Return to Fast-Food Nation

A week after returning to the U.S., Thea and I ate lunch at a local St. Louis bakery-cafe called Companion Bread.

The menu is loaded with cleverly-dubbed sandwiches like "The New Yawker" (Icelandic smoked salmon and cream cheese, stacked on one of our famous New York style bagels), "Humpty Dumpty" (Egg salad made just like mom’s, served with lettuce on our tangy New York Rye), and Thea's choice, "Crisp Fall Day" (roasted turkey, brie, arugula and apple butter perfectly browned on our tangy New York Rye).

I was about order "Cocktail Party" (Brie, apple slices, and apricot jam grilled on our Rustic Walnut), when another sandwich caught my eye: Frenchie (roasted turkey with brie, sprouts and honey dijon, stuffed in our crusty house-made Parisien). Since visiting Dijon in February, I've become a mustard fiend. I have two petit pots (little jars) that I bought to give as gifts, but am instead keeping as spicy souvenirs: Pruneaux et Armagnac (prunes and brandy from southwest France) and Noisette et Trompette de la mort (hazlenut and black chanterelle mushroom).

As I was saying, the Frenchie sandwich caught my eye, as did the Miller's Five Grain bread listed on the side (under the heading, "Want a different bread? Go ahead!"). But could I really ask for whichever bread I wanted? Would it be sacrilege to order the Frenchie on grainy bread instead of French bread, also known as a baguette? The answers are YES and IT DOESN'T MATTER.

Moments later, I had my Frenchie on five-grain bread. And I ate it, too. I marveled at the freedom I exercised there at the Companion Bread counter. Here's how it went down:

Guy at counter: Hi there, what can I get for you?

Me: I'd like the Frenchie sandwich. Just one thing, can I really get it on the five-grain bread?

Guy: Sure thing. Would you like a side salad or cookie with that?

Bada bing, bada boom. No questions asked. The "create-your-own" concept affords a simple yet profound joy that I'd forgotten in France while digesting traditional dishes with names detailing what goes in and what can't be altered, and already-made baguette sandwiches at bakeries.

People keep asking, So do you miss French food? The answer is simple: kind of yes and kind of no. I loved tasting regional dishes and peoples' excitement when preparing me/telling me about traditional specialties. I loved cooking experimental tarts and toasts (appetizer toast with salty concoctions on top), and learning food words and preparation techniques. And the cheese... but we've heard enough about that.

BUT since returning to St. Louis, I've eaten Greek, Indian, Mexican, Nepalese, and Nicaraguan food. I made a classic tofu-vegetable stir fry, devoured a veggie burger at a Jewish deli, and indulged in a home-made peanut butter and banana sandwich. I prepared Anais's famous tuna, thyme, and onion tart for my family. One night I sucked down a strawberry milkshake at Steak n' Shake, the Midwest diner chain that our New York friends adore. The next day my mom, sister and I picked strawberries at a local farm (I don't think there were actual strawberries in my shake).

So I'd say we eat darn well in this melting-pot-salad-bowl nation.

Things do seem faster in the birthplace of fast food. But my rhythm has reset itself and I'm pedaling faster.

For Mother's Day, the Emmons clan had a lovely picnic lunch at a Missouri winery. It was noon, the sun was shining, and a breeze was blowing curly hair into sandwiches. As I told my family, the best way I could think to describe the situation was in French: On est bien, là. Literally, "We're good, here."  What it means is, "Gosh, this is pleasant." On est bien, là is something the French say all the time, usually when relaxing outside in the shade or some other highly agreeable spot.

They also love the word tranquil. In French it conveys a calm contentedness that the English "tranquil" doesn't quite capture. (How was your weekend? Tranquil. How's that project going? Tranquil. How was the marathon? Tranquil.) The French are masters of tranquility.

Speaking of tranquility, since coming home, I've started practicing yoga again. I tried a few studios in Roanne, but discovered that French-style yoga focuses on stretching and is less aerobic (but more expensive). The emphasis is on relaxation, rather than fitness. Not many countries are as into fitness as we are. But while American yoga practice makes my heart race, I always leave with a sense of calm.

So Americans may be on fast-forward compared to the French, but the ones I know are active and still value good food and good company.

