Friday Photo Shoot Outs: Local food & restaurants

I like Barry's and Si's and Reggie's contributions to the My Town Friday Photo Shoot Outs so much I decided to join up. Now I've got to get around to all the other participants! Every week there's a theme and we go out for a fresh look at our local communities.

So Hello. I'm an American living in the agro-industrial heart of central France. For this week's project I'd hoped to range a little farther than just-down-the-street, but the weather has not been at all cooperative. Next time!

Aubière is a small suburb of Clermont-Ferrand, and in the town center has very little to offer in the way of dining out. There are two restaurants in the pedestrian sector, neither of which I've been to, neither of which if French. The restaurant on the main square is open for lunch but not for dinner. In fact, the only ready-made food available in the evening is from the pizza truck that comes around Tues-Weds-Thurs. Darn good pizza. And there's a new kebab place, right next to the church.

There are three bars on the square, and three or four more on side streets. They open early and close early. Not a lot of nightlife in Aubière! Not in old Aubière that is – to the north the town limits include a vast semi-industrial and commercial area. There, there are chain restaurants and hotels and a multiplex movie complex, McDonald's. I don't go there to dine (last bus home at 7:35).

Chinese takeout truck at the Sunday market. Below, my favorite of the bakeries. From the line, which is reasonable just now, it looks like everybody's favorite.

Anyway, there's plenty to eat in Aubière. We have four or five bakeries, two butchers, a greengrocer, a portugese wine shop, and a convenience store. No cheesemonger unless it's on one of the little pedestrian alleys and I haven't discovered it yet. Take a tour around the market Sunday morning and there's every fresh food you need, and many stands with ready-made specialties. Roast chickens, meat dishes, paella, squid in a tomato-cream sauce, aligot and truffade (potatos with garlic and cheese: truffade is chunky and has onions, aligot is tricked-out mashed potatos) This is where I do my food shopping. I bring my own egg cartons. I tell the cheese people how much to cut off for me, and they'll let me taste it before I make my choice (though beware all the little taster plates on offer – taking a bit means if you like it you'll be buying some – it's not graze as you go!). At the roast chicken carts they take orders for geese, ducks, and rabbits too.

Tunisian treats. They sell ten kinds of olives, too.

One vat of paella, one vat of squid in tomato sauce.

Oysters for the Easter feast.

One of the roast chicken stands. Below the chickens on rotating spits there's a trough of potatos catching the drippings.

A vat of aligot, next to dozens of sausages mixed with onions and peppers.

So by and large, the local specialty is Fresh. You can now drive to the hypermarket down the road and get all your shopping done in one go, and save money doing it. But many people like to walk around the market with their baskets over their arms, picking and choosing, and, if not always dealing directly with the producers of what they buy, at least cutting out a step or two of middlemen. I like that. I like buying my honey this morning from the guy who keeps the bees, my fungus-covered cheese from the maker, my eggs laid by chickens not more than half an hour away from here. The strawberries did come from Morocco, but I just couldn't resist, and local fruit is still at the flowering stage.

There might be a good coat of fungus on the outside of the disks of St Nectaire, but it's great cheese. And you can taste it to choose the one you like - mild, more 'done', very 'done'. I like it in the middle.

You can taste the honey before deciding, too.

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I didn't know it was going to stick

French people love nicknames. Not in our American way of shortening regular names; no, they will never reduce Robert to Bob, or Jacqueline-Inès to Jacki. But funny, descriptive nicknames they like, sometimes ones you don't say to the person concerned.
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So a while ago I was chatting with our administrative assistant over coffee, who asked me to describe the position of my 2nd-year Master student, Alex. And, for some reason I have no memory of, I said he was a sort of embryonic doctoral student.
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And now the whole lab knows him as L'embryon.
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Which he kind of likes.
Glad I could contribute.

Jetlag as a medical disorder.

Over at Mind Hacks on Tuesday there was a piece concerning the push from pharmaceutical companies to classify jetlag as a medical disorder. The better to sell their miraculous remedies, ‘natch.
Now, my readers can probably tell I take a dim view of solving problems with pills, even health problems if they’re little ones going away on their own anyway. But this, gee, I gotta make this work for me. Every time I take a 2-week vacation in the States, or go there for a conference, now I’ll be able to put in for sick time to get over the pain of returning!
It’s a golden idea!It must be said, the 9-hour difference between the West Coast and France isn’t too onerous going west - you just stay up late and sleep late and that’s it. But coming back is hell. I walk around groggy for a week. And I know that sunlight is the best thing for resetting your internal clock, maybe a little melatonin to get the sleep schedule back on, but it still takes a while. The French are insane with taking this leave and that leave, and I bet an official medical disorder would get me two-three days of kicking around the garden!

