cravings

Last week I hopped on a train heading East, and landed in the town of Chaumont to spend the day with Doc. We spent the morning with her adorable son, who is quite possibly the best behaved child under the age of two I have ever seen. After a little jaunt in the woods and some jungle gym climbing in a park - where our little hero was accosted by a very odd little girl and took it all in stride - we went to satisfy Doc's pregnancy craving for Chinese food.

There we met her husband, his colleague, and another American-living-in-France (hooray! we're setting up a bit of a network out here in the country). This particular Chinese restaurant offers a buffet lunch, consisting of about three different dishes along with the usual rice and noodles. Spring rolls are offered with lettuce leaves, which you're meant to wrap around your spring roll before eating, and they had really good teriyaki chicken, too! Doc's husband doesn't much like eating Chinese as they don't offer bread to go with your meal (which cracks me up!) but I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It seemed to me that it wasn't as greasy as the Chinese food I've had back home, and there wasn't nearly as much fried food offered. Of course, I'd do just about anything for a good crab rangoon, but Doc's given me a recipe, so I may have to try that at home some time.

So, after satiating Doc's Chinese food craving, the two of us sauntered around downtown a bit and landed in a cafe. There we sucked down cool drinks (this was before the weather finally turned, bless you Autumn!) while she copied down some recipes for me - Doc's gone a long way in alleviating my fear of kitchen implements.

Doc has also become my drug book dealer. As I handed her back the box of books she'd lent me, including the new Harry Potter, she replaced it with another box of lovely lovely books. I've already torn through The Time Traveler's Wife (amazing, amazing book) and The Poisonwood Bible (another amazing book) and have started yet another book. This is quite dangerous, as I have the tendency to let everything else fall away when I'm deep into a book, though it does keep me occupied while I'm waiting for a phone call from Mr. Irish.

Book drooling aside, it was a good day, and I'm looking forward to the day when we've got an extra car lying around so we can do it more often.