Ti, a Drink with Jam and Bread

It's about time for lunch here in this little household of mine. I am thinking jam on toast. Which reminds me of high school French class.

I used to have French class right before lunch, and in our textbook there were these pages throughout the chapters with vocabulary terms on them (these were my favorite pages, by the way). Some of these pages were illustrated, for example, a drawing of a house with labels on all the rooms and pieces of furniture. There was one page I remember vividly, with photos of food. My favorite item on the page? Une tartine. Oh, la tartine. How I love thee.

Every day around lunch time, I would start to get really hungry, and for whatever reason, I would decide to torture myself by turning to the page with the tartine on it, thus increasing the drooling and stomach cramping. The tartine, for those who are wondering, was a buttered and jammed piece of toast. That's it. Now, my cafeteria at the time served some pretty good munchable items for lunch. Every Thursday there were spicy chicken sandwiches, and the whole student body got pretty excited for those. There was a vending machine with ice cream. I mean, I was not devoid of options. But it was the tartine that stole my heart. For the simple reason that it was the best looking item on the food vocabulary page in my French text book.

By the time I hit the commons each day, I of course forgot all about the tartine and got a burger or a bagel. But all the way down the hallway, clutching my jumpy stomach, trying to quiet it ("tartines soon, I promise"), it was all about the tartine. It was a tartine love affair, I'm gonna go ahead and say it. So here today, on April 16, 2009, approximately eight years after first meeting you, I dedicate this blog to you, ma tartine. Ma chere petite tartine. C'est delicieux.