“Anyone can cook”-Day 67-March 18th, 2018

Midterms week may have been over, but I still had an essay to write for my culture class. Having this in mind, I woke up a little earlier around 9:30 and was writing this essay was my first goal of the day.  3000 words on French culture? That would be easy, I write a thousand words on it every night for this blog. Granted it is a little easier to write about your day, but French culture is a reoccurring motif in my daily life here.

There is a theory in anthropology about adjusting to new cultures called the Bennett Scale. It’s rather self-explanatory, but the scale aims to split up this adjustment to six different stages. For the paper, we are supposed to talk about our acculturation process in regards to this scale.

The Bennett Scale

In my paper, I said that I am currently between the acceptance and adaptation stages. I used various cultural observances and experiences I’ve had to track my journey through the Bennett Scale. I am considering posting my essay here, just because it’s pretty relevant to my blog. We’ll see.

It took me around two hours to write my first draft, but I finished a little after noon. I was starving and wanted to eat lunch. I was ready to give mac and cheese a third attempt, but this time I was putting my best foot forward. No compromises.

I headed to the supermarket to get all the ingredients I was missing. The plan today was to cook the pasta in the microwave as normal, but make a cheese sauce from scratch. A recipe I found online for the sauce only used a microwave, so I knew it was possible. I had a little trouble finding all the ingredients, but I made due. Cheddar is one of the best cheeses for mac and cheese, but its either really hard to find or really expensive in France. I settled for a three cheese blend that had a picture of mac and cheese on it. I wanted to make the mac and cheese for dinner, so I ate a cup of ramen to hold me over for lunch.

 

I then did some final revisions and edits for my paper. Afterwards, I spent the next few hours watching the Sopranos, but I was formulating my mac and cheese game plan in my head the entire time.

Around six, I couldn’t the fight the temptations any more and was ready to cook.

Here is the recipe I followed:

http://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/creamy-microwave-mac-and-cheese-207201

My desk now became a kitchen counter, and my microwave a five-star kitchen. The first step was to lay out all my ingredients.

THE INGREDIENTS

I was so committed to a good cheese sauce that I bought a whole tub of butter and a bag of flour. I could just borrow this stuff from Anne-Marie, but I didn’t know the French names and figured it would be better to have mine own ingredients since I would likely make this again.

I had to cook the pasta in the most painful and annoying way ever, with the microwave.

Definitely not an easy task, but a doable one.

A snapshot from this process

I have done this a few times now, so it wasn’t too bad. Making the sauce on the other hand, was really hard. I only had the small space of the mug to make it, and I had to eyeball every single measurement. I also did a pretty poor job at melting the butter as well, making the whole mixture clumpy and not smooth. Despite these issues, I kept on trucking forward with the process of: add more milk, aggressively mix, microwave, repeat. Eventually it got a little smoother, so I added the cheese. The mug was so full at this point, that I really couldn’t mix everything without stuff spilling from the mug.

The way I solved the issue was immediately spooning half of my sauce out of the mug and into the trash. It was a sacrifice, but let me add a lot more cheese and mix more thoroughly. Through some more extensive labor, I finally reached a decent mix and poured it on top of my bowl of pasta.

I had a similar problem to before, since I couldn’t mix it without spilling everything. I spooned the top layer onto a separate plate, allowing me to mix it properly in the bowl with the added room. I garnished it with some salt and pepper, and it was ready to eat.

The Final Product

While it looked much better than my last couple attempts, it was admittedly pretty bland and dry. The sauce could use a lot of improvement. On top of that, I managed to get a bowl, fork, plate, mug and spoon covered in cheese in this process. A-M always offers to wash my dishes, but I felt bad bringing this many back for one meal.

To circumvent this issue, I spent a solid ten minutes cleaning them with tissues and water from my bottle. I just wanted to get off the outer residue, but I tried to really clean the plate since it was the biggest object. I brought the rest down and left it by the sink.

Safe to say this whole process of cooking, eating and cleaning was a lot for me. I’m sure next time it will be much easier.

Exhausted and full, I passed out on my bed for a little. I woke up from my brief nap and watched some TV on my laptop. I was texting Jonathan and we had plans to go out tonight. We had a really fun night yesterday, but societal pressures (and partly our own desires) made us want to go out and drink Guinnesses to celebrate St. Patrick’s day. We made plans to meet at La Natation at 9:30.

On the way to the bar, I talked to my friend Karan on the phone for a little bit. Shortly after, I met Jonathan at the bar. They were having a special happy hour for St. Patrick’s day, so pints of Guinness were only five euros and other pints were only three.

Me and my Guinness,  and of course, I am sporting green.

Close up featuring Jonathan (also wearing green)

We each only had two drinks and just talked, but before we knew it two hours had passed magically. I guess when you have good conversations, time flies by. Neither of us wanted a late night, so we parted ways and I headed home.

I went right to bed as soon as I got home.