Cooking & Boots

Two milestones in my Parisian life today: I cooked for the first time and I purchased a pair of boots. The weather was very chilly today and rainy and snowy and grey, plus I finished class at 10 a.m., so on my way home I decided to stop at the grocery store and buy the ingredients to make chili. And since I would have lots of time to spare, I decided to make the chili. So I went into the grocery store and encountered the first round of problems in finding the ingredients. First of all, my recipe was in English with American measurements, so I bought cans measured in milliliters and hoped that it was approximately the same amount in ounces. At the first store I went to, the only thing on my list that I could find was canned tomatoes and tomato sauce. I bought those two items, and thought maybe I should reconsider my cooking career. however on my way home from the gym, I passed by another, slightly larger grocery store, and popped in to continue my search. In this store I managed to find red kidney beans (the recipe asked for dark and light, I decided to buy both red and white), a jar of tomato sauce labeled chili, and a can of something with jalapenos on the front. I had no success in finding chili powder (I looked through minimal spice shelves at three stores...I think the French have special stores just for spices), chili peppers, any peppers, onion flakes, chili mix, or cannellini beans (I may have found those but I think I bought all the beans I could find and I don't actually know what those are in English, let alone French). When I returned home I dumped all my purchases in a pot, and after letting it simmer for half an hour, voila, I had vegetarian chili. All I really had was heated up beans in tomato sauce with chili flavoring, but nonetheless I cooked something. And I'll know how to do it better next time. My French mother was proud of me for finally cooking something. She said she wanted to try it...I'm not sure if I'll let her, or if she'll actually want to follow through on this. We had a nice interaction earlier. She makes jewelry and she has a workshop filled with literally thousands of beads and she really enjoys showing me the earrings she's made that day. This evening she had just returned from a trip to the bead store, and we sifted through her purchases one by one. I sat and gushed and told her how pretty and cute I thought everything was (that's pretty much the extent of my vocabulary for talking about jewelry). I told her that I bought boots today and she got all excited and asked to see them. Maybe I'll finally look Parisian now that I have brown boots to wear, although I'm not actually sure when I'll wear them yet or with that. I tried them on wearing my jeans and managed to stuff the whole bootleg of my pants into the boots...this was the moment when i decided I'd better buy them b/c I may never find another pair that fit. Plus they only cost 35 euros, which is the cheapest I've seen in this city. Hopefully I'll try them out this weekend, en Provence!