One Year until Provence!

In exactly one year we will leave for our 6 weeks in Aix-en-Provence.  I’m already ready, except for the French… but we have been studying diligently, listening to YouTube videos.  Even Fernando, who is getting tips from a polyglot on how best to become fluent in a language.  He also has some favorite French language instructors on Easy French.  They are both très charmante.

I have a couple of YouTube French instructors myself.  Both of them speak slowly and clearly so they are easier to understand than Julie Andrieu.  Français Authentique offers language learning but also talks about French politics, geography and culture.

Guillaume Posé - Professeur de français concentrates more on the language and speaks extremely clearly.  He is also très charmant.

I’m sure there are many more YouTube French instructors out there but these are some of my favorites.

Naturally I spend even more time checking out places to go and food to eat in Provence and the Côte d’Azure.  Recently I ran across this older Turkish/American couple who are living in Nice:  HappyGoLuckyTravel.

And, of course, they were suggested by YouTube after I started watching these videos on Nice by two German women: RivieraGo!  I especially liked their video on the hypermarché because I remember the Carrefour near our hotel in Toulon in 1999.  Such a selection of French cheeses!

My problem with YouTube, of course, is I subscribe to so many channels that it has become hard to find what I’m looking for and I have trouble remembering their names, which they always try to make unique and catchy and so even harder to remember!

Back to France

 On Monday we bit the bullet and signed up for Road Scholar’s Living and Learning in Provence, which is 6 weeks in Aix-en-Provence but not until April of NEXT year (2026)!  I had been floating the idea around and nobody seemed to have any objections and it was good we signed up Monday morning.  Fernando looked at the Road Scholar web page that afternoon and the April-May dates were SOLD OUT so apparently we got the last spot!  Otherwise we would have had to settle for February-March or October-November.  After going to Sicily in late November I’ve decided against the darker months, especially if one is out in the countryside.  Give me long days, even if the temperature is a bit warmer, although we will see if May in Provence changes my mind.  May in Northern Spain was lovely.

We’ll feel like students again!

Naturally I’ve been practicing my French these last two days and what better way than to watch YouTube videos while I’m recumbent biking.  At first I was scouring YouTube for any videos on Aix but the ones in English are by visitors and what can you really know about a town if you only visit for a day or two?  And of course the things they show you are pretty much the same.  The best I found was filmed 6 years ago by Dennis Callan, who apparently leads tours of France and you’ll see his tour group from Honolulu in this video:  https://youtu.be/Iu1f6S_Mek4?si=wX7Av5MCxUsrLpGY

Unfortunately there aren’t any couples like Les Frenchies who are covering the food scene in Provence in English so I decided to try my luck in French but YouTube by default brings up the English results so you have to train it to search in French.  My latest find has been Les Carnets de Julie, which is a production of France.tv and, although the video on Provence is 8 years old, it gave me an opportunity to practice listening to French.  I understood a few words here and there…

No, Mr. Littman did a very good job teaching me; something I learned early on in college and graduate school.  But listening to and understanding a native French speaker is something entirely different from reading French.  It’s those liaisons.  I tried slowing down the playback speed on YouTube to 75% but that made it worse.  Fortunately the Provence video by Julie didn’t have captions so I wasn’t distracted from listening.  She has a video from 2 months ago on Noel in Nice which has captions in English, French or Spanish.  Fortunately one can turn them off because what I need now is to listen to French, not read it.

Practicing French

 Yes, that's right, I've been practicing my French, reviving high school French from 56 years ago, not that I was ever able to speak it or understand "Fast Spoken French".   At least now they have a term for it and admit that the French drop a lot of vowels, consonants and whole syllables.  Sort of like what operatic Italian does to normal (well, as can be) Italian.  Geraldine has several YouTube videos to get you prepared for what you won't understand once you get off the plane at CDG.

In preparation I have gone beyond the lessons of Comme une Francaise and have plunged into the 100% French of KTO Television Catholique.  No, I am not listening to masses but watching La Cuisine des Monasteres in which François Lespés goes from monastery to monastery in France, filming monks and nuns preparing fairly simple but nourishing dishes.  The dishes remind me of the vegetarian food we had on the Road Scholar retreat at the Buddhist center in Santa Cruz, where cooks really do have to use their imagination.  

And yes, most of the dishes in the monasteries are vegetarian except for the pork they slip in there sometimes, most often in the form of andouillette (pig's colon filled with pig intestines -- and some herbs, spices and wine, of course).  Don't be fooled when they call it Andouille de Vire or Andouille de Guémené and start thinking it's a regular sausage filled with ground meat.  The nuns and monks slice it quite thinly and it is quite pretty with its concentric circles.  But Will will discourage you from eating it.

The monks and nuns like their milk, butter and eggs which is understandable in monasteries that raise their own cows and hens or in places like Normandy or Brittany where they traditionally use a lot of dairy products.  But sometimes they go overboard, as in this Tourte Normande which lines a pie plate with a circle of puff pastry, then covers it with creme fraiche, then a layer of onions sautéed in butter, followed by a layer of thinly sliced apples sautéed in butter, then a layer of the andouillette.  Top that with several thick slices of Pont l'Eveque cheese and sprinkle on a persillade (parsley and lemon), beat an egg with some cream and pour that on top.  Then cover the tourte with a second round of puff pastry, brush it with an egg yolk and cook it for 45 minutes.

The monk follows the Tourte Normande with a Teurgoule which is a rice pudding using 200 grams each of sugar and rice, 2 liters of milk and that bakes for 4 hours.  It comes out looking like the Basque Burnt Cheesecake but I bet it tastes good.

I bet this is why the French women stay so thin.

Finally I just want to mention the Macédoine Polanaise  that a Polish nun serves with her pierogies.  Pretty much a  Russian salad.  Usually I think of Macedonia as a mixture of cut-up fruit but a macédoine des legumes is one of  vegetables in France.  Yes, all bound together with mayonnaise, the French sauce par excellence and Camila's favorite.