For any French speakers who might come across this, I apologize. As I believe I stated in a previous post, it has been some time since I spoke French in a classroom setting, so the grammar might not be correct. While I struggled for most of the day trying to decide if I did want to write another post about France so soon after my previous one, but I decided in honor of Bastille Day, it was the least I could do to honor the French blood flowing in my veins.
Many of you, like myself, may have neglected keeping up with your French vocabulary since being required to learn it for some form of academia, for which I do not blame you. English itself is very difficult, and I am still learning new terms such as pogontomy (the cutting of a beard), something I always end up regretting. The title of this post translates to “Mushrooms, Champagne, and Swords!” and you might be wondering what those three things have in common, to which I answer this: they all revolve around a restaurant that my family has grown fond of over the past few years.
The owner of the restaurant ties in the last two subjects in the title, and I would bet money that a reader of this post can guess the specialty of his chef. A year ago, my parents went took a mushroom foraging class with this chef and had a mushroom themed meal afterwards. How do I know the specialty of this chef is indeed mushrooms? Months later, a number of us went to a dinner and wine tasting at this restaurant, where the chef had prepared a multi-course meal with each dish involving mushrooms. Yes, even the dessert included a candied mushroom, and within a few weeks, I myself will be going on a foraging expedition with this chef.
As I have said, the owner ties in with the subject of champagne and swords, and the answer is simpler than one might think. No, he is not an expert fencer hailing from the Champagne region of France. Rather, he is the only man I have seen perform something known as champagne sabering, a practice dating back to the Napoleonic wars where soldiers would cut the necks of champagne bottles to open them. I have seen him saber a champagne bottle twice as of this post, and up until recently he was the only person I knew who could do something like that. More recently, I spoke with some of my father’s relatives, and learned that one of them had gotten a champagne sabering kit when he traveled to Champagne. In his words, he’s “100% when it comes to sparkling wine and cider, 50% when it comes to champagne.”
Perhaps when I return to France, I will visit Champagne and get my own starter kit for champagne sabering, as my father’s relative did. Perhaps one day I will be ready to try and get certified to sell wild mushrooms within the state. Just prior to writing this post, I am about 20% done making flash cards to study for the certification test. Who knows? I might even hire the restaurant owner to saber a champagne bottle at the release party for my first publication. Or maybe I’ll hold off until the second, while I had not seen the bill when he performed it at my brother’s wedding, I doubt it was that cheap. Regardless, all of what I have written about today will have an impact on my future, and I myself am eager to discover what role they will play in the times yet to pass.