Random Thoughts

Some random Frenchy-type thoughts that are floating around my brain:

• What is it about putting a francophone wrestler into an English-language movie that gives it that automatic air of adventure? The Princess Bride and Sherlock Holmes just wouldn't be the same without "a Leviathan Frenchman with fists like Bayonne hams" (thank you, Wendy Ide, for quite possibly the best quote in a movie review since Pauline Kael).

• Rillettes de Tours now have a specialized designation! The Indication Géographique Protégée means that this yummy pork product will be as protected as Champagne, Vouvray and Ste. Maure de Touraine. Seriously, this stuff is like crack...I could eat tubs and tubs of it (after scraping the fat, of course).

• Speaking of Champagne, have you signed the petition urging American producers of sparkling wines to stop calling them Champagne if they weren't produced in France? An ad on the back cover of my latest issue of The New Yorker urged me to do so, and of course I couldn't resist. The ad is correct: "Champagne only comes from Champagne, France."

• In confessional news, I generally dislike Melissa D'Arabian, the winner of the latest season of The Next Food Network Star (I was a huge Jeffrey fan), but I admit to having made "her" potato tarte recipe. It doesn't really count as her recipe, since she used her French mother-in-law's crust recipe, and that's half the dish! It was pretty delicious. I plan to try her chicken à l'orange at some point this winter.

• In a family game of Apples to Apples over the holiday, I was the judge and the word was "timeless". One family member submitted "the Eiffel Tower", which almost won, until my hubby trumped them all with "Joan of Arc". I knew I married that man for a reason! Way to play to the judge, honey. Je t'aime.

• Also notable over the holiday, my first attempt at choucroute garnie was a great success! I didn't take a photo (sadly), but it looked, smelled and tasted wonderful. The flavor profile was a new one to all of my assembled family, but everyone enjoyed it. For dessert, I made my famous tarte aux pommes à l'Alsacienne.

• I finally gave in and actually used Twitter for once, but only because Francophilia was running a contest for free French music. See the annoyances I will put up with just for Frenchiness?

• Lady Gaga wins the prize for best French lyrics in an English-language song for 2009. Je veux ton amour et je veux ta revanche, indeed. (Nevermind that half those lyrics make no sense in neither French nor English.)

• As of next week, it will officially be 6 years since I left for my extended say in Touraine. I miss it immensely. I bought myself a primrose at the grocery store the other day just because it reminded me of the flower market in the center of town, the only spot of color in an otherwise dreary winter landscape.

Photo: tarte aux pommes de terres et lardons. Copyright MLG.

Merci Mille Fois!

I would just like to take a moment to thank Johnny Retail for designing a new title graphic for me.

He used a photo I took while visiting Chinon. It is a statue (by Roulleau) of Jeanne d'Arc totally trampling a bunch of Brits on a charging horse. It's by far the best statue of her I've seen--a great "action shot". Here's the full version:



Somehow, I thought it would be an appropriate header for this blog. Just pretend those Brits are Americans and we're all set.

Les crusades de Jeanne d'Arc

I have decided that it would be interesting to expand this blog to encompass all of my Frenchie pet peeves, not just the pronunciation-related ones. This opens a whole new can of worms, since, for the past 10 years, I have been fielding just about every jackass (or, as we say in Pittsburgh, 'jagoff') comment about the French imaginable. Aside from being totally ridiculous, such comments are really a waste of my time. I used to feel like a real perroquet at times, repeating the same tired responses to the comments and questions of small-minded folks, including my dear-old-dad, a former Marine ("The French started Vietnam! We saved their ass in World War II!"). Total strangers, when pursuing the usual course of mindless small-talk, would ask what my major was. I would reply, which would then be met with a snide laugh and "French?! What are you going to do with THAT??".

As I entered college, my mother informed me that I would be ruining my life if I continued to study French. She was basing this comment on her own sad experience, having studied standard Italian in college to supplement her native Abbruzzese dialect. While I am very Italian and see some minor advantages to knowing the language (mostly to decipher family gossip at my grandmother's dinner table), I could never justify that sort of language choice. Check the list of countries that use Italian as an official language. Then compare it to French. Yeah, I'm "ruining my life", alright. I feel sorry for my mom sometimes; I know she had different ambitions in life. She wanted to travel and visit her homeland more often than just once every 25 years; things just didn't work out the way she'd planned. I can't say her comment to me didn't hurt, but I can understand why she made it; she didn't want me to fall into the trap that she did, of pursuing her language enthusiasm to a certifiable level and then watching it do her absolutely no good in the workplace. She was just trying to look out for me, but I know she underestimated my francophilia and never thought she'd end up with such an eccentric, obsessive francophile of a daughter.

My dad eventually backed off with the anti-French comments, only to be replaced by my future father-in-law. A stauch Republican (will somebody please remind me exactly why I'm marrying into this family, again?), he had a field day along with the Fox News pundits, bleating comments at me about freedom fries and surrender monkeys. I didn't take it well, eventually bringing my future mother-in-law to call a truce between us after I forced him to watch a Michael Moore documentary one politically-charged night.

In spite of all my goading family members, I persevered. A former high school teacher once dubbed me "Jeanne d'Arc" since I was constantly defending the French in any debate, regardless of topic. (Of course, in the true spirit of high school, my classmates transformed this into "Jeanne d'Ork", not entirely undeserved on my part.) I embraced the title and the defiance it implied.

So, here I am, for your reading enjoyment, the product of years of anti-French abuse and torment.

Photo: Me in Orléans, standing in a street where Jeanne d'Arc once rode, en route to train her troops. Photo taken by Marie-Helinette Lansade.