I am so tired… it’s nearly midnight and we’ve just returned from dinner at our favorite fancy French restaurant. It’s inside an old castle. It’s five courses. It’s exhausting. And this time we realized, it’s not for my brother. (sorry! We’ll find a more meat-and-potatoes place for you.)
Tonight, I decided it was time to be a little more adventuresome with my eating. We are in France, after all.
I stuck to the scallops entree (appetizer), which once again was spectacular.
For my main dish, I got really brave and asked the waiter a question. I was thinking about a fish dish that includes shrimp, but I’d never heard of the kind of fish before. John Dory. (Looking it up on the internet it sure is an ugly fish.) And I don’t like fishy fish. So, in French, I expressed my concern. Oh, no, try it, he said. It was amazing. It was a huge portion, too. Far more than I could eat. Especially knowing I had two more courses to go!
Then, I went out on a limb I never thought I’d crawl out on. For my cheese course I passed on the fromage blanc. (white cheese. Unlike anything we get in the U.S. Pour sugar on it, and it’s tasty stuff) I went for the assortment of cheeses. When the waiter wheeled the fromage cart over, I told him j’ai peur de les fromages forts. (I’m afraid of strong cheese) He picked out six he promised were creamy and mild and put them on my plate, then told me in what order I was to eat them. His selections included goat cheese, which I normally avoid like the plague. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. Especially when eaten with some dried fruit. But when I got to the last one… I nearly stopped. It was a sheep cheese. And, by golly, it was good.
The worst part of dinner is that my feet didn’t touch the ground because the chair was so high. And they swelled up like melons. I could barely walk out of the place.