Frog Blog

lunch today was "steak hache," which is sort of like ground beef in a patty form. yum, i thought. the spanish assistant and i both chose the same thing.

alas, when we cut into it, the beef was pretty much raw. it was red and barely warm. both of us looked at each other and said, what the hell is this? the other french teachers in the lunchroom explained that this particular lunch dish is very traditional for france, because the french think the meat's true flavors are lost when it's cooked all the way. huh.

now, don't get me wrong; while i usually like my meat cooked, i don't mind a little pink in the middle of my steak (b. and dad can attest that i like it cooked but not brown and tough all the way). but that's steak; this was red hamburger. it looked like it had just come from the package. neither of us ate it, much to the amusement of the french teachers.

so,
tonight the assistants and some of the profs are going out to a fine dining dinner experience to celebrate our arrival and also, i think, as an excuse to get together outside of school. a room at a restaurant in town was reserved for us and we had 6 options for food: 3 different salads to choose from and 3 different main courses to choose from. the spanish assistant and i both chose the beef option for the main course (the other choices were salmon and veal feet, no joke).

one of the teachers explained to us that our beef tonight may indeed be very similar to the bloody beef we had for lunch. but... she did say we could ask the waiter to actually cook our meat tonight.

i feel pretty adventurous when it comes to food; dating b. i've tried all kinds of foods that i normally wouldn't have and i've liked most of them (take beets, for example). i'll try just about anything once, with the possible exception of live bugs or worms (or dead bugs or worms, for that matter) but there's something about raw meat that kinda bugs me. (i know that salami isn't cooked but cured, but that's a totally different ballpark) perhaps if it's steak tonight and a little red and not ground steak, it will be different?

i guess i'll just have to wait and see.