Food! Almost one month left.

March is coming slowly to an end. My ticket home has been bought and I am almost completely finished with my application to Osaka, Japan. I have my occasional moment where I think, "Wow, I am so ready to go home!" or "I haven't done everything I want to do! I'm not ready to go home yet!" but I think I am ready. A part of my keeps wanting to cancel my Japan idea, but I've come too far and worked too hard. Why would I want to cancel it, you ask? Well, I think being homesick is mostly what it is. It happens, I just can't allow for myself to give in. Going to Japan is obligatory, just as was coming to France, going to college. It is a landmark in my brain that has been planted and will not move no matter how many other options I try to give myself. It's how I work.

Other than being kind of moody this last month (I find myself being a little more facetious and irritated lately only to pause after a moment and wonder to myself why I'm the one being a pain in the ass) and busily worrying about things getting done, I've been going on excursions.
1. Dijon and Beaune. Lovely cities that I greatly enjoyed.
2. "Tirer Les Bois". Went to a vineyard and hacked at the vines that had decided to grow around the wires.
3. Les Grottes de Chorange: absolutely magnificent.
Don't worry, I'll eventually post the photos to 1 and 3 on Facebook some day soon. I didn't take pictures of 2 considering that it was working.

To get to the main topic I'd like to talk about today other than a brief catching up, food is one of those cultural things that I find necessary to test out while in a new place. I'll be honest, eating is not my favorite time occupation. In fact, sometimes I feel disgusted at the fact that I need to eat in order to stay alive. I wish that I could eat whenever I wanted instead of inconveniently being bothered by tummy rumblies when I'm too busy(lazy) to go and feed myself. Other than that, I do enjoy tasting new foods and cuisines. France is big on gastronomy and the past six months have been full of tasting new things. What have I had here, you ask? Just so you know, I will pretty much taste anything.

- Lots of different kinds of cheese. I can't remember all of their names, but back in Angers every time I ate with my host family (three times a week) there was a new cheese to test out. Many different types of goat cheese, Parmesan, Beaufort, lots of different blue cheeses like Roquefort (supposedly the strongest cheese, but other people tell me any cheese can be super strong if you leave it in the fridge for like three weeks), and well ... lots of others. I've been to gastronomy fairs where there are literally like hundreds of booths of cheese, wine, meat, and other regional specialties ... but mostly cheese. I actually do not like cheese, but since there is like 360+ cheeses I don't see why I can't be bothered to at least taste every kind presented. I probably won't like it since I have yet to like a cheese, but you never know until you try, eh?

- Wine. So much wine. I hate wine too, but I am like a wine master. Red tastes like strong vomit, white tastes like normal vomit, sweet white tastes like perfume. I've tasted so much wine here that I am really positive that I do not like it. I did have some strawberry wine that was actually not too bad.

- Bread. The French love bread just as much as they love wine and cheese, don't you let anyone tell you otherwise. Baguettes galore. Brioche. Bread with praline in it, bread with sugar on it, bread with cinnamon in it, but mostly they like to eat plain bread.

- Flan. A delicious dessert made of the dreams of children. Love this shit. Go Google it if you don't know what it is.

- Omelette norvégienne (or apparently in English it goes by the super awesome name of Baked Alaska). They usually eat this during Christmas time. Basically it's deliciousness that they throw burning alcohol on which caramelizes the frosting or whatever is on top.

- Boudin Blanc (White Sausage). Made for Christmas. I've had it twice and neither times did I like it. It is literally a white sausage. I believe it is made of pig, but not the bloody parts. That's left up to what's next.

- Boudin Noir (Blood Sausage). Yeah, this is the stuff made of pig blood. You cut it up and weird coagulated blood kind of bobs out (if I shake the plate, it wiggles). The idea is disgusting, but I found it to be rather delicious.

- Escargot. I find escargot to be a delicate meal. You eat it daintily with adorable little forks and then you are still madly hungry afterwards. In most restaurant they only give you four to eight of them, which is kind of a sham because they are so delicious. They're not slimy, contrary to popular belief.

- Oysters. These kind of depend on the juices that have been added. My favorite is when the juice you slurp out after eating the delicious morsel tastes like vinegar. My least favorite part is when you accidentally swallow pieces of the shell ...

- Couscous and Semolina. A North African dish. They're little rice looking things that have no flavor until flavor is added.

- Foie Gras (duck/goose liver). This stuff is so good, I could eat a jar of it. With some bread of course. It's also really popular to find at gastronomy fairs because every region apparently makes it differently (but it pretty much tastes all the same). I had a conversation about chicken with my host parents where they mentioned that they only buy chicken from local farms where they know the chicken weren't treated horribly. I asked them about Foie Gras (go look up the process of how they make that, eh) and all they said to that was, "Well, Foie Gras is delicious." Okay then. No complaints here, but ...

