un diner presque parfait

I don't think I've mentioned this much, but we live in a pretty awesome, beautiful, picturesque area of Paris. It's quiet, green, full of trees, and now a days the flowers are in full bloom and it is just wonderful! (Here's Celia totally taking advantage of the sun and beautiful location...I'm sure this picture was taken while Sleeping Bleauty was playing on the computer in front of her...I'm surprised she was able to look away long enough to somewhat acknowledge my presence!)

Being such an amazing location, the Cite is home to many many movie, commercial, and TV sets. And it's always interesting to watch scenes being filmed here. So much action and excitement comes with seeing camera crews, all their fancy stuff, and of course, the snack tables, (they always have a crepe pan and Nutella! Awesome!). Plus, I'm always wondering if I am just 10 meters from the Brad Pitt of France. These actors could be huge stars for all I know and they are hanging in my backyard! (Dang! I should have spent more time watching french TV!)

It's pretty cool to watch all the action behind the action. We've witnessed some great fights, puppet movies, car acciedents, and Saturday was the mother of all shows: Un Diner Presque Parfait! It's a cooking show competition among three two-person teams. And from what we gathered while watching the filming in our courtyard Saturday afternoon, the individuals from each team get a chance to cook and create while being timed. Once time is up, the partner comes in and finishes whatever his/her teammate started. Then I think they get to collaborate for another few minutes before turning in their final creation to the judges.

In the picture above are two of the three main kitchen stations. To the right of these cooking stations were three stations of fresh vegetables, herbs, eggs, cheese, milk, lobsters, and we're guessing some crab, (one crab got away and was hiding in our stairwell! It was quite a surprise)!

So, the competition was laid out all over the courtyard. From the kitchen stations, the teams had to run to the food stations and collect their ingredients for that meal. Then run back and cook it up while being filmed and timed. Below is the team that I think won this evenings showdown:

But here's the best part. While lounging on the grass and half watching the ladies, half watching the filming, Brian and I hear the crew people behind us rolling in a huge garbage bucket. A few minutes later we hear them tossing all the leftover fruit, vegetables, herbs, and cheese into the bucket. What???!!! We raced over to investigate and then asked if there was any way we could have the totally fine, beautiful looking, fresh, delicious leftovers versus them throwing it all away. They were totally fine with us collecting as much as we could and thus, we scored enough eggplant, zucchini, peppers, herbs, strange containers of cheese, and this thing...

....to last us through our remaining time here! It was so cool! And so fun! Last night we cooked our fresh artichokes while learning about the celery root, (pictured above). Not sure exactly what we're going to do with it, but how fun is that to learn about something new to cook with! Let the adventure begin....

Yeah, we scored lots of great food. We were able to take down half those mushrooms yesterday and hope to finish off the rest tonight. Our only problem is time: the carrots are withering away and the mint I used up today in the Tabouli was almost near it's breaking point. We gave Andy a bag full of eggplant and zucchini and now I have the wonderful task of trying to figure out what to do with this bucket of cheese: Brousse de Brebis...

Either way, dinner is almost perfect and it was a pretty awesome weekend!