Day 120: I'm Julia Child in France!

29 Decembre 2009 (Day 120)
Well, after staying up late (yet again) Brooke and I didn’t get out of bed until around 11:30. I did wake up earlier, but then I went back to bed and had the strangest dream about Pete Caldwell and his family selling burgers and myself and Chris Mitchell eating them…weird! I had some yogurt and baguette for breakfast and then I worked on some PowerPoint presentations to look at with Antoine and the girls. We had some neighbors over for lunch. Nicole is this cute older lady and PehPah (I don’t know what his real name is) is a giant burly man with white hair who is a really fun guy. Brooke and I helped to make a yummy lentil salad. It contained: lentils, grated carrots, onions, and balsamic vinegar. We had rice with a light pork curry that they are going to sell (these are the neighbors with whom the Benard’s work a little bit). There was also a lentil-celery-leek dish that was good as well. The pork was so great though, it wasn’t chewy and super soft. I love their cooking!
We got on the subject of cookies during lunch, so after lunch we made cookies. They wanted to make honey cookies and chocolate chip cookies so I found recipes and translated them. We then went to the giant industrial cooking room next to the little honey factory where they normally cook the meats and stuff. The honey cookies turned out fantastic. Here is the recipe:
HONEY BEE COOKIES
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□ 1/2 c. butter, softened
□ 1/2 c. packed brown sugar (we used normal sugar though)
□ 1/2 c. honey
□ 1 egg
□ 1 1/2 c. flour
□ 1/2 tsp. baking soda
□ 1/2 tsp. salt
□ 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
□ 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Beat butter, brown sugar, honey and egg in a medium bowl on medium speed, scraping bowl constantly, until smooth. Stir in remaining ingredients.
3. Drop the dough by teaspoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake until set and light brown around edges (surfaces of cookies will appear shiny), 7 to 9 minutes. Let stand 3 to 5 minutes before removing from cookie sheet, then remove from cookie sheet with metal spatula onto a wire rack. Makes 36 cookies.

The children and granddaughter (named Marie) of Nicole came over to the ‘kitchen’. PuhPah was quite serious about this cookie business, so he helped me find all the ingredients, weigh, and mix everything. Afterwards Brooke and Mathilde made some chocolate chip cookies (they have nothing on mine). Mona (a friend), Antoine, and the other daughter (yes, I am nul with names) watched Ice Age 2.
We had dinner around 9pm, with a neighbor who came, Veronica. We had onion soup and leftovers from lunch. We had a discussion about the LDS religion/religions in general. Jean-Claude is very anti-religious (slightly communist, not atheist), and Florence used to be Catholic, so she was more open to the church. Veronica brought some fromage du brebis, that was delicious. Now we are watching Dead Poets Society (in French).