Wino Wednesday – Veuve Clicquot

No, we didn’t splurge on a bottle of expensive French champagne (unfortunately) but I did snag a flute of Veuve Clicquot at work today.  Sadly, it was not enjoyed during work but rather at the end of the day as part of a little toast to a successful holiday season at Pouchkine.  Maybe it was the fact that I had eaten nothing since 5:30am and hadn’t sat down since then either, but it tasted pretty darn good and I was tempted by a second except that I had not eaten or sat down since 5:30am!  I might not have made it home.  Would I recommend?  Of course.  Is it a splurge?  Oh yes.  Worth the big bucks?  Probably not.  My tastes are just not refined enough to know the difference between the Veuve and the 4 euro bottle on New Year’s (which for us was a splurge!).  Given the chance to sip these bubbles again for free, however, I would happy accept.

Instead for dinner, we had Kriek…

Wino Wednesday – Mort Subite

And now for something completely different…..  The astute wino’s will quickly realize that this week’s wine is in fact…. a beer.  It is a fruity beer though, so I guess it’s halfway there.  Why beer?  Well let’s just say that some weeks, even with some of the best and cheapest wine available, you just don’t feel like having wine (hopefully the French government doesn’t read this or we will likely get deported….).  So this week, we had one of C’s favourites, a Belgian beer called Kriek that is flavoured with cherries.  This isn’t the best brand of Kriek, but the good stuff is half way across Paris and wouldn’t have fit in our 5 euro and under budget.

 

So how was it? Glorious.  Wonderful cherry taste, refreshing, and we did it all while breaking one of our self imposed rules (ie. wine on wino wednesday).  Feels great to be a rebel…

 

Thanksgiving – Paris Style…

Be forewarned, the rant of the century is coming up…

 

We decided that we would celebrate thanksgiving today.  We’re not big turkey eaters, and I have a strict “no vegetables allowed in dessert” so pumpkin pie is out too.  Instead we chose to have a roast chicken, some Kriek, and a couple of nice pastries from one of the many patisseries nearby.  C worked on the veggies while I went out in search of the chicken, beer, and desserts, how hard could it be?  Every butcher shop in Paris has a chicken roaster outside, and although Belgian, Kriek can be found at a few places not too far from our apartment.

 

Well, I soon discovered that 99% of all butcher shops are closed on Mondays in Paris. Yes that’s right, they go on barber shop schedules apparently… While I understand you shouldn’t have to be open every day, why not schedule it with the guy down the block so that you aren’t ALL CLOSED ON THE SAME DAY!!!!  But we need to go back a bit earlier in my journey before we proceed any further with the story.

 

I walked about 25 minutes to the store that sold C’s beloved Kriek. It was the second time I’d been there today as I had assumed they would be open before 4:30pm, how silly of me.  I went in and grabbed the two bottles, the price coming to $5.80.  I handed him a 20, to which he replied “sorry I don’t have enough change”.  You read that right, this store that had only been open for less than half an hour had less than $14 in the cash register??? Was he hoping for every customer for the next few hours to have exact change until he’d built up a sizeable float?  I can’t say I was overly surprised as it seems like almost every store in Paris is perennially without change, except for the grocery stores of course who always try to give your change in $1 coins for anything less than $50…

 

But I digress.  I realized my solution here was to go get the chicken first and then return with correct change in order to get the beer.  I asked the clerk where the nearest butcher shop was and off I went.  Apparently when asking for the nearest butcher shop, you have to specify that you’d like one that is actually open at that time, and not some other time in the distant future.  I proceeded to walk for an hour and half, around every corner, another closed butcher shop.  In all my travels I managed to find 3 that were actually open.  Two didn’t sell chicken at all, and the third only uncooked.  Considering the chances of finding a butcher shop without a chicken roaster outside in Paris is about 1 in a million, I must have walked past at least 3 million closed shops…

 

As dinner drew near and I was getting desperate I went into the Carrefour.  I’d seen chickens there before, and after much searching I find 3 roasted chickens on a shelf in the back of the store.  The only thing is that they weren’t hot, or even warm for that matter…  For all I knew they could have been there for days (most likely).

So begrudgingly I went home empty handed.  I was so dispirited at this point that I didn’t even bother getting dessert.  C took it like a champ and whipped up some salmon instead.  AK was thrilled as she loves salmon, especially the part when she rubs it into her hair…  After dinner C ran out to grab some ice cream and really saved the day.

The Tour & My New Fave…

Day 2 in Antwerp brought quite a surprise – it shouldn’t have been, but it was nonetheless.  We walked to Grote Markt in the morning, a lovely pedestrian area with many little shops, cafes, a large cathedral and castle on the waterfront.  As we approached the river, there was a lot of hype going on.  Many vendors were setting up and a large screen – it took a moment, then, yes, the Tour de France!  What luck!  The first stage began today in Rotterdam and ended in Brussels, conveniently going through Antwerp.

After a quick lunch break, we headed back to the waterfront for a very long wait in the hot sun – ‘publicity’ (aka: many fast moving sponsor vehicles throwing swag from them) took up the biggest chunk of time, probably an hour and a half.  Then, in a flash, the cyclists whizzed by to many, many ecstatic fans screaming and cheering.  All that buildup and it was over, but it was still very exciting to see it all!

After the long wait, D, AK and I hit up a little cafe on one of the narrow pedestrian streets and enjoyed my favourite new drink, Kriek…think cherry coke + beer, utterly delicious!  It definitely hit the spot.

Tomorrow: Brugge…