joyeux le quatorze juillet!
(Just like we say "Happy 4th of July", they say "Happy 14th of July")
WOW, this post should have been up Monday, but we were so busy that day and I didn't post on my off day yesterday... So, honestly, expect two posts today. (One for this, and I may do a post on some TV I watched last night, but that might turn into a post later this week.)
Anyways, my friend Megan and I love France. We've each been to the country twice (once together, and then we each had a separate trip before that), and well, we're dying to go back. ("Dying" might be a literal term in this case. We're stir crazy for some sort of travel, and Paris is higher towards the top of our lists.) We haven't seen each other in a while - we're busy, busy, busy working adults - and I suggested we celebrate Bastille Day, since this year it fell on our off days.
[caution: raw chicken bits ahead. I've emitted the grosser bits in picture form, but descriptions are still there.]
After attempting to sleep in a bit - I know Megan woke up early, and I don't sleep very well - I went to the store to gather food for our Bastille Day festivities!
So much food!...I still have leftovers.
On Saturday, we planned on cooking a chicken dish. Now, I've only cooked one whole chicken before, but in the words of Chef Gusteau from Ratatouille, "Anyone can cook." As long as I followed the instructions, I'd be okay!
le vin.
When I arrived, we decided to go ahead and have a glass of wine. I like certain wines, but I'm more of a liquor drinker than I am a wine drinker. I trusted Megan's decision, though. (She actually got help from the guy at the liquor shop.) The wine was good!
When I arrived at Megan's, it was only 2pm, so we decided to watch a movie before cooking. We decided to watch the two movies "Amelie" and "La Vie en Rose" (or, as it's called outside of the US, "La Mome"). I figured, let's watch the depressing movie first so we can be sad first but happy later. Oh, my, I forgot how depressing that movie is! (I haven't watched the movie since 2008.) I swear I teared up so much during that movie, and I held back all my depressing emotions at the end.
le poulet.
A few months ago, I cooked a whole chicken for the first time. Upon looking up how to do so, I began to freak out. I was so worried about touching a chicken's insides! Thankfully, that time, the insides were in a bag.
I wasn't so lucky this time.
At first, I didn't feel any. I heard that sometimes, whole chickens don't have any of the bits, so I felt incredibly lucky. Well, I felt lucky until I pulled out a heart...and the gizzards...and the liver. I've emitted pictures and Vine videos, but if you decide to look up my Vine videos, prepared to hear me go, "What...OH MY---" (The "GOSH" didn't make into the video, but me freaking out has caused everyone to laugh.)
celeri et citron.
After successfully emptying the inside of a chicken, we pre-heated the oven and cut up a lemon, onion, and celery sticks. We followed a Julia Child recipe, and it told us to put lemon, onion, and celery inside of it. The chicken only fit so much, so we surrounded extra pieces around the chicken in the pan, to help with additional flavoring of the chicken.
the most graphic picture you will see in this post.
les macarons.
For a dessert, we decided to make macarons! I found a recipe for peanut butter and jelly macarons online. While the chicken began to cook, we started on the macarons. The recipe called for ground peanuts and almonds, and I guess I didn't ground them enough because the final mix (for the macaron shells) wasn't smooth and creamy like I imagined. (Then again, it could have been like that. I didn't quite read the instructions, I just wrote down the ingredients.)
I left the mix as is and we began to put the mix into balls on a cooking sheet. Well, I put them too close together and they expanded quite quickly. (Let's just agree that I'm more a cook than I am a baker. I've always cooked better than I have baked.)
les macarons...peut-etre.
Yes, perhaps the worst macarons you will ever see! Hey, Megan and I are not professional bakers. They weren't terrible tasting. Megan liked them more than I did. The filling was quite nice, but the shell... We had fun, and we're willing to try this again.
Anyways, back to the chicken...
our setup for the night.
Megan created a nice setup at her table for the two of us! The picture that I posted at the top of this post was at the end of the table.
Now, the chicken was a bit more frozen than we realized, so the chicken ended up taking about... well, a little over two hours to cook. We kept cutting it up and discovering undercooked bits, so we kept throwing it back into the oven. Now, once the chicken was done... it was delicious! The chicken was moist and, while it wasn't too seasoned - we only threw on a bit of salt and pepper - the flavoring from the onions, celery, and lemons created a nice flavor.
You'll notice the picture on the left only displays bread and sweet peas. We were starting to become really hungry, so we decided to begin eating, despite the chicken not being finished. Shortly after we began to eat, the chicken finished up.
We were going to watch Amelie while we ate, but we discovered that was no longer on Netflix. After doing some searching for short programs - I had to leave shortly after we ate - but we ended up finding "The Magic School Bus". That's right, the children's program! Hey, it's an educational program that provided some laughs but ultimately more opportunities for us to make jokes at the program.
This is the second time I've celebrated Bastille Day - the other time was during my first trip to France, when I was 16 - and this was a pretty fun celebration! Next year we'll either have to do the same thing - and cook perfect macarons - or just go out and eat somewhere.
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