The Fringe

There are so many things to do at the Fringe Festival, trying to relate it all threatens the coherency of a single entry. But I'll try anyway...coherency is an overrated ideal.

On St. Laurent the street food vendors stretched out like the ocean. Maria and I tried Jamaican patties, churros, fresh lemonade, Schwartz's sandwiches, chicken burritos, mango on a stick, and crepes with banana and nutella. But what we really wanted was to see some shows, preferably for free. So, we dropped in on a band from Austin playing in the Parc des Transameriques. We thought they were great...that is, until they stopped tuning up....

What we didn't anticipate was that the Parc des Transameriques would be the scene of something even less savory: The Cultural Gargantuan.

First off, we were tricked into going. I mean, they were offering free pancakes! Who can say no to free pancakes? In retrospect, I should have glanced at their pedigree. Had the pancakes been delicious as fluffy little maple clouds they still wouldn't have excused the display of rampantly poor theatre we endured for them. Unfortunately, the pancakes were so gritty and undercooked that they just added to our feeling of being swindled. I won't belabor the point: the "Cultural Gargantuan" was a vehicle for the production of "Fear of a Fat Planet" in which large, over-exposed women threw themselves around a stage and made out while eating bacon. We left after about 10 minutes.


In fact, if there's anyone wondering what the Fringe Festival in Montréal is all about, I think this poster kind of sums it up:


Got a run in your favorite pair of fishnet stockings? Well, sister, you're just going to have to wait until after the Fringe to replace them. Everyone's sold out.

We did catch a good show the next day, though: My Origami Motorcycle. The tale of one woman's motorcycle adventure across Canada to find her muse. Kind of a metaphor for Maria's life...except in her motorcycle adventure, when the bugs hit you, it doesn't hurt.

Spring Snow

DIY Pizza

So, I love pizza. It's one of those foods I just can't say 'no' to. There's a piece of pizza in my fridge right now I'm trying to resist eating for at least another hour. I thought writing about it would help, but it really just makes the pizza-lust stronger.

The good news is that I think I've channeled this love into a healthy new direction: making pizzas. The first thing I did was perfect the sauce. This seems like it should be complicated, but it's easy. Just open a big can of the highest quality tomatoes you're willing to shell out for (San Marzano, in my taste tests, deserved the hype), squish 'em a bit with your hands, then put them in a pot over very low heat for, like, five hours, lightly salting them before slathering them on the pizza crust. The only hard part is leaving them alone while they cook. When they start getting thick and sweet and filling your kitchen with delicious smells...you just want to eat 'em all up right out of the pot.

If you've managed to resist the sauce until it's done, then the crust is the next step, and it's a bit trickier. You really do need a pizza stone. (Comic interlude: I bought a pizza stone the other day and, of course, needed to season it. Before I had a chance to do it, though, Dr. dj's brother came by and we decided to drive over to his house to visit the new baby. So, I packed up all of my pizza making supplies thinking, 'oh, it'll be perfect. I'll get to try my first pizza out on friends who would probably especially appreciate someone else cooking for them right now. And all did seem perfect -- until I seasoned the pizza stone. There was smoke *everywhere*. And my poor friends had to take the baby down to the basement to avoid breathing it.... Luckily, the pizza tasted great, which I guess was slightly redeeming.) So, once you've bought and seasoned your pizza stone far from any newborns, you can make the crust. Here's my recipe, adapted from Giada de Laurentiis':

Pizza Dough

3/4 cup warm water (105°F to 115°F)
1 envelope active dry yeast

1 cup (or more) all purpose flour
1 cup (or more) whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon honey


Pour 3/4 cup warm water into small bowl; stir in yeast. Let stand until yeast dissolves, about 5 minutes.

Brush large bowl lightly with olive oil. Mix 2 cups flour and salt in another bowl. Add yeast mixture, 3 tablespoons oil, and honey; mix with fork then hands until dough forms a sticky ball. Transfer to lightly floured surface. Knead dough until smooth, adding more flour by tablespoonfuls if dough is very sticky, about 1 minute. Transfer to prepared bowl; turn dough in bowl to coat with oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 1 hour. Punch down dough. (The dough can be made one day ahead. Store in airtight container in refrigerator.) Roll out dough into a circle the size of your pizza stone, starting in center and working outwork toward edges without rolling over them.)

So, once you've gotten your dough all rolled out, you can either transfer it to a pizza peel or take the very hot stone out of the pre-heating (425ºF) oven and quickly form the dough and top it before the stone gets too cold. It works, I promise, you just have to be careful not to burn yourself. It usually takes between 15 and 20 minutes to cook, but you should just keep an eye on it and turn it sometime in the middle of cooking.

As for the topping, well, you're only limited by your imagination. Fresh mozzarella works best, but the stuff is pretty expensive, so I think my next culinary feat will be making my own. Wish me luck!

Méli-Mélo

I started a French class here in Montréal a few weeks ago. It's focused primarily on conversation, and the people all seem very sincere, though the substitute teacher (who is there more often than the original teacher these days) is a little nutty. He keeps forgetting that one of the students, Jhon, doesn't speak English. So, he's constantly translating things for Jhon into English as if it would help him understand French better. The other day he even handed Jhon a French/English dictionary and asked him to look up "élevage." Of course, Jhon couldn't find it because he was looking in the English part, without even realizing it. Poor guy....

But here's how poorly my French teacher knows me: he assigned us "une authentique recette québécoise" to challenge us with preparing a true Quebec specialty from a recipe entirely in French. Now, what could this amazing and authentic challenge be, you ask? Two words, dear reader:

Chex Mix

So, I made the Quebec Chex Mix of barroom fable, which even has a fancy French name: méli-mélo and got nothing but the highest compliments for the ingenuity of my interpretation. That is, for substituting Bugles for the pretzels....

Les Nourritures montréalaises

Dans le Sud des États-Unis, on fait frire beaucoup des nourritures: des poissons, des tourtes, des poulets, des cornichons, et même des Twinkies. Mon père fait frire un dinde entier chaque année pour Thanksgiving. Et non seulement on couvre beaucoup de ces nourritures de la sauce au jus de viande, mais les gens du Sud ajoutent du fromage à tout.

Mais c’etait les Québécois qui ont mis tous les trois ensemble pour créer le nouveau plat enchanté de poutine. Je crois que poutine peux devenir un gros succès à Memphis, donc j’essaie apprendre le cuisiner.

Voici ma première tentative:

CocoLoco

Now, here's something I found out the other day: Montréal fines businesses whose smells waft onto the sidewalk. ...Something about olfactory pollution?

Anyway, word about town is that these fines are directly responsible for the lack of good barbeque in the city. ...Though since walking by CocoRico I think it's just because no proper Southerners have come to show them how its done.


When you walk anywhere near CocoRico, you smell roast chicken. Every time. And every time I think: am I hungry? My nose sure says I am....


And it's the roast chicken you come for, though they do also serve little roast new potatoes, cole slaw and beans. The ambiance is great, too. It's intimate, with only a bar down the length of the restaurant and a mirror to facilitate watching the cooks dish up the juicy chicken. On a recent afternoon when dr. dj and I couldn't resist the tempting aromas, we shared a really lovely bird with a serviceable coleslaw.

Au revoir, Paris!

Well, Cecco and I are packing our bags, leaving Paris on the morning’s first train. Before we leave, though, we had to say some special goodbyes

to Berthillon ice cream,









to the Seine,
to drinking cheap wine in the park,
to chicken sandwiches on the boulevard de Strasbourg,














to the Sorbonne,























and to the Eiffel Tower.
Until we meet again, Paris...je t’aime!