And so I say with great pride, On est bien, là. We're good, here.

Holy cow, stinky cheese

If there's some stinky cheese in a forest and no one around to smell it, does it have a stinky smell?

I pose this question a week before my departure because dairy philosophy is more fun than saying goodbye.

This evening I said au revoir to the folks in my running club. Being a) French and b) runners with enormous appetites, they're a lively bunch of gourmandes. They asked what food I'll bring home and what food I'll miss most. I said I'm bringing back various chocolates and Dijon mustard and other nice things, but what I'll miss most is the one thing I can't bring along, for fear of melting, smashing, and, er, smelling: cheese.

Cheese...oh, cheese. Le fromage. Not to toot their horn - since they do it fine themselves - but the French have mastered l'art du fromage and left the rest of us with milk pails in hand, wondering what is that tangy, intoxicating odor?

Describing cheese feels cheesy. But when in France... bah, talk about cheese. It's a national past time, like striking and vacation.

Some fromage is sweet and unctuous, some sharp and firm. Some comes in rounds, some in blocks. Some has blue streaks, some has green spots. Americans have our notions about stinky French cheese, but most doesn't smell bad at all. But some does. And oh la vache - oh the cow (holy cow) - even mild French cheeses make the fridge stinky. And I mean plug-your-nose-and-scrunch-up-your-face stinky.

My favorites are ewe's milk cheese, followed by fresh goat cheese (the consistency of fresh mozzarella with the billy goat's kick!), and finally le Beaufort, a hard, cow's milk cheese nicknamed Prince of the Gruyeres (similar to Americans' Swiss cheese).

But frankly, my dears, the flavor, textural, and visual variety is as resplendent as the myriad spring flowers in bloom around me.

Now for some cheese-y anecdotes.

1. I saw a woman drop eighty euros on cheese like fromage was her middle name. Anais and I were at market in Annecy, in the Savoie region of eastern France. I stood fixated as Cheese Seller and Cheese Consumer interacted with fluid gestures - she pointing, he cutting, she nodding, he wrapping. She asked, he advised, she listened; it was a beautiful exchange. The five euros I handed over in exchange for a Tommette (a little Tomme, or sweet skim-milk cheese) de Savoie felt like child's play. Delicious child's play. 

2. I once (not to be repeated) made the smelly mistake of confusing Munster cheese with Muenster cheese. Muenster is a mild, white American cheese, and Munster is a creamy, strong, stinky French cheese. To my nose, it is King Stinky. The shape should have been a warning, as Muenster comes in blocks or slices and Munster in a round wooden box. But I was oblivious until I sunk my teeth into the stuff. Oh la la! It was not unpleasant, but not what I wanted on my toast. And I made the mistake of touching it. My fingers smelled awful, even after multiple washings. Needless to say, I kept my high-fives to a minimum that day.

3. In French, a pie chart is called un camembert (cow cheese from Normandy). Sure, okay, pie is food, too. But in all objectivity, Camembert is funnier. Imagine receiving these instructions from your math teacher:  Now, students, take your pencils and your cheese blocks and graph the percentage of people who prefer cows, those who prefer goats, and those who prefer sheep. Ha!

Admittedly, this last one is not an anecdote, just something I've been wanting to share.

The million-dollar question is, of course, how do the French each so much cheese without splitting their jeans and popping their shirt buttons? The answer is ... portion size, portion size, and portion size. Frequent consumption in small quantities - I'm talking three or four little slices. And there's never the fear that supplies are low, because the corner store has a cheese aisle the size of the dairy farm where those little blocks were conceived.

I know there's good cheese to be found on the other side, despite the pasteurization regulations (who gave that the OK?). What I'll miss is knowing that the cheese course is coming. I'll miss the excitement of not knowing what new kinds await me, and the fun of knowing and tasting more different kinds than I have fingers and toes. I'll miss maps of France with little drawings of cheese instead of cities. Though it's not my favorite, I'll miss stinky cheese.

And if I smell a little funny when you see me, it's the smell of happiness.

This one's for you, Stinky. 

 

Say Please, Dammit!

True or false: the French are rude.

Answer: Ha! It's a trick question that can only be answered on a case by case basis. But for today's purposes, it's false.

