Alright guys, I have a story for you that is well, about cheese and cow feet. I recently moved in with my host family and they are awesome! The mom is divorced and has a daughter who is 5 years old (lots of estragen in the house). She also has a neice who has been living here but I think leaves today who is 18 yrs old. So, needless to say, there is ALOT of talking and it is very loud. Well, the other night we had salmon lasagna, pizza, and lamb for dinner. I don’t know if they made the HUGE meal for me or if it how they always eat but there was ALOT of food. (No stinky cheese yet, but I’m getting there)
So today, they said it was a wonderful day outside and so we would have a picnic outside and eat. I was like awesome! Beautiful weather and eating outside, cool. I walk outside barefoot in my wofford t-shirt and its about 50 degrees….. FREEZING MY BUTT OFF! The lattitude of Rennes, France is about the same as Maine or Canada. It is the end of summer and its sooo cold. Anyway, back on track, we had a lovely meal with peas and some kinda meat (i don’t know what it was) and then she asked if I would like some cheese. In France, you can’t say no to cheese! So of course I said yes and she brouth out a tray of 8 different kinds of cheese. All looked like they had been on the tray since I was born and I was just thinking to myself, there is only one bathroom in this house… (sorry, that was gross) But anyway, so I tried the Swiss cheese first because we have that in America. It was delicious! A lot stronger than the kind you find in america but also a lot better. So next, I tried some bretagne specialty cheese. It was like hard and crumbled and seemed to me like it had gone bad. It was SO GROSS But my host mom and her neice just looked at me and said isn’t it great?! France is known for this cheese!! And of course, I said O yeah….wonderful….. (…probably going to have this cheese at every meal now….) There were four other cheeses that I had but they were but ok…all of them seemed like they had gone bad and one even had mold growing on the outside. My host mother told me that’s how you know when its good to eat. In my house in America, thats when you throw it in the trash!
Ok, Almost forgot about the cowfeet. We went to this open market thing which happens downtown every saturday. It was awesome. Literally, five blocks of fresh fruits and vegatables. Then we got to the meat part which was in an open barn type thing. Right when you entered there was a vender selling live chickens and cows. Next to him was a man selling cow tongues, ribs and what not. As we continued through the barn it just got stranger and stranger. There were rabbits, goats, cows, animal hearts, livers, brains. All sorts of stuff but there were three things that I just could not handle! COW FEET, PIG FEET, and lastly HEDGEHOG. So the cow feet and pig feet you can probably guess why that grossed me out, they were feet…. But the hedgehog was the worst becuase it still had its little spikes and head and everything! But it didn’t have any skin. The entire hedgehod was sold for about 10 euro or 15ish dollars. But it was horrible. The poor lil hedge hog had no skin but the calcium that made its spikes and all its brains and what not were still there. It was so gross!!
So there is my stinky cheese and all around gross food story. More to come later!
From France,
Hope you enjoyed!