Bluberries and Sugar

The week in Quebec is almost through and it has definitely been a roller-coaster ride! As I have stated in every other post, the morning teacher workshop is a total waste of time (2-3 hours looking on google per day!!) but at least I have been able to write in my blog and email everybody even though I haven`t gotten one original idea to use in my classroom! Today we are told to look up website French newspapers and radio program and then present what we found to the other 8 French teachers here. Bleh! I`ll just make something up in my head the moment when we are supposed to present.

Yesterday afternoon was filled with all sorts of baking. The agenda listed apple crisp and blueberry pie as our items for the afternoon. Mmmmm!! Vincent told me that he buys several kilos of butter a day just to cook with us, not to mention his catering business on the side! Watching all that goes into these recipes makes me really aware when I go out to eat that you never know what is in that flaky dessert. For example, yesterday we used butter, margarine and oil! Eeek! The apple crisp was my favorite. It was a pretty straight-forward recipe, but Vincent showed us techniques for peeling apples and keeping them fresh with lemon juice on top. You don`t use cups in the metric system, so I had to use a scale to measure 250 grams of flour, 125 grams of butter, etc. It takes a long time. I like the American system of cups better. Mine turned out perfectly! I just wished we had had ice cream to go on the side! I started making the blueberry pie crust. It was lots of fun to learn how to cut the butter into the flour and mix it--but not too much--with a bit of water and salt till it got to the right consistency. But then I watched Vincent`s demonstration of making the blueberry pie. He dumped 2 boxes of beautiful, fresh blueberries right into the crust and then piled on the sugar and flower mixture until you couldn`t even see the blueberries anymore. I got started working on mine, but didn`t have the heart to do it. My apple crisp was already enough dessert. I put all my fresh blueberries in a plastic sack and said that my pie crust didn`t turn out. He tried to help me make it work, but I finally confessed that I would rather take fresh bluerries home to eat for dessert that night. He seemed a little sad to see me not even trying to make that blueberry pie, but I couldn`t help it. I really wanted some fruit!

Andrea and I went home yesterday afternoon after our classes on the regular city bus. Our host mom, Christiane`s husband just got back into town. They had a huge barbecue celebration out on the patio by the pool. It was so fun and relaxing! Their French is the typical Quebecois style--very hard to understand. Sometimes I got confused when talking to them. They brought out watermelon and I said, "Oh, j`adore le pasteque!" They said we don`t call it pasteque here, but "melon d`eau" instead. Another funny thing is how many English words they randomly insert into their sentences like, "C`est weird. C`est cute. C`est la partie!" instead of the regular French bizarre, mignon and fete. I have to really pay attention to understand them too because every sentence is followed by the word -lo...but this family really is tons of fun!

Christiane said that since I am leaving Saturday, she is going to take us to a little side city to go shopping tonight and then to see the Moulin a Images--a night windmill that lights up, I believe. I guess we`ll see how it goes.