Oh, yeah, the snails

Frogs, chickens, calf heads, and snails -- I forgot to tell about the snails.

My first snail meal was in Louhans during my second week at La Cardere. We had come to town for a film and for a meal in a nice restaurant that I had missed during my three days there before school started. The snails were a luscious, garlicky, buttery, herby delight. They were lined up on those giant toothpicks for grilling, each snail wrapped in bacon. I couldn't actually taste the snails because of the strong flavor of the bacon, but the meal was delicious. Left behind on the plate was an excess of garlicky, herby butter which it was an utter shame to waste. I was sitting next to Danielle, the female half of the instructor couple, a piece of bread in my hand, tentatively suspended in the air above my plate. I said to her that I had been taught that in France it is considered very bad manners to sop up the leftover sauce on the plate with bread. She said that in Bresse it is considered perfectly all right, and we were indeed in Bresse, so I grinned and sopped away. She also said that a lot of the folks in Bresse, when confronted by numerous forks and such beside their plates, exclaim "What's all this?" and shove them away, using one fork for everything. I decided right then that these are my kind of people.

When my two weeks of talking, listening, eating, drinking, living, breathing, and finally dreaming in French were finally over, I spent three days in Dijon recuperating before returning to Ireland. I was so soaked in amazing food and wine by then that in Dijon I didn't even look for a good restaurant. I hardly ate at all and drank wine only once when I wandered into a casual "grill" type restaurant for my only sit-down meal. (The rest of the time I ate from bakeries and street sandwich vendors or simply didn't eat.) I selected Pizza Bourgognne with snails and mushrooms and sun-dried tomato. The itty-bitty snails had little flavor but a nice texture. It was a tasty pizza.