7 - Night of the Living Dinde - Dax and Castets

 Thursday - November 23, 2023

Happy Thanksgiving!  

It's not a holiday in France but I'd say it was a good work day here.  It marks the last of the large group meetings on-site for the time being, it was good to see my colleagues supporting from afar but they will be returning to Geneva soon.  The result of all the meetings this week is that the project startup is likely facing a delay; there is just too much mechanical work needed to be completed and meanwhile my Schengen zone clock continues to tick... We'll have to see about maybe switching my schedule around to take vacation now vs in late January... More on this later.

My Thanksgiving feast was held with the AIGP engineers and the process safety engineer (who's flight to Geneva was the next morning).  The venue this time featured a good assortment of tapas and SW French cuisine.  There was plenty of shared starters: some squid rabas, chorizo, boudin (a type of blood sausage), and Iberico ham.  Afterwards, turkey wasn't available for my main plate but apparently it's hunting season for a special type of fowl here: pigeon!  

Though the mushroom sauce really makes it look like one of NYC's winged rats, I was assured that this pigeon (my palombe)  would have foraged in the woods of SW France.  

After our main plates, desserts were ordered.  I had une tartierre aux pommes which was like a couple sheets of pastry dough with spiced apples - I rate it an eh / 10.  The others had la tarte tatin, which is an apple pie but apparently the gimmick is that the tart is baked inverted in the tart pan and then flipped out of the pan right-side up.  The story the table agreed upon was that it was invented by a pastry chef who messed up and put his tart in upside down; with a flourish, he flipped the finished tart out of the pan and exclaimed " Taaa-Tiiiiiinnnnn!"  About as a good a story as I expect one can have for a dessert. 
 

The evening was wrapped up with a digestif of patxaran, a Basque liquor.  Very sweet and viscous tasting of what I would describe as cherry and a hint of anise.  I'm not sure I'd order another one.  The ice cubes it was served with helped but I think the cherry flavor was just a little too linked in my mind to that used for cough syrup in the US; I'm not saying it tasted like cough syrup, I'm saying I thought of cough syrup.

Friday - November 24, 2023

And happy Black Friday, I guess.  It's kinda funny that Black Friday has made its way over here; I suppose nobody (or no business) is completely immune to a chance to shop a sale, not even the French.  It was a quiet day at work for me; only one meeting in France and zero meetings with the US (I wonder why).  My meeting was really more of a followup tour of the plant, where the site's fire suppression and containment systems were shown to me.  Thery're impressive systems and I might be more familiar with these now than the one's in Port Newark 😅, not that it really matters all that much for my job function.  

One tidbit that wasn't part of the tour but came about because of it was the discovery of a culture war taking place in France: the people of the SW using the term "Chocolatine" vs the more northern areas calling the pastry a "Pain au Chocolat".  Apparently asking the wrong boulanger (baker) here on a bad day for a pain au chocolat could potentially net you a baguette and piece of chocolate!  I struggled to recall an American analog for such a language war, all I could come up with is chocolate sprinkles vs jimmies...

Christmas decorations went up in the office, as well as around town; is there some strange international signal for people to do this after Thanksgiving?  At least here they had the decency to wait for a November holiday they don't celebrate/notice before breaking out the decor.  No sign yet of Mariah Carey, either Europe deployed significant countermeasures to contain the spread or she's merely bidding her time...

For lunch on Friday, I tried a different restaurant than usual; this one is located a bit deeper into the heart of Castets.  O' Saveurs de Carine, this restaurant was mentioned by one of the AIGP engineers as a place his friend either owns or works at.  Anyhow, the menu du jour was delicious.  I'm not entirely sure what the main platter was called, but the blend of flavors with just a hint of ginger might have been one of the best dishes I've had here (or at least it popped for me).

Friday night was layed back for me.  I'd failed to make any plans or decisions about the impending weekend so that occupied much of my energy.  I think I've got a plan now and the weather looks like it should be cooperative, which is always a nice plus!  Instead of going out for dinner, I also stayed in to make use of the kitchen and included equipment.  I wasn't feeling anything too tricky but also figured I should try to stick to the French theme; my fridge and pantry had just the ingredients needed to make crepes!  So dinner was a couple of savory crepes (I think they call them galletes here) with a dried sausage and emmental cheese, then dessert was more crepes (with creme fraiche and confiture).  hmm, maybe I should have had a salad too 🤔 oh well, too late!