Lost in the Supermarket

I know, I know, I have been quite scarce lately, but then again, I've been really busy this month.

Anyway, things are slowly moving along and the H is very slowly starting to adjust.

However, there was a bit of a crisis when we went food shopping. As everyone knows, I am a huge fan of Whole Foods, and especially of their 365 Whole Foods brand, which is excellent, not expensive, and is manufactured in factories with excellent separation techniques (to avoid cross-contamination with common allergens such as milk, wheat/gluten, nuts, shellfish, etc.)

Things the H has learned (to his dismay) about the US supermarkets:

1. There is no such thing as Picard (that classic French frozen foods store). Thus, we do not buy our herbs frozen, but rather fresh or dried. "What do you mean, you don't have frozen herbs??? What do you mean, there is no Picard?? Are you saying that you live like barbarians?!" was the H's response.
2. We Americans do not consider yogurt to be like, an actual dessert. Thus yogurt is sold in single-use containers and not in a 6 or 12 pack like in France. Plus, each yogurt is like, 99 cents or something. "Why are the yogurts so expensive? How do people eat dessert?" was the H's angry reaction. ("Ummm, yogurt is like, a snack you eat at like, 4:30 pm, or maybe you eat it with your granola and fruit in the morning," I retorted).
3. There is no cheese course in America. Not only that, but the cheeses imported in from France are like, a zillion dollars. "Why is cheese so expensive? We can't afford to buy cheese at these prices every day!" cried the H. ("Uh, yeah, that's because we Americans are not cheese freaks like in France and we do not eat cheese after every single meal," I said).
4. With the exception of Trader Joe's, wine here is quite pricey. Not only that, but the Italian and Australian wine sections are quite large, perhaps even larger than the French sections. "Why is wine so expensive? We cannot afford to spend $10 on a bottle of wine a day!" complained the H. ("Ummm, we don't drink wine with EVERY SINGLE meal here in the U.S.", was my response).
5. "Why is it so NOISY?!" exclaims the H, every time an ambulance/police car/ firetruck passes by. "Must they put their sirens on SO LOUD?!"

On the other hand, the H has remarked on quite a few positive points:

1. At least in NY, when you send a resume out, people actually respond.
2. The portions are HUGE. This is very good when he wants to buy a bottle of wine - he is very much into the large bottles that cost $7.
3. Pizza can be purchased and consumed by the slice rather than an individual pie. This also means much less wait time and you can even eat your food to go.
4. The Duane Reade Dollar Rewards Club is actually a pretty good deal. (When you get 100 points, you get $5 off your next purchase).
5. Whole Foods is actually not much more expensive than a regular old supermarket, especially when you buy the 365 Whole Foods brand. Plus, their stuff is way better.
6. You don't get penalized into buying a bag if you forgot to bring a bag to the supermarket. In fact, at Whole Foods, if you bring your own bag, they take 10 cents off your bill for each of your own bags that you bring.
7. Customer service is really efficient in the US. What's even cooler is that it's free to call them up and lots of times, they are open 24/7, so you could call them up at 3 am if you wanted to. For free. Oh yeah, and when you go out to eat, waiters fill up your water glasses all the time, without being asked to.

Attention whores!

Yes! Attention whores, the whole lot of them!

Just CALL THE DAMN VOTE, Indiana! (Or, more specifically, Lake County, Indiana!) You're killing us!

It's like, 1 AM and they STILL haven't finished counting!

What, are they counting ballots by hand?!

Arrrrrgggghhh!

You know, I always thought people from Indiana were weird. Though this is solely based on that time I met this girl from Indiana who told me all about how she has to drive across a river (like, literally, because apparently there wasn't a bridge, which I still cannot imagine) to get to her house and that she had sex like, 5 times a day in the woods (because her house is in like, total wilderness, which I guess is why there is no bridge over the river in front of her house).

Getting into the groove

I don't feel like talking about the saga of my apartment. It is still going on, re: the rent money and all, but I have only negative thoughts about the guy who subleted my apartment - negative thoughts in manner of "I want to strangle him", so I shall not say anything about it at all. For now.

Anyway, things are moving along. Except maybe our funds, from HSBC France. Supposedly HSBC France wired our money to our HSBC US bank account but it's been almost a week now and we still haven't received it. I am willing to bet that the delay is coming from France, and is not a US problem.

The great news is that we discovered a great little restaurant about 2 blocks from my apartment (which means delivery! Holla!) called S'Mac. It's tiny, and they serve all sorts of fancy mac 'n cheese varieties - and the best part (you knew this was coming) is that they serve GLUTEN FREE MAC N CHEESE!!!!!! I had the "Cheeseburger" mac n cheese yesterday for lunch, which consisted of cheddar and ground beef. It was SOOOOO good, but it was quite heavy, especially as I haven't eaten THAT much cheese in awhile, so I didn't feel so great afterwards, but I got better as the afternoon wore on.

Today we went to Mozzarelli's, a pizza place that serves GLUTEN FREE PIZZA and it was SOOOOOOO GOOD. Mozzarelli's is a little farther away, on 23rd between Park & Madison, but it was SOOOOO GOOD. They have all sorts of different GF pies, and you can order by the slice, like everyone else. I got a pepperoni slice and it was SOOOOO GOOD. It was almost just like a real pizza.

(BTW, shout out to Celiac Chicks for all the great GF restaurant reviews).

H is adjusting, slowly but surely. He never fails to be surprised by how friendly people are here, and how customer service oriented people are in stores and restaurants. Yesterday we headed over to explore the Whole Foods on Houston Street (we usually go to the one at Union Square) and it was like, so much better than the one at Union Square - it is much bigger and there are way fewer people, plus they have a special beer shop attached to the main store, and offer cooking classes! Anyway, I have been having major issues with my hair these days - I had recently noticed that my favorite Aveda Rosemary & Mint Shampoo listed "grains" as one of their ingredients! This unfortunately coincided with a massive attack of eczema on my body, and now not only do I have patches everywhere, but my hair is oily and my scalp is freaking out - it's all dry and itchy and weird. I figured Whole Body at Whole Foods would have something for me but I looked at all the labels on all the shampoos and almost all of them listed something along the lines of "wheat", "barley", "wheatgerm oil", "hops", etc. The only one that didn't have any of these kinds of ingredients was the Whole Foods 365 brand of shampoo. I figured I'd buy it, but asked the saleslady if she would know if their brand of shampoo contained gluten. She was quite perplexed, and said she wasn't sure, so she advised me not to buy it, but to call her at her direct line (she gave me her number) next week as she would send out an email to the Corporate Headquarters for me to make sure if it was gluten free or not. "Wow," said the H, "that is like, REALLY nice of her. Salespeople are very nice here." (I didn't really say anything, but I had a look of extreme smugness on my face).

Anyway, as I pointed out to the H, France is never far away - and then I showed him the ultimate thing - that we get Le Journal de France 2 (the 20h edition) on channel 25 here in the NY Metro area. (Luckily they still show it every evening at 19h, and it hasn't changed since I first started French classes at the age of 8). So now he can keep up with the news back home - which tonight included clips of people arguing about working hours (something about some unions and people who are mad about working overtime or something) and the importance of the month of May in terms of vacation days (apparently there are many vacation days in May and the best way to take advantage of them all is to get your RTT's in between all the official Catholic holidays, which means you can get up to like, almost 2 entire weeks of vacation for only like, 5 RTT's). Oh yeah, and something about the Tunisians being all annoyed at Sarko's visit (big surprise).

If anything, it's vaguely comforting to see that nothing really changes much in France.