Le bon goût

Ok, well apologies for the absence, this week I have been staying with a French home and believe it or not, there are houses out there which still don't have the internet!!! The family is nice but I haven't spent a whole lot of time there between school, work and my hectic social life. The other night I scored a massive 140 bowling, a record for me! So while I haven't spent a lot of time there, and I have to catch the bus into town everyday, the food is completely worth it, so far every nigh has been a three course meal.

The first day started with pizza followed by a delicious, home made courgette, potato and cheese soup followed by poached pears and chocolate fondue. The second night was advocado and a vinaigrette sauce, pizza, chicken with a lentil and vegetable sauce followed by chocolate puddings. Night three I was a little disappointed because there were only two courses , roast chicken AND steak with potatoes and salad followed by grapes and yogurt.

Last night was the killer though. And not in the good way either. The soup was good, the mains was a stir fry of some sort which started out really well, then on my third mouthful I discovered that there were little mussels in the mix. Ok so not so bad, I can eat mussels, I actually would go so far as to say I quite like them. But that starts me thinking as I take my fourth mouthful that perhaps there are other types of seafood in the mix, then I notice the little prawns. Now I've tried these before and I can do them, I have after all been brought up to eat whats put infront of me and of course my english side doesn't want to cause offence so I continue to stomach it until I realise that peering out of the rice and vegetables are two giant king prawns AND that the little vegetables that look like they have funny tenctaley things are actually baby octopuses!!!!!

This is when I have to stop. But it's too late to back out, I can't feign illness or decline dinner because I'm going out, I'm already at the table and halfway through. So I eat around the king prawns and sift out the baby octopuses until I'm almos done and then I see that the others are not leaving a large pile of unwanted seafood on the side of the plates so I decided to make a move on the king prawns.

It didn't look too difficult, just snap of the heads, peel of the shell and then pull out the flesh with my bare fingers. The first was not so difficult and I tried not to look it in the eyes as I broke its body in half and it actually didn't tase too awful. On the second though, I nearly dry retched as I accidentaly put my thumb into the guts and they splurged out onto the plate. I had to pause take adeep breath and eat the smallest amount of the body I could and still make it look like I had eaten.

After that there was no way I was doing the baby octopuses, so I artfully arranged the shells, octopusses underneath, all pushed up against the excess rice in the vain attempt at creating the illusion I had eaten more than I had. While I am pleased to report that I am well this morning, regardless of the fact that I have the contents of a small rock pool floating around my stomach and am all the stronger for it I thick I'll continue to avoid the seafood buffets.