Thank Goodness for Chocolate Chip Cookies

I want to start my blog post for thanking Ruth Graves Wakefield for accidentally discovering chocolate chip cookies in her attempts to make chocolate cookies by just putting chunks of chocolate in vanilla cookies. Chocolate chip cookies have saved the day. And a big thank you to Aunt Lisa for my birthday present a few years ago: my baking book thicker than my calculus textbook and full of amazing recipes. I just made the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever had(even better than those from Napolitos) using the recipe from my baking book that I photocopied and brought.

I will admit it, I have had a really rough week. I had a whole lot of downs and not as many ups as I would hope. But this afternoon, chocolate chip cookies came to my rescue. Alexis and I made them together and they just totally brightened my day. They dont have chocolate chips here, so i had to chop up a giant bar of high quality dark chocolate, but it made them so much better. Some of the shavings flavored the cookie part, and some of the cookies have big chunks of chocolate. They are so great. No more store bought low quality chocolate chips for me when I get home. Plus, I now have the confidence to bake in metrics and i can use the oven, so now im ready to move on to bigger and better things, as well as starting to learn some french things. Watch out Edith, I might be invading your kitchen pretty soon.

I even got my brothers to help me cook. They helped me with clean up...why? because it meant licking the dough off of the spatulas and beaters. So, here you can see the uncooked but beautiful balls of dough, and then the perfectly golden cookies fresh from the oven. I was actually really scared to make this recipe, since it makes a ton of cookies. If it didnt work, I would have wasted a lot of ingredients. But it turned out perfectly and I was practically jumping up and down with happiness. My french kitchen confidence has sky-rocketed today.

Some funny stories from the week. We had a fire drill at school on Tuesday during my lab class. We had to leave the classroom and go into the courtyard in our lab coats and latex gloves. We looked so funny. And the fire alarm sounded like really bad and loud bagpipes. I was laughing because the noise was so funny and not fear inducing at all. But, it was definitely not as annoying as the rio fire alarm. 

In SVT this Tuesday, we moved on to our second dissection: pig eyes. Our pig eye was huge! And it was covered in fat. But it was so cool to see all the different parts of the eye and separate them, once you got past the fact that you were pulling the fat off of an eye that had been pulled out of a pig head. We even shaved a piece of the cristallin and looked at it under the microscope. And when I plunged the scalpel into the eye the first time, it made a squishing-sucking noise that sounded just like when Cyrus(my dog) chews on his squeaky ball in the backyard. My group of three burst out laughing and we were laughing so hard that our teacher came over and demanded to know what happened. And one group was pulling to try and get the fat off, and they squeezed to hard and the eye popped out of their hands and rolled across the room(which our teacher had warned us might happen just two minutes before.)

This was the first week of the school year that we didnt have french fries at the cafeteria. My friend and I clinked our glasses to “Santé” or “health,” celebrating the fact that we were eating potatoes boiled and coated in butter, rather than fried in oil. And another funny "la cantine"or cafeteria story...On thursday, i got to the part of the lunch line where you choose which meat you want. One of the choices was "Une brochette" (a shish kabob) or some sort of hamburger. When the lady asked "Une brochette ou un steak?" (steak haché meaning hamburger) i thought she said "...chat ou steak" which means "...cat or steak". I thought the shish kabob had chunks of cat meat on it! So i pointed to the other thing, which was some sort of hamburger patty and said thank you. When I got to our table, I asked my friends what the shish kabob was and they said "une brochette" and i asked what kind of meat it was and they said they didnt know, but probably beef. And i told them i had thought the lady said "cat" and they burst out laughing, saying only the chinese eat cat. They said "we eat frogs and snails, but we dont eat cat. we aren't that crazy." And then we proceeded to have a conversation about whether we would eat a cat if we were starving and had nothing else to eat. it was pretty funny. 

I ran in the department cross-country meet on wednesday and came in 4th in my division(birthdays in 1995-1996). But we ran at the same time as the 93-94 people, and I came in 6th overall, so if I had been older, i would have been third and medalled. It was very frustrating. But, I qualified for the regional cross-country meet in 13 days and if i do well enough, I will qualify for nationals. Plus, my team(the top five girls in my age group from my school) won our division. We actually had two teams in our division qualify from our school, since the top 4 teams qualify for regionals and we were 1st and 4th. So a lot of us get to move on.

Our team got a trophy for coming in 1st, plus medals for each individual. I decided to take the trophy home and take a picture with it before bringing it back and leaving it at school. My backpack was really full on thursday so i couldn’t put the trophy in. I had to ride the bus carrying it. And when I got on the bus and took a seat next to a little elderly women, she said “oh, you have a trophy. why?” and i explained about the meet and had a little conversation on the bus with a random french woman. I think that’s pretty cool.

Me with the team trophy from the department cross, my gold medal from the department cross, and my gold medal fromt the school cross.

I went to lunch with my AFS volunteer today. We ate at a really cute little italian restaurant which was super yummy. I got spaghetti and it was great. When we got to the restaurant at 12:15, there was absolutely no one there, but when we left, it was practically full. And then I got home and made chocolate chip cookies and made my day a million times better.

Everything is gearing up for christmas here, even though it is still early november. Without Thanksgiving as the holiday the grocery stores are advertising, all of the “Ideas for christmas” ads start now. Decorations are starting to appear. Ads on TV for the playmobile advent calendars. Aisles of the grocery store dedicated to christmas decorations and candy. So grocery stores here also go from one holiday to the next, but with less holidays, the ads start sooner. It is weird for me to hear all the talk about christmas when for me, this is thanksgiving gear-up season.  

Sorry that my post isnt very long this week, but I just had a kind of slow and pretty tough week, so I dont have that many things to write about.

Alexis being, well, Alexis. I tried to take a picture of the construction in the house, but he really wanted to be in the picture.

Edith made min-croissants for appetizers last week. She got the idea from the 8 hour luncheon where the appetizers were mini-croissants, and they were so good that she decided to recreate them for just us at home.

Well, here they are. I know you have all been waiting for it. Escargot! Edith and Thierry ate snails for appetizers last week.