Wednesday, January 17, 2007

The best day of the week... Tuesday.

I live an a quiet residential area of Nantes, just off the busy star-shaped Plaza Zola. On my road, about a block closer to the plaza, is a large supermarket with a parking lot around back and a moderate blacktop in front. Most mornings this blacktop is home to renegade shopping carts and the occasional beggar. However, Tuesday is different. Sometime before dawn, the Abid family park their large van there. It is not a normal white van, but one of those you see at fairs where the side flap opens up to reveal the counter of a food vendor. The Abid family sells one of the most important foods from this particular region of France: crepes and galettes (whear, savory crepes). On two huge crepe cookers (they look like a large skillet turned upside down) they keep cooking the crepes all day. For less than 15 cents you get the basic building block of the crepe dinner - the cooked batter. People line up, in fact I rarely see any less than three people in line at any given time. In general, I buy three huge crepes (31 cents) each week - in the afternoon, when the wife is working. She is really nice and likes to small talk... anyway... Each week I plan on saving them: eating one when I get back, one after dinner, and one for breakfast the next morning. Nothing fancy, mind you. Just butter, lemon, and sugar. No matter how forcibly I remind myself about the planned rationing, I have yet to have a crepe remaining after two hours. They smell too good to leave on my shelf for too long. I end up eating them in rapid succession - usually ending in a stomachache. However, this never stops me from buying three crepes each week from my favorite crepe-mobile.

Bon Appétit!
Heather

1 comment:

VL said...

now I desperately want creps. dang it!

keep having fun!!

also, wear two pairs of socks and thick boots, Or I'll have to come over there and hit you with, well, I haven't taken any oaths recently, but I'll hit you with something!! :)