Andrus Foe Paws

Thanksgiving in Paris

We hadn’t been here very long, and it was a regular work day for Joe, but Abi wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner on THE day.  Joe came home a little early.  Abi and I went to the butcher and bought filet mignon…au porc to make our favorite herbed pork medallions (pork tenderloin) out of the Best Recipe Cookbook.  We bought apple pear sauce…apple sauce with chunks of pears in it, had roasted veggies and lit candles.  We also made Missy B’s  very delicious apple crisp for dessert.  A turkey for three seemed a little silly and you have to order turkeys weeks in advance.  Good thing our boxes came from Paris so we could break out the pie plate! Since this was our first baking effort we learned that it isn’t a good idea to  use the fan (kind of like a convection oven but not really) when you bake unless you keep a careful eye on things…it will be very done on the top and not so done in the middle.  We also had to experiment with brown sugar substitutes…we are using something called  muscovado which you can buy at the Bio…(pronounced like the abbreviation for body odor) which is a health food store.    It has a hint of molasses taste in it and is a similar texture to our brown sugar.  Since then people have told me that you can make brown sugar with white sugar and molasses…but we haven’t found molasses at the local super market.

What do you MEAN the water will be off between 8-16 until the project is finished???

About the time that we figured out how long it took to do laundry this sign appeared on the door to our building…Although I do not speak French…I could kind of tell from the illustration that it had something to do with water…I met my neighbor coming out to walk his dog and confirmed my suspicions.  What that entailed for us was only doing laundry in the evening.  It also meant filling a bucket with water for toilet flushing and planning to be out all day…OH  and showers had to be taken before 8 in the morning (no sleeping in for Abi!).  We also filled bottles for drinking water.  but mostly we tried to be out.  They redid the pipes in the cave (cellar) and took out all the cool water fountains in the hallways from the days before running water in each apartment.  Then they used the place where the old pipes were to hide all the electical wires that were running in pipes along the outside of the walls. It took about six weeks.  Everytime we thought we were home free and decided not to keep a bucket in the bathroom because the water had been on all day…the water would be off…  We were glad that they finished the project before our Christmas company came!

This is what was hanging in the hallway outside our door when we moved in. It was the source of water before running water to each apartment in the building. More convenient than hauling the water up five flights of stairs, I would say...

The French Iron EVERYTHING

I should have known by the number and variety of irons for sale in the stores.  It is truly amazing to see the selection that is available….And the quality of the irons!  Supurb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dry cleaning and laundry is very expensive here so we aren’t sending Joe’s shirts out.  Takes me back to the days that Michele and I used to chat on the phone while we ironed in our early married life.  I figured out that there is a setting on the dryer that dries the clothes until they are just damp enough to iron…it helps with the wrinkles some…I can only stand to wash six shirts at a time because that is all I can stand to iron at once.  I have wished now and then that I had access to the old ironwright that my mom used before permanent press and before we had a clothes dryer.  It would make doing sheets so much easier.

We have had to resort to buying distilled water so as to not clog up the iron with all the minerals in the water here.  There is a short shelf at the grocery story devoted to products for ironing…We have also discovered that it is best to line dry the duvet covers (thanks for the suggestion, Val)  rather than trying to dry them in the clothes dryer…the wrinkles aren’t so hard to iron out.

It takes HOW long to dry the clothes?

We have a combination washer/dryer…something that I was warned against before we signed up for this apartment…but hey, we didn’t have much choice in the matter…and it is a NEW machine.  The real estate agent told me that you can speed things up by drying only half a load at a time.  My first load of wash was an all day affair.  First you wash…on the econo setting it takes two hours to wash one load (the water heats up in the machine).  Then if you split the load in half and dry on the lower of the two heats it takes about two hours for each load of drying.  Do the math…that is 6 hours for one load of laundry and there is no such thing as throwing a load in the washer while the other load is drying!

The drying process is interesting.  The clothes go round and get hot and then the dryer spins the condensation out of the machine and the cycle starts again…heat, toss, condense, spin, heat toss, condense spin…in a small drum…until the clothes are dry…  all that spinning causes lots of wrinkles.  Even the sheets are too wrinkled to put on the bed…and the duvet covers!!!! total disaster….

I was able to find directions for operating the machine in English (on line) and have since figured out that I can greatly shorten the wash cycle by picking different settings and adjusting the length of the wash.  We can now wash each batch for an hour or so…Drying is more complicated.  Only two settings…Very wrinkly or somewhat wrinkly.  Or hang the stuff up to dry on the drying rack.