I've encountered one rude French waiter, one rude French café owner, and one rude French running partner, but all the rest pass with flying colors. A well-kept secret is that the French are actually incredibly polite. La politesse means serious business in the land of King S'il Vous Plaît and Queen Merci, and like most things French, there's a certain way to do it.

When leaving a place of business, the check-out person or shop owner bids the customer farewell by saying, Merci, bonne journée, au revoir (thanks, have a nice day, bye), always in that order. But what they actually say is Mercibonnejournéeaurevoir! because it's as ingrained and oft-repeated as "How are you? Fine, and you? Fine, thanks." And as automatic as, "Wow, your baby is so cute!"

The customer's response to the shopkeeper's MARB-J (merci, au revoir, bonne journée), as I like to call it, is merci, au revoir. Or, merci, bonne journée. Or, bonne journée, au revoir. Any combination of two will do, but never all three. The customer never says all three.

The MARB-J was easy enough to get down. Within a week of my arrival, I was wishing shop keepers good days before they even started to thank me. The aspect of French politesse that I've had some difficulty mastering is the one that should be the easiest: the one and only S.V.P., s'il vous plaît, the timeless and universal "PLEASE, sir, I want some more!"

Act 1, Scene 1: A sunny Sunday afternoon in Lyon. On the way home from un petit café en terrasse (tiny coffee with a side of sunburn), Vincent and I stopped into a rustic, delightfully aromatic boulangerie for some bread. When it was our turn to order, I smiled and said cheerfully, Bonjour! Alors (so), un pain aux céréales (a whole-grain loaf), et une baguette au sésame. I stood there smiling while the girl behind the bread counter looked at me, waiting.

Vincent swooped gracefully to my rescue: S'il vous plaît, he said, with his darn perfect French intonation and a smile that said, "We come in peace. She's from a foreign land and means no offense. Please let us taste your delicious bread." The girl smiled, nodded, and fetched us the bread.

I felt my face turning the color of an heirloom tomato in August. I laughed nervously and coughed up a pathetic Oui, euh, s'il vous plaît. Merci.

How, HOW could I forget to say please? Lesson 1 of Life as a Civilized Person: say please. Then say thank you. Repeat. I've got a B.A. but no preschool education.

C'est pas grave! Vincent assured me. "It's ok!" (Or "it's not grave!" as a student once told me.) The people behind us smiled, their soft chuckles saying, "How cute, she's just arrived and is learning how to say please and thank you." It's been seven months, my friends. Oy va voy.

I still don't quite understand my difficulty, but I think it's the extra syllables in s'il vous plaît that make it seem like more effort than it's worth. "Please" is so short, so sweet! Or the fact that in English, while it's always better to say please, I think that if I smiled and said jovially, "Hello, I'd like a loaf of your whole grain bread and one sesame baguette!" that it would pass, and might even get a smile back.

Smiles alone don't cut it here, they require an S.V.P. supplement. For the French, s'il vous plaît is more than a humble Please, sir. First, it it a sign of respect for the business transaction at hand. But more importantly, it comes at the end of the transaction to signal that the order is complete. One whole-grain loaf, one sesame baguette, do you read me, over? Yes, I read you, over.

Pardon (par-dohn, emphasis on the dohn) is another funny one. Like "sorry" or "excuse me," it's a versatile interjection. Pardon! when you unintentionally bump into someone. Pardon! when you want to pass a slow walker or squeeze through a group of people. Pardon? when you didn't catch what someone said. Pardon, excusez-moi! when you roll over someone's foot with your shopping cart.

It seems normal enough, you're thinking. But it's not normal! The French pardon themselves significantly more than Americans say "sorry" or "excuse me," or the occasional "ex-scu-zay-mwah." Someone bumps into you? Oh, pardon! Someone pushes past you or between you and the person next to you? Pardon! Someone doesn't understand what you said? Pardon! Someone rolls over your foot with their shopping cart? Oh, pardon!

Then what happens is that the bumper and the bumpee/the pusher and the pushed/the roller and the rolled-over say Pardon! simultaneously. Then both people try again. And again. It's like the endless dance we do upon arriving face-to-face with someone in a hallway or street: both people move to the same side to let the other pass, then both move to the other side, and you mirror each other's steps for what seems like an eternity. Finally someone jumps sneakily to one side to end the dance once and for all.

