Super is the same in both languages.

Super old men in France will talk to anything slow enough, and when I'm waiting for something I'm slow enough. The other day I was waiting in a park and an old man wearing about four sweaters came and wanted to chat, about how great my nose is, and where I learned French, and if I have ever lived in a desert and what I think of souls.

"I'm going to be honest." he said. "If I had a time machine and could be a young man again, and if you lost some weight, I would ask you to marry me right now on the spot."

"That is super honest." I said.

DO NOT FEED HONEY TO INFANTS

Yogurt Review:

This yogurt tastes the way sunscreen smells.




If you want to taste summer but by "taste summer" you don't mean watermelon or lemonade or barbecue or anything you would normally eat in summer, you just mean you want your mouth full of the smell of sunscreen, with a few grainy bits maybe sand maybe rocks, that's what this is.

who needs cheese reviews

If there's one thing about food we can all agree on, it's that it's not very enjoyable unless it's combined with an experiment. Which is why the last time I went to the grocery store I bought milk made from almonds, an expensive spiked fruit, and powdered peanut butter.



Also known as PB2!

If powdered peanut butter were the most popular sandwich topping and you were an astronaut going on a space mission, you would invent regular peanut butter. Powdered peanut butter is peanut butter for earthlings. I would say it's my favorite food, but I'm not sure if it's a food and I'm pretty sure it's not my favorite.

Just add water and it become spreadable. Try eating it plain and you will choke. After these two experiences I moved onto more complicated recipes, with varying results. Here are the results.

Peanut butter yogurt
If this grosses you out you're not ready for the following recipes.
Three stars. ★★★☆ 

Peanut butter eggs
This was a bad idea. Of all the types of eggs I've made (cinnamon eggs, pizza eggs, spinach eggs, pasta eggs, chili eggs, and blueberry eggs) peanut butter eggs are the definitive worst. I would only recommend them to bodybuilders or people without mouths.
Zero stars. ☆☆☆☆

Hot peanut butter water
At this point I'm probably going to lose all credibility as a peanut butter reviewer but it's worth the risk: hot water mixed with powdered peanut butter is delicious.
Four stars. ★★★★

Peanut butter applesauce
Peanut butter tastes good on apples, so I wondered does it taste good IN apples?! No, it doesn't.
One star. ★☆☆☆



In other news I might have that condition where I have a work-related accident in a factory and lose the ability to taste, but I'm also a time traveller so I lose the ability to taste BEFORE the accident actually happens.

Cheese Review 11 and 12

11. Smoked cheese from the Carpathian mountains (Polish)
Pretty good. Looks more like meat than cheese, but it is cheese. In this picture it looks more like bread, but there's a bear in this picture and that's hilarious so stop complaining.
Rating: 5/10


12. Twarog (Polish)
Sour and wet. Apparently you can mix it with sugar, salt, onions, or peppers. You can also make it yourself but it's really complicated and you need to live in a climate similar to Poland's.
Rating: 6/10


I don't know if you've heard already but I'm a pretty big deal in Marseille's Polish community. My Polish friends introduce me to Polish chocolates, Polish tea, Polish music, and best of all (though it's hard to top chocolate) Polish cheese.

At lunch today we debated whether Poland or France had better cheese, which seemed like a ridiculous argument. René (French) ended it by citing the Charles de Gaulle quote "How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?" And then we all agreed that because of quantity alone, France was the clear winner. René said there were 365 different varieties, not 246, but during the conversation he casually mentioned 23 I had never heard of, so he does seem to know what's up. I wrote them all down.

Cheese Review 9 and 10

9. EMMENTAL
This isn't that exciting, because another name for Emmental is Swiss Cheese. But it was made in France, and it was pretty delicious. Not Comté-delicous, but pretty delicious.
 Rating: 8/10



10. CROTTIN DE CHEVRE
This translates to "goat dung." I had super high hopes for this cheese, but it actually lived up to its name. Probably because I skimped and got a cheap kind. It tasted bitter and spongy, a really bad kind of spongy. Yikes it was nasty. Maybe I will try again with a higher-quality goat dung? Stay tuned.
Rating: 1/10

cheese review 8

8. CAMEMBERT
My first experience with this cheese was a reference in the movie "Wallace and Gromit, A Grand Day Out." But my first experience eating it was last week at my friend's apartment. It tastes a lot like brie - but a little less brie-ish. I had just eaten a lot of other cheeses without cleansing my palate, so I might have to review this one again.

rating: 7/10

Cheese Review 7

7. FICELLO
This is just string cheese. I bought it the same day I bought the apple yogurt, the day I now refer to as the worst decision-making day ever. There were two varieties, regular and "baby", and I got the baby kind, assuming the word "baby" was being used the same way it's used in "baby carrots" - small like a baby, not made for babies. But when I got home I noticed the package called it "Baby's first cheese!" How does a baby eat string cheese? How does string cheese milk a cow? Like this:

Rating: 6/10

Cheese Review 6

6. BOURSIN
Recommended by Aimée and Alaine, fellow English teachers. Boursin is really, really, really good. It's losing a few points because the only thing worse than cheese breath is garlic cheese breath.
Rating: 7/10



Ok, there are worse breaths.

Cheese Review 4 and 5

Still way ahead of schedule on my goal to try a new type of cheese a week.

4. FROMAGE BLANC
Recommended by Hannah. This is more like yogurt than cheese. But it has the name cheese, and it is delicious.
Rating 8/10



5. KIRI
Recommended by Sonia, who said if I like kids food I'll like Kiri. There are two brands of this cheese: La Vache qui rit, and Kiri, which sounds exactly like "qui rit." Madness. It tastes exactly like cream cheese. I told the people I live with that we have a cheese like this in the US, but you're not allowed to eat it plain, you just put it on a specific type of pastry. They looked at me in a way that says "if you don't have anything interesting to say, don't say anything at all" which is a look I get a lot from French people.
Rating: 9/10

Cheese Review 3

I'm 9% done with my goal to try 33 new cheeses. I think that's ahead of schedule.

3. SAINT AGUR GOAT CHEESE
Recommended by Emily, who I met because she was traveling all over Europe. This cheese is freaking strong, but Emily can handle large amounts of it.
Rating: 5/10




0. BRIE
This cheese doesn't count because I've had it before. But it was recommended by Celeste, who randomly brought it to church for everyone to eat.
Rating: 9/10

my life is so hard

I'm going to have a pretty grueling year in France. Evidence is the arduous goal I've made for myself: to try 33 new kinds of cheese while I'm here. Almost any kind of cheese is fair game, because so far in my life I think I've had less than 10 different kinds.

I had planned to keep track of my progress by getting a tattoo of each cheese on my arm after I ate it, but halfway through the first tattoo this morning I realized it would be more convenient and less painful to write about each of them. So, voila I guess.

1. GOAT CHEESE
Recommended by Sarah, my English roommate my first night in Marseille. Don't make fun of me for never eating goat cheese before now. I think it tastes like cream cheese, and it's good with space lettuce or peaches.
Rating: 8/10



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2. COMTÉ
Recommended by Ashley and Ruthie, friends in Marseille. They talked this cheese up all day but it is impossible to exaggerate how good it is. It tastes like swiss cheese a little? And it's probably good with anything.
Rating: 12/10



I'm probably going to have to adjust my rating scale. Because any cheese is at least a 7/10.