Pommes Frites

All this french fry nonsense reminded me of the first time I tried to order fries in Europe. We were at some wine festival on the German-French Border. We wanted some fries, but the girl behind the counter only spoke french, and I was trying to use very fractured german, with a pseudo-french accent (thinking that would help her understand).

After about 10 minutes, she started laughing, because she could speak english and was just having the time of her life watching us poor GIs make fools of ourselves. She was 15 years old, and her name was Marie. She remains in my memory as one of the most innocently beautiful girls I have ever seen. I wish I hadn't been so painfully shy back then.

Two more things. Over there, they serve french fries (pommes frites)with mayonnaise. Not the yucky kind we have here, but a wonderful homemade kind that makes one forget there was ever any such thing as catsup(ketchup).

The best response to the whole embarrassing "french-freedom" fiasco came from someone in the French embassy who pointed out that french-cut fried potatoes originated in Belgium, not France.

The vegetable with a heart

It's officially artichoke season in California. Each spring the produce shelves sprout the tantalizing green globes, and I go for it all the way. As long as the price stays reasonable, we'll have artichokes almost every night. I like to drizzle them with oil, steam them and serve with green onion dip. Mmmmmmm.

Since they were prominently featured in today's paper, I just assumed they would be on sale at "the store", so I mentally added them to tonight's menu. Artichokes will go well with the homemade portabello mushroom pizza I'm planning to prepare. When it is my night to cook, I like to have interesting food.

At "the store" artichokes were $1.99 each. Bummer. Way too expensive. I decided to stop at the "other" store and see how much they were. I don't like the "other" store. It's aisles are backwards and things are never where I expect them to be.

Anyway, artichokes were same price as "the store". But by now, the idea of artichokes had firmly planted itself and taken root-- "the menu had been printed", so so to speak. I picked out two great looking 'chokes and a lonely roma tomato in search of a good home, and fell into line.

The cashier rings me up. Two artichokes and a tomato: $10.30. Wait a minute! That can't be right. "Sir, if you had one of our preferred savings card, it would be much less". I hate those stinking cards. "The store", where I usually shop is the only store in town that doesn't make you use the stupid things, and that's why I shop there instead of here.

So she scanned some dummy card they have, and it resulted in a $6.00 savings. I still didn't see how I could save $6 on two artichokes that were only $1.99 each. She looked at the tape and gasped--literally! She had charged me for 4 artichokes instead of 2. She deducted them, leaving a total of $2.32. So I paid with a debit card-- for the amount only. She then hands me $1.85 in change. I have no clue as to why. All I know, is that it is artichoke season, and my first two artichokes cost 12 cents (the tomato was 35 cents).

I gotta make some dough. See ya later.