An American in Provence

Every year, around December or January, we invite friends over for a traditional "Raclette" meal. This is similar to fondue, and comes from the France/Switzerland border area. What you do is buy a certain type of raclette cheese, that is usually pre-cut into square or round slices. These slices are then placed on little pots, which are then placed into a heater, which melts them. Then you scrape the cheese onto various high-calorie items, like potatos, bread, ham, or sausage. Sometimes you can be really healthy and have it on apples or carrots, but let's not get carried away. In the picture, you can see the raclette machine where you heat up the cheese slices, which are placed on the utensil just to the right of the knives. The wooden thing is to scrape the cheese off.

Why do we do raclette every year? Well, besides it being a very good winter dish, there is also no actual cooking involved. (besides cooking the potatos, which I can actually manage).

So this year we invited most of our friends here in Provence one couple couldn't come because the woman was about 39 weeks pregnant (and has since had her baby), another couple was out of town. I was pretty tired as I had spent the entire week working hard with a visiting US engineer but Alain and I managed to get the apartment cleaned and the groceries bought in record time. It was also a good occasion to use various wedding gifts that don't get used as much as they should.

The raclette should be eaten with a salad and white wine is supposed to be served. For dessert we had ice cream and a coconut pie that Veronica, a lovely Argentinian, brought. Her husband, Sebastian (Argentinian as well), works with me.

It was a very nice night.





The night wen