So as everyone knows Christmas was just two days ago. This Christmas was especially strange for me because it was the first one I've ever spent without my family and the first one I've ever spent in France. So obviously even in western culture, there's going to be a difference on how each country celebrates Christmas, and that difference further divides by region of that country and eventually by family. So that means this French Christmas blog will be about how I spent my French Christmas, chez Roux, Satillieu, Rhône-Alpes, France, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy, The Universe. If I missed any details about that address just let me know. Unfortunately the majority of what means Christmas to me doesn't happen in France, or at least where I am. So that means no waking up early to open presents, have breakfast and watching a christmas movie, which would most likely be the Grinch. Instead I woke up at around probably 10am and did absolutely nothing Christmas related until about 5pm, except for watching a few christmas movies on the TV which my host mom so aptly called "conneries" and/or bullshit, ha! At around 5pm we started preparing the appetizers which consisted of Salmon Roe (salmon eggs) and some other kind of fish eggs, various savory puff pastries, and of course Boudin Blanc and Boudin Noir. Also everyone dressed up nicely even though we were all at home and no one came over, it was just us. I thought it was kind of weird.
The fish eggs were absolutely terrible and evil and gross in my opinion. It tasted of really fishy fish and dead babies. Not only that but the texture was terrible and each egg popped inside of your mouth as you ate it which in turn released more of the fishy fish/dead baby flavor. The puff pastries were really good and consisted of kiche with escargot, pizza, pigs in a blanket, and some other stuff that I forgot about. The Boudin Blanc and Boudin Noir are sausages and in spite of sharing similar names, are quite different. The boudin blanc is white and is just made of pork and sometimes includes gross things such as livers and hearts but I guess not always and its actually pretty good. The boudin noir is a blood sausage and therefore I have no idea how it tastes because I am not that adventurous and I don't want to eat blood. To accompany the appetizers we had rosé champagne, fake champagne and cherry coke, of which I tried everything and it was all good, haha.
For the main course we had raclette, which is basically potatoes, various forms of charcuterie (sausages and the like) and the raclette cheese. Apparently the name for this dish and the cheese is the same. By the way this cheese smells SO bad but it tastes really good. So what this consists of is your potato, your meat, the cheese and a device in the middle of the table which melts the cheese. You put the cheese in a little triangle shaped thing and then the triangle into this device which is kinda like a grill, and then your cheese melts. Once your cheese is melted you scrape it out of the triangle with a wooden scraper thing and onto your potatoes and meat. And then you repeat until your done. The one thing I really don't like about this dish is that the cheese used is so fatty! Like when you melt it, there is also some melted fat next to the cheese. We also had really cool rolls that had each of our names written on them which turned out to be written with cocoa power mixed with water on the prebaked dough. We didn't end up eating them (I didn't really want to anyway, because its not everyday you get a piece of bread with your name on it) and frankly I have no idea where they went.
For the dessert which we for some reason ate the next day for lunch (I guess we forgot? idk) it was a Buche de Noel which probably every French family eats for Christmas Dessert. Basically its a cake that is made to look like a log and traditionally it was accompanied by little meringue mushrooms but I guess they don't do that anymore. To make the log shape, what's basically done is they bake a really thin sponge cake, put the filling inside and then roll it up and apply icing which is then made to look like bark, sort of. Sometimes there are extra features, such as a branch or something added on to the log but not always.
The fish eggs were absolutely terrible and evil and gross in my opinion. It tasted of really fishy fish and dead babies. Not only that but the texture was terrible and each egg popped inside of your mouth as you ate it which in turn released more of the fishy fish/dead baby flavor. The puff pastries were really good and consisted of kiche with escargot, pizza, pigs in a blanket, and some other stuff that I forgot about. The Boudin Blanc and Boudin Noir are sausages and in spite of sharing similar names, are quite different. The boudin blanc is white and is just made of pork and sometimes includes gross things such as livers and hearts but I guess not always and its actually pretty good. The boudin noir is a blood sausage and therefore I have no idea how it tastes because I am not that adventurous and I don't want to eat blood. To accompany the appetizers we had rosé champagne, fake champagne and cherry coke, of which I tried everything and it was all good, haha.
For the main course we had raclette, which is basically potatoes, various forms of charcuterie (sausages and the like) and the raclette cheese. Apparently the name for this dish and the cheese is the same. By the way this cheese smells SO bad but it tastes really good. So what this consists of is your potato, your meat, the cheese and a device in the middle of the table which melts the cheese. You put the cheese in a little triangle shaped thing and then the triangle into this device which is kinda like a grill, and then your cheese melts. Once your cheese is melted you scrape it out of the triangle with a wooden scraper thing and onto your potatoes and meat. And then you repeat until your done. The one thing I really don't like about this dish is that the cheese used is so fatty! Like when you melt it, there is also some melted fat next to the cheese. We also had really cool rolls that had each of our names written on them which turned out to be written with cocoa power mixed with water on the prebaked dough. We didn't end up eating them (I didn't really want to anyway, because its not everyday you get a piece of bread with your name on it) and frankly I have no idea where they went.
For the dessert which we for some reason ate the next day for lunch (I guess we forgot? idk) it was a Buche de Noel which probably every French family eats for Christmas Dessert. Basically its a cake that is made to look like a log and traditionally it was accompanied by little meringue mushrooms but I guess they don't do that anymore. To make the log shape, what's basically done is they bake a really thin sponge cake, put the filling inside and then roll it up and apply icing which is then made to look like bark, sort of. Sometimes there are extra features, such as a branch or something added on to the log but not always.
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| French Christmas Tree + Presents |
After we finished our meal, it was time for presents. That was pretty much the same as it is in the US except it was like 9PM. I am happy to report that I got everyone a present and everyone seemed to like what I got them. Which if you know me, I'm not always the best at giving gifts. Ok, I suck at it, but at least I own up to it. And I promise that for Christmas 2013 I'll at least try to give gifts, maybe. I guess I've always sucked at it because I always felt that getting gifts would be this terribly hard and frusturating thing to do, but in reality it isn't at all. I guess my fear of "what the fuck am I gonna do if I got them nothing and they got me something?" overwhelmed my misconstrued conception of buying gifts. Anyway, that kind of wraps up my french christmas experience. My next post will probably be about new years. Happy Holidays!
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