I had never had one (or, if I did, I certainly didn’t realize it) until recently. Frankly, I was rather skeptical about how an oven could clean itself, but pleasantly surprised. Basically, it heats up to some ridiculous temperature: hot enough that it has an automatic locking system so that you can’t do something silly, like open it…which is a good thing, because I get the impression that a puff of hot air out of our oven feels hotter than past ovens I have used, which is either my imagination, or the fact that it’s “cold door” (which means that it’s cool to the touch – good for energy efficiency and for not burning yourself!). Had I started this blog earlier, you probably would have heard alllll about my oven. I couldn’t stop talking about it, after suffering for months with a toaster oven so small, that even pans specifically intended for toaster ovens didn’t fit. Since I quite like cooking, it was a very frustrating time. Going from that to the cold-door, self-cleaning, programmable oven, was a bit like going from rotary to an iPhone (no, I haven’t taken that leap).
Fish babies
Since the weekly trend of finding new babies in our aquarium is continuing, I felt it was time to find out more about our frisky fish. Apparently the average gestational period is 26-42 days (at least according to Rate My Fish Tank
), although I haven’t made any real effort to verify that information. Assuming it’s accurate, that means that most of the fish were pregnant when we bought them which, the way I see it, makes them a pretty good deal – x for the price of 1! If we’re still seeing babies in a few weeks, then we’re all set for a self-renewing fishy family 
.
Incidentally, of the 4 types of fish mentioned in Rate My Fish Tank’s paragraph on the gestational period, we have 3 of them: guppies, mollies, and platies. We also have neons, a bottom feeder and a window cleaner (I don’t remember the real names of those that make our aquarium a living version of a self-cleaning oven).
Turning the table
I’ve been picking apart French use of English terms, but us anglos are just as guilty of doing the reverse. When I was in high school, I sometimes liked going to “matinées” at the movie theatre, which was usually around noon on Sunday. That’s all well and good, except that “matinée” refers to the morning. An even more common one is the ever-present-in-restaurants “entrée”, which refers to the main course. But “entrée” literally means entry or beginning, and refers to the first course / appetizer. I’m actually quite curious as to how that one evolved in English to mean “main course”. I admit that I haven’t looked, but if you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them
In addition to warped meanings, we’re pretty good with warped translations too – ballet and croquet are forgivable, since the French sound for words ending in -et is harder to distinguish from “ée” for anglos, but the one that I find most amusing is lingerie. Why do we pronounce it lingerée? I guess it just sounds more French / sexy / je-ne-sais-quoi 
. Admittedly it does sound more appealing than the real pronunciation which sounds a bit more like “laingeree”, and certainly better than if we said “lingeree” since that sounds much to much like “laundry”.
From Italian Lasagna to Swedish Meatballs
Today’s culinary experiment is another shot at meatballs. This is my third attempt, and while I wasn’t particularly disappointed in the first two, I think I can do better. In particular, I can’t seem to get them to stay round so that I can just roll them around in the pan as they cook. In any case, my hopes aren’t too too high today, since I had planned on a pork and beef mix, but ended up having to stick with all beef. Sigh. Funny how the things I knew best as a kid are the things I have the most trouble recreating now. Tomorrow it’s blueberry muffins and filled cupcakes. Mmmmm, can’t wait. I love that my childhood culinary experiences range from so many sources. One day I’ll have to try to make pierogies, although that may be hoping for too much, from what I’ve heard.
Cooking and social networking?
I wonder how many social networks, RSS feeds, and other such web addictions are too many, because I must be close. Even so, with impressive timing (considering my recent reflections on where/how to put my offline recipes online so that I can tag them and bookmark them with my ever-growing online collection), I have just discovered Group Recipes. I don’t know if I’ll go that route, for a lot of reasons, but it’s one more thing to consider, even if it means adding yet another website to my list of places to spend (waste?) time.
Words that end in -ing
Besides jogging and footing, there are lots more -ing words that I’ve heard in France, usually (always?) using differently from how we would in English. According to a rule that I learned in my linguistics class a couple of years ago, but don’t fully remember, -ing words are sometimes used as nouns. This may explaining why “camping” is not the act of doing so, as in English, but refers to an designated place where you can pitch a tent or part a camper (a camping area, I guess I would say). Similarly “parking” is a parking lot (car park for the Brits in the audience) rather than the fact of stopping your car in a lot, a space, or wherever you happen to find enough room to put the car (because, whose kidding who, I live in France).
