Recipes for Starving Students in Paris or Anywhere

OK. Let's bite the bullet here. We talk about all the things we ate as students but how does that help the starving students of today? Zip! So lets start a collection of simple recipes you can make either with no cooking devices or with a simple electric hot plate, Camping Gaz bottle with burner, toaster oven (been available in France to for years), access to sink, some basic utensils and no bank account. Here goes "Recipes for Starving Students"

Food we love now that we are old, wise and never wrong.

We have expanded our food loves and passions (we all have affairs with food right?) so I think we need another Post section to cover what we love now and any recipes we have to share.

Food we ate then.

We have had a great thread, that I hope will continue, on recipes and food and olive trees and tall stories. But I am thinking that I would also like to know what we all ate back then. I'll kick it off. For a few weeks I lived with a widow and 3 other students working on their Masters from Stanford. We had little on common (they actually seemed to like to study!?) and I remember little about what I ate. I ate. I then found a room in an apartment at Ave. Rapp and St. Dominique of a little old lady (4 foot 6 inches if that) and cooked my own food. I bought ground steak from the butcher, Uncle Ben's white rice (can't remember if it was instant but if they had that, then that is what I bought), onions and peas. So, equipped with a Camping Gaz bottle (you know those little blue things with a burner that screws into the top) and one of the first non-stick skillets (all coated with raw Teflon!) and either fried up the ground beef or rolled it into little balls. The butcher would press the ground beef in an oval press to make a patty for me. Great meat too and not horse. I tried it once though (if we can eat those lovely creatures with their big eyes and kind ways, cows I mean, we can eat horses with their tempers and sharp hooves!) but I preferred the beef. I added the onion which caramelized. Put it aside to keep warm with a towel and then cooked the rice in a Scout's pot I had brought with me. Never a Boy Scout myself but they made great knives and camping gear. Since I lived in a small hotel the second year, I did the same thing there with a view of where the femme de menage washed her buckets and mops. She gave me pointers. (Very sweet woman with bright red/orange hair that hung like straw and a warm and caring disposition. My favorite person in Paris!). Sometimes I varied the diet with just the rice and butter. When I was flush, usually at the beginning of the month, I splurged and bought some prepared salads like the Carrot Rapé, or something swimming in mayonnaise. Usually, I had a patisserie that I had bought along with my morning croissant and ficelle at the boulangerie. My repast was then finished with a cigar bought in the same small shop that also sold what are now supplied in Mini-Bars and Airlines around the world, those little one shot bottles. So I worked my way through every liqueur known to man loving those made by monks from pears best. Loved those dedicated monks. Apart from the occasional sandwich Jambon, Croque Monsieur and the rare treat of an early in the AM of the onion soup with frites at Les Halles. I had yet to learn about Campbells Cream of Mushroom soup and Ritz Crackers that can be used to cover anything from a chicken breast to fish. I was a slow learner. Breakfast was almost always a cereal with the strange tasting milk that was supposed to last until I was dead and in my grave. But heated, it made that unique taste when steam heated and added to coffee. Yesterdays bakery items were brought out and eaten with salt free butter and some jam filled with fruit bits. OK. Now there are my sins, what were yours? If we all work well on this, perhaps we could publish here a cook book for poor students having to cook for themselves in Paris!

Food that bring back memories of our ACP, Paris and France

Glenda mentioned "Baguettes! Stinky cheeses, ham sandwiches, Escargot, roasted chestnuts, etc." and Barbara brought us back to "...all the bread, les Parisiennes, Pain au Chocolat, crepes with butter and sugar from those little street crepe stands, a warm potato salad that I think was called Pommes a l'huile, Pate de la compagne, almost all the cheeses with Saint Andre, Brie and... Montrachet being among top choices, Bearnaise sauce (still have my recipe from a little French cookbook I bought over there), Escargots which I used to make frequently in NYC, Bouillabaisse which I made the night I met my husband on a blind date and have never made since!, onion soup gratinee of course ... yes carbs are a challenge! Am sure more will come to mind ... and favorite Paris restaurant meal memory: "Taverne du Sargeant Recreuteur" on the Isle St. Louis...", and more. I think both my pocket book and palate trained on boiled potatoes, cabbage and bread and dripping limited my exploration, but I do remember well the Crepes Grand Marinier (from the same stalls as Barbara probably), Eclairs au Chocolat, Pain Chocolat, Brioche and Croissants hot from the Boulangerie, the steak hache that I cooked up on my Camping Gaz with some onions and steamed white rice. The mini-bottles of Courvoisier, Armagnac, Grand Marinier, and other liqueurs to round out my cuisine. The muck we were served in the college Cafeteria, the Petit Suisse that we loaded with crunchy sugar down at the student cafeteria during orientation down by Porte d'Orleons, that I still love to this day. Many tastes bring back memories of more than the food but also of the places and events coupled with them. I remember well the cafe on Ave. Rapp where I first tried espresso and cafe creme. I had been feeding myself Nescafe in my room. Never again! I can see the thick cup and saucer, the cubes of sugar and the stamped metal spoon for stirring it in. I can picture the chair with the colorful plastic webbing that left its mark on the back of thighs but never absorbed water to leave the back of your legs itching after a spring shower. The waiter bringing my receipt in a little black plastic saucer and tearing it half across on payment and throwing it in the air if my tip was not to his satisfaction (no "service compris" in those days!) The big, wide leaves of the "Platane Commun" trees that lined the boulevards but were black skeletons during most of the low season. The Soupe à l'Oignon that we burned our lips on when we went, usually it seemed in the rain, to Les Halles at midnight to consume with the Pommes Frites as we ogled the pour souls on display in doorways, windows and on the streets. I remember a butcher waving around a huge, erect bulls penis as he came into a cafe for some coffee with eau de vie to the guffaws and hoots of his fellows. So now my mind pictures that image as I dig into a rich Soupe à l'Oignon where ever it eat it. So many memories come alive with just a whiff of a dish from our past. Do share yours including any recipes you may have or still serve and any photos you have too of dishes you enjoyed there, then or anytime in the subsequent years. Peter