- Okonomiyaki. My Japanese roommate back in Angers made this before we parted ways. It's a little difficult to explain so your best bet is to look it up. But it was delicious and is a specialty in Osaka, so I'm guessing I'll be having this again if I manage to make the cut for the Osaka abroad program.

- Quiche. I hate quiche. It is one of the few things that I will not taste over and over again. I don't like the super scrambled egg texture. When I have scrambled eggs at my house they have to made a certain way because I just don't like the super fluffy egg thing. It is weird in my mouth and actually makes me kind of gag.

- Horse meat. Eh. It's okay. Didn't particularly like or dislike it. It kind of has a weird texture.

- Boeuf Tartare (raw beef). Considering that the French don't seem to like to cook their food all the way, this isn't too weird, eh? It tastes like beef ... but cold. I have yet to catch salmonella from it.

- Croissants. Soooo sick of croissants. They were so magnificent at first but then I had too many of them.

- Pain au chocolate. Chocolate bread? Bread with chocolate in it. See Croissants.

- Moules frites (mussels and French fries). Mussels aren't really filling, but French fries are! Here's something cute about French fries ... they're called French fries because they originate from Belgium. While in Dijon we were at a Kebab place and the 'Belgian Sandwich' was just two pieces of bread with a bunch of fries between. Hi-layre-ee-uss.

- Kebab and Shawarma. A middle eastern cuisine. Extremely greasy but quite delicious. Meat is generally of questionable origin according to Urban Dictionary, but hey ... obviously I am not one to really care considering my track record on what I'll eat, eh?

- Rabbit. But dey so kewt DEY SO DELICIOUS. Probably the best, most perfect meat in existence.

- Crepes. CREPES. Okay. there are "dinner crepes" where you put things like meat, cheese, tomatos, eggs, et cetera in it ... not my favorite. Don't really dig those kinds of crepes. But chocolate crepes? Caramel, salted butter crepes? The stamp of delicious is required for this entry. [DELICIOUS]

- Fromage Blanc. That translates as White Cheese. It is like yogurt, but be careful where you buy it at or it actually tastes like cheese. It's a dessert item.

- Duck. Not exactly rabbit, but delicious all the same.

- Fish and Chips. I had this in London. Well, it's ... it's fish and chips (fries). Nothing too special.

- Beer. I've had a fair share of beer tasting as well, not as much as wine, but tasted all the same. Beer is questionable. It is not quite as off-putting to me as wine, but I don't exactly like it either. There was one beer I tasted that I kind of liked, but it was in an Irish pub somewhere in Angers that I cannot even remember the name of. Of course, in Dublin I had Guinness. I have yet to figure out if I like Guinness or not ...

- Cider. Depends on what kind it is. Though, I don't really like alcohol either way so there's that.

- Tartes. Apple tart, raspberry tart, strawberry tart. Nummy.

- Hot chocolate and coffee. I've noticed that both of these are a lot more bitter here in France than in the U.S. My first few weeks here I had to add sugar to my hot chocolate. I'm used to it now. Coffee, on the other hand, I have never liked in the first place but it is especially black here.

- Ominous specialty alcohols from the Alps with branches of a pine tree in them. I love drinking pine-sol (this is a joke, it was awful).

- Weird aperatif snacks. An aperatif is when everyone invited sits around and has a whole meal of small little snacks and generally some wine to go with it. Since I don't know the names of the things I've eaten during aperatifs I'll just have to describe them. Weird little pieces of bread with meat in it, weird spreads that taste like fish, salmon (salmon in France is not eaten as fresh as salmon in Alaska), and pretzel sticks.

- Macarons. Little delicious cake things.

- Chocolate. It is really good here. Kind of bitter but good. It doesn't taste like plastic how many chocolates in the U.S. taste.

- Mushroom meals from the caves. Gross. But that's my fault because I had a food poisoning experience the year before thanks to mushrooms (and my stupidity).

- Churros. Yum!

- Scones. I have had them before in Alaska, but I noticed that scones from Ireland taste different from scones from London. Cheers.

- English and Earl Grey Tea. Best tea ever. Well, there's still green tea, but ...

- Fondue. I actually am not a huge fan of fondue. I mean the traditional cheese and crouton fondue. I greatly prefer racklette.

- Racklette. Like fondue, a meal traditional to the Alps and Switzerland. You have a cheese melting thing and you melt the cheese and then you slide it onto some potatoes and meat. My favorite~

Well, that is all for now! I think this is long enough and I can't really think of any more, although I am sure that I have tasted other things.

Until next time~