The Wait for Our Stuff from Boston

Lady and the Unicorn puzzle from the Cluny Musee

My lace shawl....finished Novemeber, 2011

We live in a furnished apartment so we didn’t need to ship much from Hingham but we wanted a few touches to make us feel at home:  things like family photographs, quilts, knives, non-metric measuring cups and spoons. a vegetable peeler and can opener for arthritic hands, etc.  We shipped two ottoman’s to try to make sitting in the very uncomfortable side chairs bearable.  We also wanted books to read (that we could leave here when we finished), and I wanted to bring part of my knitting stash so I could work on some of the projects waiting in my que.  I figured I could bring more yarn over as I finished projects… We had the movers pick up our stuff in the beginning of October, thinking that it would take about six weeks to arrive.  We packed up enough books and projects in our suitcases to last until then.  After we arrived in Paris, I called Daley and Wanzer to see how things were coming.  They had just finished crating the stuff up and hadn’t had it picked up by the overseas mover yet!  Then they told us that we needed a detailed inventory for the overseas movers in French!  RIGHT!  like we have the ability to do that from Paris on a shipment that is crated and sitting in Hull, Massachusetts.  We decided to turn this issue over to the OECD HR group.  They worked things out and the moving company (which is based in Canada but works with a group in Connecticut) got our stuff on to a cargo ship.  They translated the English inventory into French for us and we kept our fingers crossed that our crate wouldn’t get stuck in French customs.

We waited and and waited…and while we waited, I finished a shawl and the back to McKenna’s sweater.  I read all of the books I had downloaded on the kindle, we bought a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and finished it…We did lots of sightseeing…and it started to get cold…hats and gloves and winter coats on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic!

The back of McKenna's sweater with a paper M on it.

Our shipment arrived the day before Thanksgiving…something to be grateful for, indeed.  The 24 boxes were brought up in our elevator.  If we had had large pieces of furniture they would have been lifted up with a crane and pulled through the tall windows in the apartment.  It all came, according to the inventory sheet…however, gloves and hats and laundry bags didn’t make it.  Are they missing?  Or are they in a box in the basement in Hingham?  Guess it will be a few years before we figure that out!

French Cheese Stinks

French President Charles de Gaulle said, “A country that produces 325 varieties of cheese cannot be governed.” I would say that while I’m not sure that I have been exposed to 325 varieties of cheese yet, I am of the opinion that cheeses in France smell more than cheeses in the US. 

When we first arrived, I couldn’t figure out why my kitchen always smelled like the trash needed to be taken out.  It clearly wasn’t the trash can.  Then sweet Jen said, “If you don’t want your kitchen to stink like the cheese in the fridge you need to put it in an air tight container. ”  Smart woman Jen!  She went shopping with us the first week we were here and helped us find a hair dryer, an electric tooth brush, boxes to put our socks and underwear in on the closet shelves….AND an air tight container (top shelf left).  I have since shared this important knowledge with a friend from the UK whose French partner adores stinky cheese…she is very grateful for the tip!

House guests/French Speaking Facilitators

The day after Abi and I arrived in Paris, our first house guest arrived.  Jen…one of our favorite seminary students is a nanny in France this year and she came to visit and to meet up with her sister Kerstin who was on her way home from a Doctor’s Without Borders mission to Africa.  It was great to see Jen and we knew just what kind of help we needed right off…help buying cell phones.  Kersten spent her early years in Rwanda and speaks fluent French and Jen hopes to become a French teacher one day.  They were a big help when it came to convincing Orange (the French Cell phone provider) that we really did want two iPhones…one for Joe and one for me and no we were not going to sell one of them so PLEASE don’t make us wait a week to buy the second phone.

SMALL WORLD STORY

When Abi and I arrived in Paris and were waiting to go through passport control I kept looking at a young woman who was chatting with her black associate.  I kept thinking…I’ve seen her before…where do I know her from?  But it’s weird at 6:30 am in an airport to walk up to someone and say, “don’t I know you?”  so I didn’t.  Turns out it was Kerstin…who was arriving at the same time from Africa…I had met her once before…but didn’t associate her with Jen…funny when she showed up at our door the next day.  🙂

Cook top shmook top

Joe arrived in Paris two weeks before Abi and I did.  He was quite pleased with the apartment except for the cook top.  He couldn’t get it to heat up…so he had to rely on the microwave and the oven to cook his meals.  So frustrating!  Abi took care of that issue the first night in the apartment.  She remembered hearing our friend Rebecca talk about the relative merits of induction cooktops compared to gas…  Voila!  The pot has to actually be ON the right burner before it will heat up!  Something about magnets…

Faux pas 4  ???? The griddle pan we didn’t want to live without that was coming in our boxes from home will not work on this cooktop.  No magnets.  😦

What we didn’t notice while selecting our apartment

I’m not sure…was this a faux pas?  Now that it is staying light longer…it seems ok.  When it was pitch black at 8:30 am and at 4 pm…I had my questions.  I do miss my bright, sunlight filled view of the garden in Hingham.  I think I need to plant window boxes in the spring.  There is a railing outside each of the windows.

Le Appartement: Part 3

The dining area: featuring a painting by the landlord in the cove and a table that will stretch to seat 12