La Fête des Voisins

A mix of all kinds of food is currently sitting in my stomach willing itself to digest. Ok, well the reason I'm sharing is because of a comment that "colleague x" made tonight at our "neighbor party" translated literally from above.

There was a sign-up sheet for "un repas" or meal in the lobby of my building. It seemed casual. We would set up a table outside near the laundry lines and parking lot. I figured it couldn't be much more than pizza, chips, and pop. I figured wrong. This isn't America, it's France, where eating is an art, a regime, a scheduled event with courses, magical baskets of apéritifs, cheeses, bottles of wine, and fresh desserts. Being my last day of teaching, I decided to go easy on myself, and got an apple tart from the grocery store. My dessert never got eaten. Why? There was so much food, so much home-made fresh, delicious food that no one even touched my store bought cake. It's currently sitting in my fridge. It got beat out by an identical apple tart, a home-made apricot cake, and cream puffs drizzled in warm chocolate.

I thought the first course of home-made pizza and salmon/aubergine quiche was it, so I filled up on that, only to turn my head to see taboule, vegetable salads, chicken wings, and bread landing on the table. Cheese was to follow, along with a steady "taste this, taste that!" from whoever was sitting beside me.

Colleague X, a normally quiet man, turned and said to me, "now, you need to tell your new President how much food we fed you here in Chasse so that we have good relations between the U.S. and France."