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we've been eating pretty well here, whether from our own slowly developing culinary skills or from eating out, despite a few bumps in the road to our stomach. thanks to all, by the way, who have contributed recipes. i've made quite a few of them and they've made us happy and full.

now that the weather is getting warmer, all the cream and butter, bread and chocolate, wine and undercooked meat that are so beloved by the french (and now us) are starting to feel heavy. all the mental and physical sluggishness of winter needs to be sloughed off. the crocus bulbs that i planted in a window box when we arrived are beginning to bloom. they say, "the spirit is in need of renewal!" in their flower language. they urge me to clarify and purify. and they push a radical diet transformation. they tell me that we'll call it the 10 day cleanse. no dairy, no wheat, no sugar, no meat, no caffeine, no alcohol. add some daily yoga and meditation, candle-lit essential oil baths, and a massage from the significant other and we have a diy home spa retreat, "nestled in the south of france." hurry! for a limited time only!

i was vegetarian for a couple years in high school, having gotten bitten by the animal rights bug. then dropped the stringency and started eating chicken and fish occasionally, and this pseudo-vegetarian diet was with me for almost a decade, that is, until i met seth. i won't blame him wholly; it was about the same time that many of my previously vegetarian and pseudo-vegetarian friends started reverting back to omnivores (ironically, about the same time we moved to portland, one of the most vegetarian friendly places in the western world). i will say that having never been a vegetarian, seth didn't attach any special importance to eating a steak or italian sausage. it was natural to him, guilt-free. it might sound strange, but having only dated the vegetal variety, being so comfortable around someone who is so comfortable about eating meat, naturally transformed me in into a meat eater once again.

i'm now on my fourth day of my cleanse and my diet has thus far included: cooked buckwheat, pumpernickel bread, spelt almond and sesame cookies, kasha pasta with mediterranean galettes vegetal (flat vegetable and whole grain cakes) and olive tomato sauce, apple and prune compote, pears, strawberries, pineapple juice, rice milk, hazlenut & almond rice dessert, tofu and pepper stir fry with brown rice, chickpea and tomato curry with red rice, herbed spinach with carrots, green vegetable soup, rye crackers and rice cakes with curried vegetable pate, herbal teas, and lots of filtered water.

some of these things were bought at the local health food stores and organic co-op. i was happy to find out that they exist here too, in almost the same configuration as they do in the states, and with almost the same patrons. now, one doesn't need a natural foods store to do a cleanse. you can be even more basic about it - just fruit and vegetables and whole rice. you can make it about eating humbly. or you can eat all raw food, or go a step further and do a juice fast. the idea for me was to invert my ordinary dietary patterns, thus altering my daily choices and considering ones that i take for granted.

so far i'm keeping the cravings under control; my self-discipline is intact. but i'm curious as to when exactly i'm going to begin dreaming of cheese wheels and baguettes.

there are some things that i really miss about america right now, and they all belong in the stomach. yesterday, feeling a lack of good food in my life, i went to the super sized hypermarché to buy some harder to find groceries. i know that i shouldn't expect much from prepackaged sauces and food kits from the ethnic isle, but tonight for dinner i made the "cantonese style stir-fried rice mix" and it was so salty and flavorless i almost cried. not exaggerating there. i'm trying to salvage my tastebuds now with some baguette, cheese, and sauccisson sec, but i fear they may be too far gone for tonight so i will drink some vanilla coke that i've been stowing and finish off the meal with something predictably, trashily, good.

of course i should not be looking at grocery store isles for amazing food, but at produce stands and boucheries and my own imagination. but as of late i've been culinarily uninspired and the meals that i've attempted have been disappointing. and our kitchen is difficult to work in. we went down from a sad three square feet of counter space in portland to oh-so-very-very sad one square foot, so when cooking i often have to put things on the floor and the aforementioned echoey apartment acoustics when i do this, or any cooking activity for that matter, produce a jarring clatter that insures an unrelaxing cooking experience. we only have two burners that are very close together, and the bigger of them doesn't heat up as much as it should and we have a toaster oven instead of a regular oven. so while it seems that we got a bad deal somewhere, in actuality all of the places we looked at had measly kitchens, most even more so. for a supposed land of food, apartment dwellers aren't given much to work with.