The problem is, when you pardon someone before she can pardon herself, you steal her pardoning thunder. It's like saying, "You're sorry!" before she can say, "I'm sorry." And what's more, over-pardoning diminishes the power of the pardon, and the power of the word itself. If you're constantly saying you're sorry, at some point people will stop believing you. It's the same reason you don't go around saying "I love you" to people in the street. Well it's not actually the same reason, but both suggest to me that certain words should be used with moderation.

But that's the way it goes here. They're just trying to be polite, and I can, too. In my last month, I'll say s'il vous plaît when I buy bread and join in the symphony of pardons at the supermarket. But I swear, the next time someone rolls over my foot, there will be no pardon from this American. S'il vous plaît!

Hello, my name is Petite Américaine

"Kärt barn har många namn” is a Swedish expression that means, "A dear child has many names." You've hit the nail on the head, Sweden. Tack (thanks).

I love names. I love giving (not calling) people names, and I love receiving them. Sometimes long, sometimes short, nicknames are the beer and cheese (delicious essentials) of friendship. Nicknames are how I tell someone that she (or he) is not just a regular old girl (or boy) with a regular old name, but that she (or he) is an indispensable character in my life, worthy of a special name. Like knighthood, but without the sword.

I love that different nicknames work in different languages. Here in Francy Pants, lots of people call me la petite américaine, or petite Sonia. In English, these both sound condescending (Hey there, little American! See you soon, little Sonia!) and this would not fly with me at home. Americans don't call each other "little" anything (and being American is too mainstream for a nickname). 

But the French slip the word petit(e) in wherever possible, and it just sounds endearing and/or affectionate. There's the classic French petit café, a shot of espresso in a teeny cup with a tiny spoon. Logical. But I've also heard men talk about their petite bière while nursing a liter of the stuff. In this case, I understand it to mean that one liter is a mere drop in the bucket of beer over the course of a life. 

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Not so fast, Juliet! There's a lot you can't see from that balcony, namely the beauty and majesty of a good name. (Girl was in love, probably not thinking about nicknames.)

I love giving people names that stick. Who knew that Yiddish-izing Tove into Tovela would work so well? Or that a simple Sassy Sis could say so much? Or that gentle Vincent could become the mighty V-meister? All this magic with a little tap of my nickname wand.

I love my name in these parts because no one mispronounces it; none of that SAWN-ya business I hear in the States. It's SONE-ya, good lord, SONE-ya! But pronounced in French, the emphasis is on the second syllable: sone-YA.

Case in point: when American friends are happy to see me on the internet, they write, "Soooooooooonia!" When French friends are happy to see me on the internet, they write, "Soniaaaaaaaaaa!"

I'd bet a block of Brie that the most popular French girl names (of my generation) begin with A and M; in mon petit portable, my humble cellular telephone, I have six of each: Adeline, Amandine, Anais, Annie, Audrey, Aurélie. Marie, Maryse, Marion, Marine, Maryne, Myriam. Très français. So French.

No traceable letter trends with boy names. "Quentin" remains a nightmare to pronounce: kohn-tahn, not kahn-tohn. See what I mean?


For now I'll only say that while

a rose is a rose is a rose,

a good name is the loveliest rose in the garden.

Where bröd is king

Tove told me a surprise was coming. 

Dessert? I squealed hopefully. Ooh, I know! Swedish pancakes? Not edible, she replied. Hm. A non-edible surprise? I was skeptical.

We were flying from Malmö, Sweden, to Stockholm. Malmö is the southern port town where Tove grew up and where, in 1945, my German grandmother, my Oma, spent a year recovering from concentration camps. At that point, her parents and sister were dead. I thought about my family across the ocean.

The day Tove and I spent in Malmö was rainy and gray, so we passed a cozy afternoon in a cafe that smelled wonderfully of roasting coffee beans. At one point, Tove left to fetch our food and I watched people outside walking past the cafe windows. I closed my eyes and thought about Oma in 1945, six years my junior and walking down the same streets, seeing the city through eyes that had seen things no eyes should see. I shuddered and opened mine to see a smiling Tove returning with our sandwiches. It was more than a comforting sight.

