When I was about to come home from our family Europe trip three years ago, I listed some practices I wanted to bring back with me, so that our vacation would leave me permanently changed, if only by a little bit.
And then there's the food. Since I have been here I have made a new vow at every meal, it seems. When I get home I am going to find a supplier of tiny sour French pickles and I will never again eat a ham sandwich without them. I will buy the beer at Surdyk's which is attached to the city's best cheese shop and I will find out if they sell Abondance and Tomme de Savoie, and I will make salads with fine ribbons of white, soft-rinded cheeses and twists of proscuitto. I will throw out all the bottled salad dressings and make only pungent mustard vinaigrettes and luscious cream dressings with herbs. I will buy a crêpe pan and an electric fondue pot, or at least a correctly-sized enameled cast iron saucepan that will hold the heat. I will buy the expensive butter, maybe not for the whole sticks that are melted to go into waffles, but at least to spread on my sandwiches. I will make pan sauces again with cream and wine.
I know better than to think, even for a minute, that I have time to do much of the fancy sort of French cooking. But surely I have time to make my quick meals more civilized? With the good kind of canned tuna that is packed in olive oil? With better cheeses on my salad? With tiny, ice-cold glasses of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice?
I did take up some of those practices, and a few others, like starting family meals with "first course" when I can manage it.
Will I take up any new ones this time around?
I have some thoughts.
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Food is always the first thing I think about, because you encounter it three times a day. I wish I could get greengages or Charentais melons, but they are a rarity. Anything more feasible?
Well, I was reminded how much I like sparkling water with meals, and a couple of the kids learned they like it for the first time. I'm not sure if it's realistic to think we'll grace our table with fizzy water; it would be a pain to lug one more liquid home from the store. But it's something maybe to have more often. One of my cousins swears by a Sodastream, just for making her water bubbly. I'm a little worried that this would lead our family down a direction I don't want to go. On the other hand, you can make tonic water with one, too. I suppose I could just buy bottles for a while and see what happened.
I have a new interest in Ligurian red wine: tart, a bit frizzante, pale so that it nearly looks like rosé. I guess I will look for some.
I learned to make proper fondue savoyarde, and I think I would like to try it again at home; that is, if I can find the right cheeses and wine. The wine might be tricky, since I don't think much of it is exported; but perhaps I can find something close to the right balance.
Another thing I learned: to make tuna sandwiches by mixing good tuna only with good mayonnaise, and spreading it on soft, not-at-all-crusty bread, with lettuce and tomato (maybe capers), and slicing the egg instead of mixing it in. The results are a bit more swanky and luxurious than my prior default tuna sandwich method, which involved diced onion and celery, lots of dill pickle relish, and sometimes a baguette.
(I will go on making tuna melts the old way, I think, though, with English muffins and sharp cheddar cheese. Those are pretty hard to beat.)
On the English side of sandwiches, I have decided to find a nice spicy chutney or two and squirrel them away in the fridge to have on buttered bread with more sharp cheddar cheese. And for drink: I was reminded of the superiority of Samuel Smith's beers. Some of these, I am sure I can find at home in Minneapolis: Taddy Porter, oatmeal stout, a bottled bitter. Maybe (I hope) the chocolate stout. "They're what, seven dollars a bottle?!" protested Mark, but I wouldn't drink them every day. Just some of the days, and I would share. Who knows, if I look high and low I might even find the apricot beer.
Furthermore, I have seen the light: puff pastry has great utility as a carbohydrate delivery method, and I am resolved to learn how to make sausage rolls and meat pies.
Also cheese-and-onion spread.
Maybe mushy peas.
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I don't know if I have any non-food sorts of things to take up. But I find myself wishing that we went away more often, maybe just for a weekend, to do things that are interesting or relaxing not so far away from home. I don't know how realistic that is. It seems easier to do one big trip than to find the time for multiple small ones; and many weekends are taken up by Scout trips, school planning, and necessary household tasks. But I would like to make it work, if it could work.
Who knows what you are capable of as a family if you don't try?
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