Frenching with Freakazoid
We followed through on our threat to make blanquette du veau tonight. Actually, yesterday's veal buying spree was an interesting lesson in speaking French in that one must be prepared to deal with something entirely different than what you wrote down on the index card and practised for 20 minutes before screwing up the courage to ask, in this case, for 1.5 kilos of veal.
One slightly eaten blanquette du veau...
Our friendly butcher understood the asking part but when he put an additional .15 kilos to an already oversized pile of meat and asked (I think) "is this amount ok?", it got real quiet. As in deer-in-the-headlights quiet. Er....we fumbled around trying to say "less" which ended up as "cut the meat into cubes". No. Stop that. Please. Merci. The butcher's wife (we think) said to him "no, stop cutting the meat". He finally (literally) threw up his hands, took the pile of meat and put it on the counter and moved away mumbling...either at his wife or us. Probably both.
Eventually, we got our veal with much foriegn langauge angst afterward. We made our stew with a nice salad and some pate and cheese and bread and dessert and we were stuffed. Again. Oh and wine...so we were a drunken lot as well. Ah Paris.