High up in the clouds, I'd already been impressed by the complimentary sandwich we received on our hour-long flight. The soft yet delightfully hearty bread was covered in a paprika cream-cheesey spread, much of which remained smeared on my fingertips, turning them a lovely shade of orange.

I was rubbing my fingers together, trying to clean them but instead creating a layer of sticky gray residue, when a smiling flight attendant strolled by and lowered a tray of steaming white hand towels in front of us. Surprise! sang Tove.

We eagerly snatched up the towels and then dropped them - aiii! - scalding hot killer towels! I poked at mine until it seemed a decent temperature, then rubbed my fingers clean with the happiness of someone taking a shower after a week of camping in the mountains. 

And on the eighth day, God created wet wash cloths to clean sticky fingers and make people on airplanes very, very happy.

 The smiling lady came back with a straw basket for us to drop our dirty towels into. I turned to Tove and shook my head in that way that says, Hey, I'm really impressed.

Hey, I'm really impressed, I said out loud. It's like a sushi restaurant... only it's an airplane. 

Sweden is impressive in the air and even better on land. It's a beautiful country brimming with two of my very favorite things: good bread and people on bikes.

I'll save bikes for another time. Let's talk about bread.

Well, first let's talk about cheese. French cheese is hands down the tastiest I've had (so rich! so sharp!), and I love the enormous variety of tastes and textures. But I won't say that French bread is the best of the best. The baguette has its time and place -- fresh from the boulangerie and snuggled under a slice of sharp Compté cheese -- but I do not believe it is the be-all, end-all of breads. My knight on a white horse arrives not with a baguette in hand, but with loaf that is rich in color and filled with crunchy nuts and seeds, or chewy dried fruit. Above all, it is impossible to roll my dream bread into a ball. Go ahead! Call me a bread snob - I've already accepted it.

And I've found my bread king up north. Swedish bread, or bröd, is chock-full of tasty stuff. Seeds and nuts, spices and seeds, nuts and spices, hurrah! In Malmö, we regaled ourselves with Tove's mother's home-made breads. One was cut into small squares and exploding with whole hazelnuts. Another, sweet and tangy with honey and caraway seeds, was cut so thin that I sucked down entire slices in a few bites.

Back in cheese country, I'm finding fine, seedy substitutes and remembering that above all, variety is how we appreciate different tastes and textures. While hearty bread is delicious in the morning, slices of fluffy brioche (light and slightly sweet) make for excellent tartines (toasted bread with sweet or savory toppings) and pain perdu (the French call French toast "lost bread." Million dollar question... why do we call it French toast?)

And the most delicious thing I've learned, confirmed with every bite, is that everything tastes better with friends.

Hug it out

Sure, so Europeans have great social welfare systems, but in America we have something better: hugs.

A hug, my god, a hug! The joy of wrapping your arms around a friend and giving a little squeeze that says, I'm glad to see you! or, I'll miss you! Equally satisfying to give and recieve, hugs are like body postcards.

You laugh, but for a tactile person, life in a culture of les bises (cheek kisses) is like an alcoholic in a dry city. Outta luck, buster.

Thank goodness for friends who accept, embrace, and practice hugs the American way: big.

Myriam and Benjamin lived in California for a year, where they got plenty of hugging experience. A few years later, they imparted their knowledge to Vincent. The hugging trio now rules the streets of Lyon.

Benj is a tall drink of water, so his hugs lift me solidly off the ground.


Myriam is my size exactly, so a hug from her fits like a silk glove.


Vincent delivers quality hugs with conviction and character, like a good handshake that leaves you speechless, wondering what you did to deserve such appreciation.

Last weekend, six of us (along with Anais, who is also French, and Wugui, who's Tawainese) descended upon Dijon, France -- home of wine (capital of Burgundy, after all), mustard, ginger bread, currant liqueor, and the Palais du Duc, where the numerous dukes of Burgundy lived. Yes indeed,  Dijon contains more mustard as far as the eye can see.

One morning in our hotel, I walked into the breakfast room to find Myriam already sitting with her cup of tea and book. Happy to see each other, we said bonjour with a giant bear hug, the kind where you rock back and forth, really letting the person know that a) you're glad you're friends, and b) you're glad people were created with arms, so that friends can hug.


