Legal!!

I'm in France legally again!
"What? Reading between the lines, Kel, does that mean that for a time you were in France illegally?" you say?
Yes, in fact it does.
There's this pesky little thing called a Carte de séjour, which is kind of like a residency card. A student visa lets you stay in the country for about two months, during which you have to ask for your carte de séjour so that you can finish off the year. Easy as pie, right? It would be, except for all of the documents you have to collect. One of which was a bank statement showing that you have enough to pay for rent and food for the year (430 Euros a month). Peachy. Because by the time I had gotten my account open (which took a couple weeks) and set up international transfer service with my American bank (which took a week) and transferred my money (which took a couple of days) and waited to get a bank statement (which took a week or so) there weren't any appointments left until today at 10 a.m. I suppose that when they said "It's better to wait until you have all of your documents to make an appointment, since then you don't have to worry about them refusing you your stay because of an incomplete file" what they meant was "Make an appointment now, because once you have your documents together there won't be any left."
Anyway, en bref I was in France illegally for ten days. And today during my appointment (all documents in hand, of course) I was told, "You realize that I'm supposed to refuse you your stay, and make you go back home and get a new visa, right?" Luckily, he understood that I did have a reason (however stupid on my part) and didn't. I now have my carte de séjour, and therefore am once again in France legally. Huge sigh of relief.

In other news: once you've had your turkey (or rotisserie chicken) you're likely to have lots of bones, and leftover white meat that's not tasty. What to do? Make chicken stock, of course. Once you've made your chicken broth, make some dumplings:
One egg
1/4 cup milk
a pinch of salt
about a cup of flour
Beat the egg and the milk together. Add the salt. Mix in the flour until the dough gets pretty doughy. It will not be doughy enough to knead, but it'll be thick. Drop little scoops into your boiling chicken broth (they'll about double in size, so keep them small). Add some of the leftover yucky white meat (it won't be so dry and tasteless if it's in taste-full liquid) and whatver vegetables you're in the mood for. When the dumplings float, they're done. Yum.