastic sculpture and design of this cathedral.

(My friend is Dutch and he's really tall; his head ruined the only picture I took of Notre Dame haha)

We thought we'd enter and go up the Cathedral, but since we went on the first Sunday of the month, it's free for everyone to enter. A sunny Sunday, and free entrance. Naturally, you're bound to see a terribly long line. Yup.

We ended up not going inside it because we still want to see other things around Paris and we didn't know how long it would take to get us inside.

Instead, we walked towards the riverbanks just in front of Notre Dame to see it from another angle. Just right in front of Notre Dame, right before the river, is the Square Jean-XXIII.

From there, you can see the side view of Notre Dame. It's really massive, and you can tell it definitely took a genius planner to plan and design such a masterpiece.

If you cross the bridge to the other side of the river and walk down the stairs, you'd be able to take a great shot of Notre Dame. 

We found a really nice spot to take this picture after looking at a postcard sold along the riverside (LOL). It's nice to have two photography enthusiasts within the group!

Oh, by the way, my friend spotted this children book:

Candy Candy is a relatively old Japanese manga that I read when I was in... kindergarten? Yup, and they have it in children storybook version in French. I guess they really loved the story.

These stores along the river sell "antique" books (or perhaps it's better to say "books that look like antique books"), postcards and printed artworks as souvenirs. At times, you would also see more modern books, like these:

I thought it would be interesting to read Harry Potter in French, but again, I think I might need more time spent on checking the dictionary than reading the actual book. I'll have to see if the courses in Paris will be as tough as the previous courses in the Netherlands and in Ireland. I have way too many things I want to do while in France.

Moving on, we decided to walk towards Musée du Louvre because the scenery and the weather were too pretty to be missed. After 2 months in cloudy Ireland, the bright sun really brought us our cheerful mood.

Honestly, I don't know what this place was, but after several Googling, I found out that this was the L'Hôtel de Ville, or in English, the City Hall of Paris. Outside the City Hall was an iceskating rink. I believe the temperature was around 9 degrees C when we went there; I guess it's still cold enough to have an outdoor iceskating rink.

We kept on walking for another 10 minutes, and we arrived at a locks bridge just outside Le Louvre.

There's a really cute lock with the whole family written :)

Ok, back to Musée du Louvre. Yay, we finally reached it!

The entrance to the inner part of Le Louvre is free. There's some sort of construction or event preparation going on, but it doesn't really affect the overall awesome experience at Le Louvre.

And.... beyond these arcs, behold....

The pyramid of Louvre!

The pyramid was really beautiful. The position of the pyramid and the empty space around it made me feel sucked into another dimension of space.

The whole complex of Musée du Louvre was just splendid. Too many details to describe. I think if you really want to pay attention to every single sculpture on the buildings, you'd have to spend at least 2 weeks. Really, really beautiful. Magnificent!

At the back of the pyramid was an arc called Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and this is not to be mistaken with Arc de Triomphe (without the du Carrousel), which is located in the centre of Place Charles de Gaulle.

Then, we took the metro to reach the Arc de Triomphe (this time, without the "du Carrousel").

Much, much, much bigger than the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. The sky was kind of getting dark; I think we reached here around 4 PM.

I only had my phone camera with me, so I couldn't take really nice pictures of the arc. I left that responsibility to my photographer friend, and I'm just going to steal the photos from his facebook (sshhhhh....)

We went up the arc (for free because it's the first Sunday of the month!) and saw the whole Paris. The view was just gorgeous. Sadly, when you take photos from such a height, you normally don't end up with good pictures, especially with a phone camera. Well, I had enough fun and excitement from climbing up the arc. The spiral of stairs. Oh god. That felt like an eternity. I guess the effort of climbing the stairs really paid off!

Finally, we arrived at our last destination for the day: Tour Eiffel, or the Eiffel Tower.

 

There are so many movies and stories around love based on this tower, and this tower is also the symbol of Paris.

We didn't stay until late at night because we were really tired by then. We didn't go up the tower either; I'm definitely going back to the tower again before I leave Paris! :)

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France - Changing my food consumption pattern

I typically prefer Asian food, but when I'm in France, there's no way I should remain so stubborn about food. It's time to explore the gastronomical world, baybeh!

Well, we started with having a mini wine-tasting session. My roommate and I bought 1 bottle of red wine, and two others bought another bottle.

We're students, so we'd like to first start off with cheap wines. Well, we didn't really like the wine on the right, but the one on the left was not too bad. They're not our favourites, though. Which means... more wine-tasting sessions coming along the way!

Along with wine comes the cheese and fermented sausages like salami. Mmmm~

Ok, these are cheap, processed cheese cubes with flavours, but they actually taste pretty good. The mini salami was great accompaniment to the wines, too.

Because I'm a weak drinker, and we didn't have dinner, we decided to eat baguette (costs only 80c! HEAVEN!!). 

I bought what seemed like a tarako/mentaiko called Tarama. It really tastes like mentaiko cream. I put it on the baguette, and it's really yummy!

Aside from meals and wines and cheeses and baguettes, France is also famous for its desserts.

I had a hard time passing through the supermarket aisles in France. Too many awesome foods to look at. They have a great variety of products; not just by brand and flavour, but the type of product itself.

I don't know how busy I'll get at school here, but even if I don't have enough time (or money), I think I can be somewhat satisfied strolling around the supermarket aisles.

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