9 June 2010
02:10 Toulouse
(Photos)
Tom Waits is singing somewhere else in time and I am listening. Sitting on a rooftop in Toulouse. Feeling the slightest mist on my face. Côtes du Marmandais in my hand. Not a bad way to end a day.
The chair I am sitting in we picked up at Babou, I don’t know, maybe ten hours ago. It is a set of four chairs, a table, and an umbrella. It was metal poles, a glass disc, and a pain in the ass to get into his BMW. We tested it all out earlier, before we went to dinner. The umbrella goes up and down. Mission Accomplished!
Dinner was wonderful. We went to a little restaurant we picked mostly at random walking along Faubourg Bonnefoy, the street where Eric lives. The proprietor and the menu were based on foods from Cap Vert. Well the proprietor wasn’t exactly based on the food. I had a great bit of grilled steak with exotic fruits and a sweet sauce: Bife à Casa (entrecote grillée, fruit exotique, sauce roquefort, sucrée salée—fruit was fried banana, mango, sweet potato, papaya, pineapple, and one other).
We talked with the proprietor and we agreed that sweet and sweet can be complimented. Then we talked about heat being a compliment to sweet—mmm, the sweet heat. He told me he didn’t use the peppers for his French audience (cream lovers!). We talked a little about Thai food and New Orleans food. This lead to an offer of some of his home-made pepper sauce, with which they normally accompany the dish. Now we’re getting somewhere. He said it was jalapeño, but it neither looked like jalapeño nor tasted like jalapeño. It was delicious regardless. The sweets and the heat fell into a pleasant dance which I chewed myself into cuisine oblivion.
He invited us to a little party they are having on Saturday at the restaurant, but we have different plans for that evening so we had to decline. He is going to see about having the next one (which happens approximately monthly) before I leave. I hope to go again and try some more food. Maybe something off-menu.
But dinner is too late. What about breakfast?
Brioche. I stayed up until something ridiculous after having been awake for near 30 hours. I was fall down tired as we wandered around St George last night, but I still managed to get a couple of items posted before calling it quits. Woke up once and it was still dark. Strange toilet in the dark. Groggy. Survived. Woke up again and it was light. Felt good enough to start again. Brioche.
Eric insisted on coffee. Apparently this is what gives him all that energy. I confess ignorance to the source of my own. He’s in bed now. Has been for an hour.
Anyway, after breakfast we walked down Faubourg Bonnefoy. He doesn’t know his neighborhood yet as he is just moving here. But he knows what to recognize. So we walk South and I listen to Eric talk about the street, France, and his prowess. I’m not clear how they are related, but I feel if I just listen long enough it will all make sense.
Our furthest point of venture was a little open air spontaneous market (well, spontaneous every Tuesday). There were charcuteries, fromageries, and all sorts of things you’d always hope to find in a ring of wagons around a dried up well. Nice to see it. Salivated profusely. Profoundly even. Bought a loaf of fouasse and tried some cookies which reminded me of cookies my grandmother used to make and which are flavored with anisette. The fouasse was similar in ways to brioche except its a loaf and encrusted at the top with sugar crystals.
The better part of the day day was spent getting mish-mash for Eric’s apartment. There is this business, enormous, called Babou. I don’t know, I suppose it’s somewhat like a large Fred Meyer or large Target (sans food). Large at any rate. We picked up mops and buckets and trash vessels and a lot of other objet plastique. C’est drôle.
Also, I can confirm that Ikea here is a lot like Ikea in South Center. The bunned sausages were different. Eric tells me that the French just don’t understand the whole hotdoggie sausage thing. My protest is that they are not selling hotdogs. They are selling slender chicken sausages. They could use some work. But we didn’t only go for sausages. A couple of tables and some other Ikea classics. Yeah, Consumers!
Finally we walked around a mall of some sorts (le centre commercial Roque or le grand Roque). At one end was a store. Again, a bit like a mammoth Fred Meyer. Only this place has pig hind quarters. The yogurt aisle was more like a yogurt isle. It was twice as large as the cheese section and that was larger than the vast majority of beer sections I’ve seen. Pig’s heaven. Well, except for the whole dead relatives thing.
Brought our bounty back from the epic euro shopping center and did the aforementioned patio furniture test. Eric rolled a blunt but I really just can’t stand tobacco. The weather upon arrival was too hot for long pants or a jacket (even well into the night), but today it was scheduled to rain. Apparently the rain here is the only thing without a good union as the rain started ahead of schedule. Being from Seattle has its advantages.
Sometimes in Seattle we get this mist where you can walk around and very nearly forget it’s actually dampening everything. I call it mobile humidity. No need to wipe eyeglasses. That was the sort of rain that greeted me eating a little nibble under the newly installed umbrella. I pushed my chair out from under the protection and enjoyed the cooling mist dissipate the heat from the several three story trips up the winding stair.
Signing off to Reservations by Wilco.
What a life. I wonder who is living it?
For those interested, the Côtes du Marmandais was from Château Briolet (2006) and was picked up at basically a convenience store (run by a Russian immigrant) around 23:00 for six euros.