Lasagna – always an adventure
Strangely, the longer I’m away from Canada, the more I include things I ate as a kid into my menu. Don’t get me wrong, French cuisine is (often) as great at everyone thinks it is (I’d even venture to say that it’s as good as the French think it is, and that’s a LOT…I mock because I care ). While I haven’t enjoyed all things “gastronomiques”I can’t argue with the quality of them, and I’m lucky enough to live where French cuisine and German(ic) cuisine come together, which makes the range even greater. I regularly discover how to make new things (and am often surprised at how easy it is to do way more stuff from scratch that I ever imagined in Canada). Nonetheless, the more I discover, the more I return to my roots. But what roots can one have in Canadian cuisine? I would say we get a bit of everything, and more of somethings than others depending on family roots and traditions. I have a personal taste for Italian (or perhaps North American Italian would be more accurate, as I probably still have a Canadian-warped view of Italian cuisine, since, despite the relative proximity, it is worlds appart from Alsace. In fact, it always amazes me how different things are on each side of a the German and Swiss borders, despite the significant German influence and Germanic history of Alsace!), and remain amazed that garlic bread is virtually unknown in France. Anyway, one of my recent re-discoveries is lasagna. From “no pre-cooking needed” noodles (alright, but not recommended) to recipes that don’t seem to have nearly enough filling, I’ve done a bit of experimenting with lasagna, and am coming close to a recipe that I’m happy with (as with most things these days, I look for recipes on the ‘net, and modify as I go). To tie all this into my geek side, I bookmark recipes with Yahoo, and tag my heart out, tagging every ingredient, as well as other useful details, for easy search later. I know that some sites provide this kind of service, but I don’t like limiting myself to what one site (no matter how large and varied) might offer. I also have piles of recipes on my hard disk, which I should probably, some day, get online so I can tag and search them too. Hmm. All this talk of food is making me hungry. Yahoo bookmarks, here I come!
Les poissons, les poissons, how I love les poissons!
I never thought having an aquarium would be so entertaining, and yet the fish always find a way to amaze me (at the moment the amazement comes from the number of babies that keep appearing). Hours after bringing the first ones home, we found a baby swimming around (apparently there was some hanky panky at the store!). Luckily the aquarium came fully kitted out with (what I call) a baby box, or the maternity ward. It’s a box that floats around inside the aquarium, with slits along the bottom so that the water is as fresh as in the rest of the tank, that the babies have to be kept in to avoid being eaten. So that’s pretty much the first thing I learned about fish: they eat their young, who even have to be protected from their mother at birth. So the baby box has a special insert for putting in a pregnant fish, such that the babies slide down into a separated area. We have not yet successfully used the insert, as the fish keep having babies when we’re not looking. We have found new babies hiding in the filter every weekend, and now and then find one just swimming around. Altogether there must be about 15 or so in the box, one old who is old enough (we hope) to make it on his own and has graduated to the regular part of the tank, and at least one brand new baby swimming around (zut alors, I have missed one!) and may or may not get eaten, since we haven’t been able to catch him and add him to the baby box.
Body parts, clothing, and sports
So I’ve told you about baskets for your feet, but, there’s lots more to say about French and feet. Don’t expect me to justify any stereotypes about the “smelly” French (ok, when it comes to cheese, consider this confirmation that it’s true) because I suspect that the stereotypes surrounding the French and cleanliness date back to the war(s) or earlier and can confirm that they are not accurate in this day and age, at least not in “my” part of France. But I digress, I wanted to tell you about “foot”. This is related only distantly to what us anglos think of, because to the French, it means football (soccer for the North Americans in the audience). Similarly, “basket” is basketball, “volley” is volleyball and “hand” is, of course, not that thing attached to your wrist, but handball. There are probably more that I haven’t thought of, however I didn’t come to talk about sports, but about feet. So if “foot” is soccer/football, what is “doing a footing”? Going jogging, of course! But wait, the French talk about “jogging” too! …except that that refers to a jogging suit or sweat suit. Which bring me to another favourite: “sweat” (pronounced “sweet”, just to be a little more confusing) refers to a sweatshirt, while a “pull” is a sweater (from the British “pullover” – and totally incomprehensible to those North Americans who have never used the word pullover in their lives). The list goes on…
Baskets – containers often made of thin strips of wood, or shoes?
That depends what language you’re speaking. This was certainly not the first English word I heard used in French in what I considered to be a strange way, but it’s the first one that came to my mind when I sat down to write. When a French person talks about his/her “baskets” (or “basquettes”!) he’s referring to what I would call running shoes (although I’ve been mocked by my British friends for not calling them “trainers”). How did they get from shoes to baskets? Not from some long-gone (and presumably horrible) fashion trend. I’m pretty sure that it comes from basketball (“basket” in France) and probably simply referred to basketball shoes at first. This is one of many, many English terms pulled into French in very recent history, and then cut so that some key part of the expression is lost, and resulting in significant confusion for anglophones hearing them from a French person for the first time. There are plenty more where that came from!
