gésiers.
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I couldn't bear to use a photo of what gésiers actually look like. Google at your own discretion! |
Last week,
my French neighbor Daphné invited me over for a "girls' dinner" while her
husband was out of town. Before then, we'd shared
several meals together with our husbands, I'd helped her with her resume
and cover letter, and Kevin and I dog-sat their adorable pup for a
weekend. But we'd never really had the chance to just sit and talk
together as women. To me, this dinner meant that we might be moving from
being just neighbors to actually becoming friends.
The day before our agreed-upon night, I emailed her to ask what I could bring. She wrote back:
For tomorrow, I am planning a salade landaise (gésiers / lightly
fried potatoes / onions and greens + extra inspiration) and apple in
the oven. If you'd like, you can bring some wine, or anything that
would go well with the meal.
I
assumed "gésiers" was a kind of French cheese, or French
vegetable, or French pastry, or some other delicious French food that
you can only get when you have an authentic French neighbor. I was excited.
And then I did a Google search. And freaked out. And shouted to Kevin, "Why is she trying to kill me?!"
As it turns out, "gésiers" are
duck gizzards. And the salad she described is a common dish in her part
of France, made up of greens, veggies, and a generous helping of
lightly cooked gizzards. I
wanted to be gracious. I wanted to be a good guest. And I really didn't
want to offend her in the chance that I got there and gagged on my
gizzards.
So I sent the following reply:
I'll be honest - I did not know what "gésiers" was and I did a Google search and jumped a little in my seat :) I
am an adventurous eater and will definitely try it - but don't take it
personally if I take my time with it...
At her house that night, I watched her prepare the gésiers. She talked me through her cooking
process, slicing them thinly, tossing them in a pan to lightly cook, and
topping with a little sauce she'd made earlier. She was so excited to
eat them, and I tried to be excited, too.
She told me that a friend had brought them back from France for her, the gésiers packed in a tin with lots of fat. It was one of the things they always asked for when people were going back and forth. I
was truly honored when I learned this - I'd assumed they were expensive, but I had no idea she was sharing something so prized
with me. I decided to try and love these little gizzards.
"Try not to think about what it is," she told me as I took my first bite. But that was impossible. I kept thinking to myself duck gizzards, duck gizzards, duck GIZZARDS!
The taste was better than I expected, but still new - it tasted fatty
and salty with the consistency of very rare steak. I ate a few more
bites as we continued to talk.
Without
our husbands present, and the formality of a couples' dinner, we talked
freely and easily. We talked about her mother's upcoming visit, about
her attempts to find a good job, about her passion for food. We gossiped about the neighborhood. And then I tested
her.
I
told her about a new piece I'd just written, a very strange, dark piece called "Monsters" that my writing group had just workshopped.
It's a piece about feeling like a stranger among my friends who have
babies, being a 30-year-old woman who still isn't ready for children,
about the fear that society would label me a monster if I decided I
never wanted children, and about some of the physical realities of
pregnancy, birth, and newborn life that I actually find quite scary.
I
didn't know if she could relate - on principle, I don't ask people I
don't know well about children, and I certainly wasn't about
to ask about her plans.
But
for some reason, I decided to tell her about this piece, my way of
sharing my own thoughts about children. I didn't know how she would
respond.
She
could have judged me. She could have been completely unable to relate.
She might have even been weirded out that I would admit this, that I
would open up in this roundabout way by describing my creepy piece about
monsters and babies.
But
she didn't do any of those things. She nodded in understanding. And we
had something new, more meaningful, to talk about, a new way to connect
as women, a more intimate way of knowing each other.
After
that, our conversation was a mix of light and serious, but it was clear
that we'd crossed the line from neighbors to friends. I'd offered
something of myself that I was unsure about, taken the risk that she
might immediately spit it out and say, "No, thank you."
And as I finished all but a few of the gésiers on
my plate, I realized she had done the same. She wasn't trying to kill
me - no, quite the opposite. She was inviting me into her life, opening
herself up in a way that I might have completely rejected.