Tacos

On Tuesday my roommate and I made dinner for Madame. We decided that we should make something American for her, and somehow we both thought of tacos, which aren't really "American," but everybody in the US has had a taco, right? So we began.

First, you have to realize that the oddest things prove very difficult here: for example, locating and affording the ingredients. I spent about 9 euros (maybe 12ish US dollars) on the meat, which was only half a pound of ground beef. The store also only carried one size to choose from. Next, sour cream? No. Didn't happen. We couldn't even begin to imagine what that might be called in French, since it's just a description in English anyway. Cheddar cheese? You'd think in a country famous for its cheeses, it'd have them all but...not so! Only French cheeses, and zero cheddar. We refused to mix more cultures into this taco, so we went without cheese as well. My mom had mailed me a few weeks ago taco seasoning and tortillas, so we were set there since there wasn't any of either at the stores we visited.

We had a grand old time, us roomies plus a friend of mine who doesn't have a roommate who Madame said we coudl invite, in the kitchen preparing the food, listening to music on our computers, and generally bustling about and singing along. It's a good thing Madame didn't come home just then. My roommate wanted to put all the toppings in pretty bowls, but I wanted to be ULTRA un-French and keep them in pans, etc., but she won out on the end - I think Madame would have been shocked to actually see a pan of rice at the table.

We had to show Madame how to put it together (Oh and it was quite funny to watch her try to eat the chips and salsa) and she had a most difficult time eating it with her hands. Poor lady - she ended up scooping the lost toppings onto her fork surruptitiously with her chips after a taco. She was surprised when we kept eating, and we explained that pretty much this was the only course. We DID make dessert but really none of us have dessert every day. So she willingly dug in to yet another, exclaiming to me at one point, "Sariah, how do you keep it all in the, how you say, tortilla!?" and we showed her again how to fold it. She seemed to have fun, though, watching our obvious delight at something we all knew and loved from years of experience, and she kept commenting, "C'est delicious! Tres bon!" I hope she actually DID like it! And she was somewhat shocked at the spicy Taco Bell sauce my mom sent me. We tried to warn her...! Poor lady...but that was something I thought I'd never see, the image of Madame using her hands to try to eat a messy taco.