Forgive me father,

...for I have sinned! Dinner tonight was delicious, but sinful in its overwhelming fattiness. Remember those rillettes that I was so fond of? Well, I had bought another batch last weekend and they were of the "old fashioned" sort that come with a layer of lard on top to seal in the flavor. Well, normally one would toss out the lard, but I thought, "What would my mother think if I threw away something edible?" So, I decided to use it as a base for another risotto. I also used a couple of Diots de Savoie which are very delicious smoked pork sausages from the Savoy region (there's even a recipe on Wikipedia). I cut up the diots and put them in a pan with a finely diced onion and the layer of lard from the rillettes. I let them sizzle for a while, until the onions were beginning to brown, and then I added the rice and coated the rice with the fat. Then I did the usual risotto thing with beef broth. Also, I added two tablespoons of Peruvian aji rocoto to make it spicy. The result was not surprising: it was !@#$ing delicious, and I could feel my arteries clogging as I ate it. I'm going to have to eat nothing but salads for a week just to make it up to my body.

Work was busy but less busy than the previous two days, so I took that as a good sign. After work I had to buy a few cheapie phones for the students who still needed them for their rooms, so my plan was to go to Darty. I went to the location at Nation, since it was sort of on my way home. I had never been to Nation (it's one of the large circles/places from the Hausmannian era) and I was actually quite impressed. The east side of Paris is relatively less chic than the west side, and far less touristy, which meant that there were plenty of cafés and restaurants with huge terrasses looking onto the park in the middle. There was plenty of tables free and the prices looked decent. There was a huge multi-lane boulevard called rue du Throne, which ran from Nation to Porte de Vincennes. On both sides, there were rows and rows of decently priced shops, so I think I've found one of the more reasonable shopping destinations in Paris. The street was full of shoppers.

It was on that street that I found Darty, but they didn't have the model I needed. I was about to just head home, but the woman at the phone counter offered to call around to other stores. She pulled up an inventory screen and saw that there were some at the Belleville store; she called them and they only had 2. "Oh, it says 6 on my screen, here. Oh, OK." Then she called the Porte de la Villette store; they had nothing. "Oh, it says you have 11. Oh, OK." Then she called the République store, and they hung up on her. I would make a comment here about French efficiency, but I've tried the same thing in American department stores with similar effects. The truth is, it's hard to maintain an accurate inventory, and large store chains have just too much crap to keep track of.

Anyway, I eventually tried the République store, since it was near a stop on my métro line, and finally took care of it. By the time I got back on the métro, however, it was HIGH rush hour. Holy crap. I've been on packed subway cars before, but this was nuts. It was too packed for me to reach for a bar, but that was OK, since we were actually too densely packed to fall over. Every time the train lurched, you would just slam into the person next to you, who slammed into the next person, and so on until somebody hits a wall. Add to this the fact that the #11 métro line is always really hot, plus accumulated body heat of a complete carload, plus the one or two people who chose to buck the system by forgoing deodorant, and you can imagine the fun I had getting home.

The rest of the night was mercifully quiet. I distributed the phones and made my "risotto of doom." I took care of a few administrative emails, took care of some blogging, and hit the sack. Oh, did I mention I ate a whole baguette with my meal?