Plus ca change...

I can't really help myself with the French titles, what with having heard a massive amount of French over the past little while (which is what happens when your partner, his family and most of his friends are French Canadian). What the title really refers to is the same saying in English, "the more things change, the more they stay the same..." What I've noted this evening, however, has both to do with food and lifestyle. The more things changed, well in this case - they've changed.

I realized tonight that a year has gone by since perhaps one of the best summers of my life. I spent it out socializing with a terrific group of guys - all of us single, happy, free, unencumbered. We partied till the wee hours - drinking, dancing, carousing, eating, playing, flirting - until we collapsed back in our respective homes until the arrival of another weekend.

Boy, things have changed.

I spent the day running from shopping to coffee to more shopping to home to send the boyfriend off on his merry working way so I could get down to the business at hand. Making jam. Peach jam. One plain, one with ginger. Making gougeres to test a recipe for Christine. Filling them with smoked salmon and capers for a midnight snack. Freezing the rest to make for company as appetizers. Prepping ingredients for tomorrow's dinner - Japanese curry rice. Taking pictures of coffee and my Italian ingredient centre of my kitchen. Listening to music blaring from iTunes in a somewhat disturbingly psychic awareness of my mood, playing Tori Amos when needed and Madonna ("Push", from Confessions) just after Christine emailed to say, "Enough with the Tori!" :-)

Yep, I've hit my Carlsberg years. I'd rather stay in on a Saturday night cooking cheese puffs and skimming foam off jam and drinking Illy espresso than quaffing cheap pitchers of beer and getting annoyed by the silly drag queens who insist that blue is a good colour for eyeshadow. The venue has changed, the company has gone its separate ways - but I'm still having a good time in my own little way; the best summer I've ever had in so many ways. Plus ca change...