*ribbit* Monday, Mar 22 2010

I had frogs’ legs this weekend. 😀

Just look at those things.

My lab mate had asked me, “Do you just want to eat them or are you interested in the prep too?” I said “prep,” naturally, so here I am at 10 am on a Sunday morning blotting dry little amphibian limbs.

Once thawed (you can buy these in the supermarket, they come individually wrapped) and blotted, you toss them in a bit of flour, then fry them in some butter. Once that’s done, you check them all in the oven with a butter/parsley/garlic sauce and bake for 20 minutes or so.

They come out looking like this:

Fresh out of the oven and ready to be disassembled.

There is (unsurprisingly) not a lot of meat on these things, but the sheer amount of butter that goes into them ensures that you won’t eat too many. And what do they taste like? Fish. The flesh isn’t quite firm enough to be compared to chicken, I found.

Still haven’t had escargot yet, though. 😀

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Qu’il neige! Saturday, Dec 19 2009

It’s been hovering around 0 C lately, which means…. SNOW!

Taking "store in a cool place" to a new level

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Weird, the stuff you can find here Sunday, Nov 8 2009

Okay, so while running around yesterday (remember, everything is closed on Sunday in France) I ran into a large grocery store called Lidl. Little did I know I had just walked into a “hard discounter” where the ambiance is lacking, the aisles are crowded, and the wares are cheap.

Not to mention kind of random. I always feel a little better experimenting if I don’t have to break the bank to do it.

One French food and one decidedly non-French food

Quenelles are a Lyonnais specialty: they’re kind of like a fish-based sausage/dumpling/thing, comparable to Chinese fish balls, but less dense (more fillers). I’ve only had them at the campus cafeteria, which is probably not the place to go for the best quenelles in town. Frankly, eating them out of a can is probably not the best either, but it’s cheaper than eating out. 😛 (I promise to post a picture when I actually make these things.)

The other thing is just a package of chocolate chili cookies. Yes, you’ve heard of the drink, but now you can have them in cookie form. I have no idea where they came from, but they were so weird (and cheap: 0,59E!) that I had to buy them.

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GLOVE GLOVE GLOVE Saturday, Nov 7 2009

In keeping with the three-part titles, I present: la boîte à gants à trois gants (the three-gloved glove box).

Acronym: BAG

It’s basically right in between your single and your double glove box in size. The two gloves on the left are ambidextrous, but the last is right-handed. For some reason I have a really hard time getting into the ambidextrous gloves.

Here is where I spend a lot of my time, the high vacuum line:

It looks complicated, but.... okay, so it is kind of complicated at first

And this is what we use to achieve high vacuum, a refluxing mercury pump. Just a little bit scary. I usually don’t get this close.

Mmmmm, Hg

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My country for sale?! Saturday, Oct 24 2009

En France, le Canada se vend au marché ?

One of the things I like about Lyon are the early-morning markets. They’re not always farmer’s markets, but there’s a bunch of them all over the city. Some of them are specialized: artisan crafts, paintings, flowers, books…

Anyway, as you can clearly see, Canada goes for about 1.20 Euro a kilo in France. I have no idea where the name of this cultivar comes from. (For what it’s worth, I bought a couple from the supermarket a few weeks back, and didn’t really like them; they were a bit mealy.)

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Yes, I actually do work Monday, Oct 19 2009

Well, parks and random close-ups of food are all well and fine, but I am here to carry out research, after all:

CPE Lyon

Here is the fine and venerable institution I now belong to, for better or worse. They like to boast that they’re a school with 3 Nobel Prizes: Victor Grignard (1912, Chemistry); Yves Chauvin (2005, Chemistry); Jean Dercourt (2007, Peace).

Doors leading to nowhere

An exterior shot of the labs. I spend most of my time in the middle lab on the top floor. (You can tell by the orange propane tanks we keep outside for glassblowing.)

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Système D Saturday, Oct 10 2009

Système D: 叉燒酥

There’s a Chinese guy at work who has been of great help to me getting set up these last few weeks. He invited me over for lunch with another Chinese girl for a “real Chinese meal.” In this picture are his homemade 叉燒酥 (BBQ pork puff). They’re really good, actually, and the recipe’s not hard at all: just wrap your pork in some puff pastry. And where does one buy BBQ pork in Lyon? I have no idea. This guy makes it himself.

“Système D” is a French expression meaning roughly “resourcefulness”. It refers to making do with what you’ve got.

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Hello res! Wednesday, Oct 7 2009

A true kitchenETTE

So I managed to procure a studio apartment for the duration of my stay here. When I got in I decided to take photos of everything for état des lieux (state of the premises) purposes. This will be my kitchen for the next nine months. I have two hotplates. I think what I miss most sorely is an oven. Goodbye cookies, casseroles, toast….

On the other hand, the fact that I don’t even have a microwave should stop me from buying prepackaged frozen entrées at the supermarket, so that’s probably a plus.

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