The ACP - Early Years FaceBook Alum Group

I have been remiss in not posting this a bit earlier, but have been waiting until I feel we have mastered the FaceBook basics on how to keep the new ACP - Early Years FaceBook "Group" closed and private for everyone but invited participants. I think and hope that Barbara Williams Thorsen and I have managed to do that. We not have 11 Alum members and hope many more will join. The Alum Association with Jessica has been working with us to promote both the new site www.acp-early-years.com that covers, well, the early years of ACP with photos mainly but some memories as well, this blog and now the FaceBook Group. It is interesting how fragments of memories from one person triggers long forgotten memories in another. Get a bunch of us together we can actually start to reassemble memories we had thought long gone. And photos are beginning to come in from members that will find their way to the albums on the site as well. Before you know it, we will be stirred by ancient, long forgotten urges to drink cheap wine and tear open our palates on sandwiches Jambon. So those ACP Early Year Alums, do contact us on FaceBook and join if you have to (set your privacy settings very carefully for those new to it and don't list all your personal information!) and join in. Peter

Our Favorite Music, Singers and Songs from Paris of the '60's

At the behest of Barbara (Williams) Thorsen, I am opening a new Blog Thread. She, Cameron Watson, Glenda (Johnson) Cooper, Joan (McCullum) Rasool and Cynthia Hale have had a tread going on our FaceBook ACP Group page about their favorite songs, who sung them and with what accents and, more important, how to try to find them now and download them for nostalgic regurgitation. So please join in the piecing together of bits and pieces of memories. Peter

Thoughts from David Brewster.

I, too, have reached the age when we wax a little nostalgic.  Peter’s web site is the perfect opportunity to do just that about a long lost part of my life.

I came to ACP, unlike most of you, kicking and screaming in resistance.  I wanted strong drink, women without virtue and bacchanalian frivolity.   I was not, however, an eighteen year old with a lot of choices and then there was that unpleasantness somewhere in Asia.  Nor was I the type of student ACP recruited (or even wanted).  I had finished last in my high school class, failed French four times (five if you count summer school) and the last place I wanted to be was in a country with a foreign language.  My father, determined to have me educated no matter how much it pained him and in total opposition to my expressed desire, sent my application in and due to some huge bureaucratic error I was admitted.  The admissions staff was at least savvy enough to put me on probation before I darkened their doorway in 1964.

Then some time that fall I began a metamorphosis.  Continuing my errant ways I mourned the night of Goldwater’s loss to Johnson in a stupor at the American Center for Students and Artists (261 Boulevard Raspail for those who’ve forgotten), pursued women who had the good sense to ignore me but I did go to class and I met Lionel Rothkrug.  For those who don’t recognize the name he taught Western Civilization 101.  As I recall he was the Director of Graduate Studies at the U of Wisconsin, was in Paris for a one year sabbatical and he seduced me into academics (lust wasn’t panning out).  His classes were performances and I hung on his every word as we fought the Crusades together.  At the end of the first semester the last class burst into spontaneous applause.

For the first time in my life I was emancipated and not completely frivolous with the freedom.  Classes were interesting, the discussion was stimulating, and the professors provocative.  I even quit drinking beer with lunch for fear of being drowsy in my afternoon classes.  Most frightening of all, I did the assignments and even passed the examinations.

While my change process never turned me into a butterfly I did change in orientation.  I came to view the academy as a surrogate mother.  She provided warmth and comfort, she nurtured me and helped me grow ...  Whenever my life took a new twist I returned to the academy.  At this point I have attended nine colleges earning six college degrees including one doctorate and I have done all course work for a second doctorate.  My emphasis has been the study of higher education and measurement of human behavior/performance. Had it not been for the then American College in Paris I would not be able to write these paragraphs about my life.  It was pure dumb luck that got me a chance and I am truly thankful."

David