this food homesickness, while usually low-grade, is exacerbated right now by seth's absence. he is in san francisco right now getting his visa and eating. he has been relaying tales to me of all the wonderful food there, with pavlovian effect.

when we've eaten out here we've had some good food sometimes, but not with the success ratio as say, portland dining. and portland is not necessarily a culinary capitol. but i'm realizing what makes american food so great is that the best of it isn't american. burritos and udon, green curry and chicken tandori, ethiopian stews and pho. i miss all of this so much and you just can't get it here. what you can get is moroccan food, which has been our favorite meal so far. but the asian restaurants have been, well, weird asian hybrids: thai curry with chinese vegetables and vietnamese shrimp chips. these cuisines are so good on their own, but it doesn't follow that they'd be good all melangé.

and then there's breakfast. i know, i've mentioned it, but i love big breakfasts and the french just don't understand. seth and i went to aix-en-provence the day before he left, and my lonely planet revealed that there was brunch at one of the restaurants. i was so happy because the only brunch in avignon is 55 euros. but then we got there and it was 28 euros which is just really hard to justify spending, especially since only one of us is a brunch hound, but then again we used to go to breakfast nearly every sunday, so if you add all that up.... okay, so instead we had some italian for lunch, provencal for dinner, and during both seth ended up with the better meal. and the next day i awoke, hours after seth left to catch his flight, and went to have a breakfast. saw a sign advertising brunch for 9.50 euros. finally. but it was an otherwise traditional french breakfast - bread, butter, jam, coffee or cocoa, and juice - with the addition of a savory part that filled a hot-out-of-the oven ceramic dish: two runny dippy eggs, one broken, and two big fatty bacon slabs all mangled together. don't they understand? bacon is only good because it's fried and crispy!

i will soon be praising french cuisine, i know it, but for the meantime i think i will long for the food that i cannot have. ye salad roll, ye yakisoba. eggs benedict, you soft pillow of bliss.

p.s. okay, as stated, i'm needing a little cooking inspiration. so if anyone has suggestions for cooking sites they swear by, or favorite cookbooks or even personal recipes they'd like to share, do let me know. what i'm looking for are good simple recipes that, given our limitations, involve a minimum of preparation steps and not too exotic ingredients. pastas need not apply.

it seemed a bit lonely to split a turkey breast between seth and i. there are some fellow english teachers that i hang out with here, so i decided to have them over for thanksgiving. one girl brought mashed potatoes. she was going to bring sweet potatoes too, but couldn't find any sweet potato or yam-like produce. another girl brought a mixed vegetable dish. one guy brought flan, his french roommate lasagna. and then we sat down on our rug, the one that doesn't cause an allergic reaction, and ate and ate and ate. and when we were all finished we watched a charlie brown thanksgiving.

so the turkey. they don't sell whole turkeys here, at least not that we've seen, and even if they did we wouldn't be able to fit one into our toaster oven. so our only turkey option was to buy it in parts. the last time we went grocery shopping i noticed little paupettes de dinde, which looked like little turkey breasts tied into a small serving-size ball with string. but then when we went shopping for thanksgiving dinner i actually read the ingredients: the first thing listed was 68% assorted pork meat. i did not want a turkey with an ingredients list, especially if the first thing listed is not turkey. so we settled on a rôti de dinde which is an all turkey roast, well, except for the big band of pork fat holding the whole thing together.

we finished off our meal with some chocolate, cheese, beaujolais, and some eau de vie de poire. yes, it's called water of life. it is this pear liquor and it's amazing. when i think of fruit liquor i think of schnappes, but this is not that. there is no thick syrupy sweetness; it's just pure alcoholy goodness with the a radiant hint of pear.*

hmm... what else? we splurged and spent 11 euros on christmas decoration for the event and for our own sheepish christmas streak: tinsel, little silver balls, a garland of red shiny beads and a string of christmas lights.

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*i just did a google search and the first hit was for a distillery in oregon. ah, the exotic discoveries we are making.