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/04/drug_company_pushes_.html

Excursion to the Atlas (7 of 7)

Oof. Last evening and I’m glad to have it to myself. I’m exhausted from a morning of shopping the souks for gifts and the afternoon on a little trip to the countryside.
I just wish I could have had all day in the country. Getting some fresh air was a treat, and with the rain they’ve had this year everything is green and blooming.
Just to make my bag heavier, I hauled a book with me, uselessly. This is because Hassan is so habitually late and it’s so difficult to park near the hotel, that I read in the lobby for a good half hour waiting for him, and then had to jump into the double-parked car pronto.
I like Hassan. He’s got a real sense of dry humor, and he’s always yelling ! Badia ! in an Arabic way that is quite different than his neatly spoken French. On the other hand, he’s quite a fan of Brian Adams, and every time I ride in his car it’s the same cassette, over and over. ‘Please forgive me...’
We’re taking his car on the trip, and meet Badia at a swanky hotel where she uses the gym. She has YJ and his wife Edith with her - it was a convenient place to leave her car. Finally they emerge from touring the swimming pool, after a certain number of Badia!!s shouted into the phone.
Off we go southeast to the foothills of the Atlas mountains. The first 15 miles or so are flat plains dotted with random mansions, shacks, and olive groves, but all the same I have the urge to request a photostop every two minutes. This herd of sheep. That roadside shop, all beg to be captured. But I wait, and we start to climb, gently, into the foothills.
The sun has gone, hidden by thick clouds as soon as we start to gain altitude, making the landscape nice, but not spectacular. Along our route we pass turnouts where camels and their handlers are waiting for tourists to stop. Shops selling carpets or metalwork, or pottery line the road.
We stop for tea in a popular spot. Even in early April, on a Thursday, the parking strip is nearly full and all the picnic tables are taken by families having a break. There’s a lively snowmelt stream with a rickety rope and plank bridge that Edith, YJ, and I dare to cross: our hosts take the more secure crossing. On the far bank families are sitting on rugs, enjoying picnics they’ve brought and tajines and tea ordered from somewhere. BB finds a nice shady clearing a few yards up from the bank, identifies the proprietor, and orders a table, five chairs, and mint tea.
Kids are playing, women are chatting, the poppies are in intense bloom. Upstream a party of women is washing clothes in the stream, just like since forever.We decide to take a walk upstream, me in hopes of obtaining a vista of the now-close snowy peaks of the Atlas. But it isn’t to be. We walk along the road a hundred meters, then give up, not wanting to battle the traffic. Which isn’t much, but it is persistent. Then the idea is to go back to an intriguing shop we passed, all covered with carpets on one side and a hill of pottery spilling down from the other. This time we make several photostops, though the poor light didn’t do the countryside justice.

Descending into the Marrakech plain, Edith mentions there’s a saffron garden nearby to visit, and, after a touch of confusion, we make the detour. Hassan: You’ve got to take the detours in life!
It’s a great place to stop. I finally get a look at a garden going full-tilt and trash-free. Orange trees in fruit and bloom, roses, olives in rows, poppies in the field where the saffron crocuses are in their leafy phase. Those flowers come out in November, unlike the crocus just fading in my own yard. It’s a short tour, a last breath of clean air, and a cup of mint tea spiced with all kinds of things from the garden. Orange blossom, rosemary, sage, marjoram, even geranium leaves, all go into the tea at one season or another, many of which sound excellent. Too many different things, alas, are in this particular cup.
Traveling back to the city in the late afternoon, we remark on how many people are just hanging out by the side of the road. Families are picnicing. Women are gathering who knows what. Kids are playing, riding bikes, waiting for their mothers to be finished talking. Random men are standing around.
It’s the perfect angle of late sun to wander among the olive trees taking photographs, but we are all tired and I get the idea that our hosts have things to do still today. It was very generous of them to take the afternoon off just to haul us around the countryside.

We make plans for next time. Everybody is in favor of meeting in a different city, say Fez, for a day and night there before coming down to Marrakech. We also are eager to arrange a Franco-Maghreb breast cancer genetics gathering where we can at last get the Tunisian, Algerian and Moroccan groups together. And definitely we’ll be speaking to our computing department about the spam-blocker!
It’s seven by the time Hassan drops me off at the hotel, and the lobby is swarming with a newly arrived gaggle of young tourists, all trying to check in at once. Great. This hotel is dreadfully noisy, all hard surfaces and little insulation. As predicted, there are comings and goings and raucous laughter until well after 1. I sleep very badly, both because of the noise and because I’m coming down with a sore throat. My wake-up call is at 4, and a friend is coming at 4:30 to round us up for the airport. At one point I get up to use the bathroom and hear a honk outside that isn’t like the usual traffic noise. Booting up my computer, yep, it’s 4:34. No way I slept through the call; there just wasn’t one. I throw on my clothes, grab my pre-packed luggage, and that’s it for this time. Oh, except for missing my connection in Paris because the baggage thing was too slow - it takes me 14 hours to get home

The Majorelle Garden (6 of 7)

This garden in the heart of Marrakech was established by a French expat in the early 20th century. Now open to the public for 30 Dh (about $3), it’s one of the most popular visits in the city. If you can ignore the teeming crowd of tourists, each trying for his own perfect photograph, it is a quiet and wonderful place.