More from the Mama

My turn to write about the things that Eric has missed. Warning: there will be no cool-looking photos with this post.

I cooked my first meal here on Thursday. We headed to the neighborhood supermarket and picked up some broccoli and some-sort-of-steak. The salt and pepper at the flat would be the only seasoning, because this little store doesn't seem to have any spices.

When I got into the kitchen I realized we don't have a steamer for the broccoli. I also learned that the only knives we had were steak knives. And there was no oil.

So I cut the broccoli with a steak knife and boiled it. I rubbed the steak down with the S&P and fried it in a little butter. Threw some butter and salt on the broccoli, and VOILA! Dinner was served. It wasn't the best meal ever, but it wasn't bad either. And I think it probably cost all of 4-Euros.

Tonight I'm going to cook again. Nothing fancy, just a little pasta with meat sauce. However, we did go to the Monoprix yesterday. It's kind of like a Super WalMart, but it's on a much smaller scale. It has groceries plus some clothing and general goods. We spent 28-Euros on a couple of knives, found a couple spices and some boullion and got some more food for Ella (tortillas, crackers, chicken nuggets).

We had to be careful not too buy too much, because we had to walk quite a distance back to the flat. Most Parisiennes have a rolling cart for groceries, but I didn't find one of those at the Monoprix. I brought a shopping bag from home that folds up into a little case, and that's been awesome. Plus we bought a couple of good-quality plastic shopping bags in the Monoprix checkout lane.

The last bit of housekeeping news (if you haven't already fallen asleep reading this) is that I've been struggling with the washer/dryer combo in our flat. We knew I'd be doing laundry almost every day, but we didn't count on the dryer being so bad.

The dryer only seemed to handle underwear and socks; I've been hanging our wet pants, shirts and sweaters around the flat to let them air dry. What a pain in the rear! Today I went online and was able to find the instruction manual for the washer/dryer. Thank God I found another setting that seems to work MUCH better than the one I was instructed to use. I came home this afternoon to find mostly dry clothes -- only the cuffs and pockets are a little damp.

We haven't been to the open market, yet. Maybe on Tuesday ... right now, I'm heading to the kitchen!