Two women at the next table were eyeing us curiously. I checked the mirror to see that there were no strange growths on my face (nope). Then I realized that it was the hug that had provoked the inquisitive looks.

I motioned back and forth between Myriam and myself, to the hug that had just passed between us. "Un calin americain," I said. An American hug.


The two women nodded eagerly, like students wanting to show that the knowledge transmited has been sucessfully received. 


I chuckled.


And then something beautiful and unexpected happened. Both women stood up on their respective sides of the table, bent forward, and wrapped their arms around each other. The table between them meant that their derrieres stuck out at funny angles, causing them to smile and laugh the joyous laughs of people who've just discovered gold in the backyard. 


"Qu'est-ce que ca fait du bien!" one lady exclaimed. Well hey, that feels great!


Myriam and I smiled. Our work there was done.


In France, les bises (cheek kisses) rule the land. They are practical because they are no-questions-asked: see your best friend? Cheek kisses. See your ex? Cheek kisses. See your ex's mother? Cheek kisses. But more often than not, brushing cheeks with someone leaves me wanting more... arm involvement.


In Europe, the hug is considered as American as hamburgers. Pff, those Americans with their hamburgers and their hugs. 


Yeah, well, I've done les bises, and the hug wins hands-down.


hug: 1. French kiss: 0.

Roxanne à la campagne

Isabelle and Steve run a full house: three sons, one hamster, two dogs, three cats, walls lined with shelves lined with picture books and Beatles anthologies, cabinets brimming with colorful antiques, and best of all, a tire-sized fruit bowl that never empties of nature's sweetest gift to womankind: oranges and clementines.

Isabelle and Steve are English (Isabelle is an English teacher at the high school). Chez eux (literally, "at their house," but - I love this - chez can also refer to personality or preferences, as in, "according to them"), tea means black tea with milk, cheddar cheese comes from Cheddar (not Vermont, as the Sharps had me believing), and David Bowie is no joking matter. Oops.

They live happily à la campagne - out in the country - a good forty minutes from Roanne. Fifteen minutes out and we're passing fields of happy cows and clucking chickens in front yards. Thirty minutes and the roads are dirt or gravel. By the time we reach their narrow lane, farm houses dot the rolling hills on all sides. Well-trimmed hedges form even squares that, viewed from a distance, transform the landscape into an oil painting. A quiet calm, accentuated by a soft soundtrack of lazy mooooooos, blankets the land.

Inisde next to the woodstove, it's cozy and ... less quiet. Joshua, age seven, circles like a whirling dervish - can I eat this? do that? go there? Let's play a card game, or read a book, or make Play-Doh spaghetti! And it's all in Little Boy British English, which triples the cuteness factor.

The house is a delightful mélange of French and English cultures. The language spoken at home is English, but at 8 o'clock it's off to school where the boys turn into little French school children, and off to work where Isabelle converses with her French colleagues. Steve, a stay-at-home dad, says bonjour to his French neighbors. When French company comes for dinner, French is spoken and no one blinks an eye. But when company leaves, the BBC or "Antiques Roadshow UK" resumes, and the wine is replaced by tea.

Bilingual children are a beautiful thing; bicultural children are the raspberry on the tart. I was hugely pleased (ah, British English) to walk into Josh's room one morning to find him reading Franklin - a picture book about a turtle named Benjamin - in French, while listening to The Police on his Fischer-Price cassette player! I reckon the beauty of this trio was lost on him, but I was happy watching him and he was happy with his book and his music. Win-win-win (one for Roxanne).

I mentioned a woodstove and citrus fruit - this combination may be my favorite part of weekends à la campagne: standing next to the stove, peeling orange after clementine after orange, putting the peels on the woodstove, and smelling the citrus fill the room. Yuh-MEE! in the words of Isabelle.

Whenever I spend a weekend chez Isabelle, we visit neighboring villages and I discover little regional treasures. This time we went to the tiny town of La Clayette, home of Les Chocolats de Bernard Dufoux - one of the top chocolatiers in France. And now prepare yourselves.

