Feasting on Dijon

This past weekend, during our study abroad program's weekend trip to the quaint and tiny town of Dijon, France, I ate.

On the six hour bus drive there (Parisian traffic can hold its own next to L.A.), I ate two slices of whole grain bread and drank half a plastic cup full of burnt vanilla liquid sugar-I mean coffee-from one of those 1-euro vending machines at a truck stop. This was dieting compared to what was to come.

When we finally made it to Dijon for dinner at 10:30 p.m., I ate a fresh green salad with 6 thick slices of mozzarella cheese and 5 slices of blood-red tomatoes and too much bread (with the best Dijon mustard), piles of au gratin potatoes, the biggest and reddest (French style) hunk of beef I've ever seen, some veggies, and a bowl of creme brulee 6 inches in diameter. At some point between the end of that day and the beginning of the next (around midnight), I stumbled into our tiny hotel, the pressure of too much food in my stomach disallowing the normal progression of thoughts...and I passed out.

Next day. Breakfast: coffee, orange juice, pain au chocolate, baguette, confiture (jam), applesauce. Lunch: more bread, more salad, saucy duck, glorious potato cake thing, and the most mouthwatering rasberry and gingerbread sorbet with chantilly (whipped cream) and fluffy gingerbread cubes on top. Dinner: red wine, creamy escargot pot pie type delicious thing appetizer, heaps of au gratin potatoes, red wine, rabbit, bread, red wine, most delicious nutella chocolate eclair, red wine, red wine. (Somewhere in there we visited a museum, had a tour of the Beauty & the Beast-type city, which one can traverse in under 20 minutes, and shopped at the local H&M which makes up the entire dowtown, outside of which the entire population of the tiny town stands around staring at each other at 5 p.m.)

Breakfast next morning was welcomed with open mouths (more croissants and the like); whether that was due to the ridiculous Frenchified excitement in the streets the night before (the French unexpectedly beat New Zealand at rugby and one would've thought Jesus came back), or the consistent stretching of the stomach over the weekend, I'll probably never know. After a frightfully dull tour of a medieval hospice in the even tinier (if possible) town of Beaune, Lunch consisted of 10 too-garlicy escargots complete with shell and snail-torture extractors, bread, rice, black-current basted pork, 3 of the best cheeses of my life, and a trenche of pear tart.

Our supervisors displayed their best intelligence yet when deciding to take us wine-tasting right before the 5 hour bus ride back to Paris, during which 99 percent of us students dozed in the peace and quiet that only drinking 8 different types of wine can bring. (My preference? Beaune-Grèves for red wine, __ for the white).



The food fiending (new word) didn't end there. A return trip to the truck stop proved successful with bouts of Pringles, Snickers, cookies, suckers and yogurt. mmm...(I reel at the thought of it now).

Only now do I understand the absurdity that was me not being hungry at home on Sunday night for dinner...

*Check out more photos of Dijon at: http://picasaweb.google.com/maggiemagee1/DijonFrance?authkey=BnUP-5qYJBo