Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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As we walked through the 7th arrondissement yesterday, we passed a large junior and senior high school. Since it was mid-day on a Friday, the kids had been let out of school. Many schools in France are closed on Wednesdays, let the kids out early on Fridays, yet require the kids to attend school on Saturdays. As you can imagine, many families wish that Saturday school would go away and that the kids would have to attend school on Wednesdays and all day on Fridays. If that were the case, child care and family weekends would be easier to arrange. I’m always appalled to see so many young women smoking. (Why do more young women smoke than young men???) But to see some of these young kids, male and female, lighting up right after school makes me sick. They don’t realize what it will do to the quality of their last years of life, how it will most likely shorten their lives, and the grief it will cause those who are close to them. That they think smoking is cool is strongly ironic to me; because I just think smoking makes them look foolish. They might wise up in a few years, but then they’ll be hooked and it will be too late to quit easily. In fact, quitting, if they can do it, will be one of the toughest things they do in their lifetimes. Young girls smoking are a hazard on the sidewalk because they hold their lit cigarettes down low and out to the side – where they can burn holes in your clothing if they pass by too closely and carelessly. Now, on a variation of this hazard, there are the young girls who are smoking and also staring down into their smartphones, which are held a few inches below and in front of their downturned faces. The cigarette sticks out to the side from one of the hands holding the smartphone. The young girl does this while walking forward along the sidewalk, zombie-like, and oblivious to whom she might run into and burn. The smoking smartphone zombies are a threat to my long hair. So far this summer, I have managed to avoid being burned. But these young women are burning their own futures . . . if only they knew. How idiotically wasteful it is. So yes, the rentrée has happened for the kids, and as Le Parisien as reports “le rythme frénétique des journées est vite revenue” (the frenetically paced days have quickly returned). The other day at the fromagerie in the Saint Germain market, we initially mis-read, and therefore mis-pronounced, the laguiole cheese that we ordered. Mr. Sanders, the proprietor of the fromagerie, said (in French, of course), “It is like the knife, the laguiole, are you familiar with the laguiole?” My eyes widened in wonder, and I said “Non, pas de tout.” The reason I was surprised is that I am familiar with the word, but I thought it was simply the name of a town in the Aubrac plateau (remember the day earlier this summer when I wrote about Aubrac cows?). Laguiole is a controlled appellation for this cheese, so it only comes from the departments of Aveyron, Cantal, and Lozère. It can be made from the milk of either Aubrac or Simmental cows. Now that I’ve done some research, I know that laguiole is also the name for a particular kind of pocket knife originally made in the town of Laguiole. Now the laguiole knives are made in a number of places in southern France, with the majority coming from Thiers. Originally designed in 1829 by Jean-Pierre Calmels, the laguiole has a bee design where you put the pressure with your index finger when you use the extended knife. The bee was also a symbol used by Napoleon, and by the Merovingian kings long before him. An awl was added to the laguiole in 1840. Tom says it is for removing the hook from a fish’s mouth. That makes sense, but Wikipedia says it was used by cattlemen to puncture body cavities of animals suffering from bloat, to relive the pressure caused by eating too much young grass. This awl is triangular, not round, and short, to insure that the puncture wound would not necessarily kill the poor animal. Later, starting around 1880, a corkscrew was added to the laguiole. The handles on the original laguioles were made from cattle horns. But later, some fancy French hardwoods were used, and even later ivory was used – often carved into the shape of something, such as a naked woman. So, the cheese wasn’t named for the knife. Rather, the knife and the cheese were named for the town. Unfortunately, the town of Laguiole never patented or trademarked the knife, so there are lots of cheap knock-offs out there in the marketplace. Now that I think about it, I believe that we’ve often passed a shop that has laguiole knives in the window. I think it is on the rue Saint Sulpice. We’ll investigate later. Sign
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Saturday, September 10, 2011
Dinner last
night was at Le Cantina Napolitaine, on the rue
Clement in the Saint Germain market. This is the veal scallopini
pizzaioli. It was excellent. Tom had the veal scallopini
al limoni, and he pronounced it
“very good.”
Dessert was
a Baba al Limoncello. The round things are balls of pound cake,
sitting in whipped cream, on a base of fraise
melba, soaked in limoncello liquer.
A
Parisian’s attempt to instruct her neighbors not to leave their garbage in
front of her gate.
Above and
below, strange exhibit under the Pont Alexandre
III, back in early July.
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