You've got your chocolate bars, your chocolate truffles, chocolate ganache, chocolate-covered marzipan, your pistachio, almond, and hazelnut chocolates, caramel chocolates, chocolates with ginger, jasmine, cardamom, lavender, thyme, rosemary, or red pepper, chocolate bars filled with rhum ... and that's about it (Bubba Gump style).

My favorites were the Barre anti-stress (praline, hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, raisins, orange peel) and the Buchette aphrodisiaque (marzipan, pistachio, praline, ginger). Who needs meds or cupid when you've got chocolate, eh?

You were probably wondering what's so great about expensive chocolate stores. Unlimited, guilt-free samples is what. I bought twenty-two euros worth of chocolate, and ate about five euros worth in the store. So it's like I paid seventeen euros. Cha-ching.

After an English weekend in the French countryside, here's what I can tell you: while some things are hugely English and others are très français, chocolate, my friends, is universal.

Mona Lisa Thattaway

Last weekend, two country gals took a trip to the big city.

Bonjooouur, Pah-reeee! Hellooooo, Paris.

My former Greenfire housemate and fellow Birkenstock-wearing friend Christina was visiting France during a vacation from teaching English in Giresun, Turkey. And so it was that we spent a lovely weekend in the City of Love and Public Displays of Affection.

We walked, we sight-saw, we feasted our earbuds on gypsy jazz and jazz standards, and we found Christina her Holy Grail: a steaming bowl of authentic French Onion Soup, complete with a rude French waiter who chastised us for ordering only soup and wine. Thanks for the soup, buddy.

We deftly navigated the Paris Metro, taking the 1 to the 9 to the 4… and I found myself humming Jay-Z’s “H to the Izzo” in between Edith Piaf melodies. [Editor’s Note: “H to the Izzo,” released in 2001, was hip hop artist Jay-Z's first Top Ten Billboard single. The song's lyrics use izzle language (H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A) to spell out H.O.V.A., which refers to one of Jay-Z's nicknames, Jayhova, and his self-proclaimed status as the god of MC.]

That’s neither here nor there, but surely more there than here.

We spent a sunny Friday afternoon atop Montmartre, the picturesque hill that affords a panoramic view of Paris, nibbling on chocolate-pear and rhubarb macarons (egg white and almond powder pastries that look like brightly-colored mini hamburgers and fit neatly into your palm).

Saturday was a typical Parisian day, cloudy and gray, so we followed the famous Rue du Rivoli to I.M. Pei’s glass pyramids, marking the magnificent Musée du Louvre. In front of the larger pyramid, a girl in furry boots approached me with her camera, pointing to herself saying, “Photo? Moi?” with a thick Texas accent. “Sure,” I replied, “And I speak English.” She laughed. “Oh, great! Would you take a picture of us in front of this pyramid thing?”

The Louvre is one heckuva museum. Its enormity is unfathomable for someone like me with the estimation skills of a mosquito. You can walk for hours at a pace conducive to a couple comments per painting and only see a tiny fraction of the collection. Christina and I wandered through rooms filled with ancient bowls and masks looking for the reputed Turkish room, and got sidetracked by ancient perfume bottles and statues of naked gods. You’d think they were trying to out-naked each other, those Greeks.

We wandered right into the Winged Victory of Samothrace, an armless, headless statue of the winged Greek goddess Nike (Victory). Her magnificent wings recall a certain trademarked swoosh, and her right hand, found in 1950, is displayed in a glass case off to the side. The palm faces up and only the middle finger remains, the rest broken off and lost. The wrist is also bent upwards.

A little girl with her hands pressed against the display case was motioning to her mother.

Maman, regarde, Speeder mahn! Look ma, Spider Man!

Bah dis donc. What do you know, Nike’s finger and wrist were perfectly positioned for first-class web-shooting à la Speeder Mahn. Time and time again, American culture makes a dramatic entrance into deep-rooted French institutions.

Scattered throughout this particular wing of the Louvre are laminated signs depicting Her Majesty Mona Lisa, with arrows pointing you toward what is arguably the most recognizable face in art history. The signs seemed as normal as those pointing you toward the W.C., and I’d bet my Louvre ticket that more people visit Mona than les toilettes.

So we followed the signs to Mona’s wall (she gets her own wall) and took pictures of the hoards of people taking pictures. Christina noticed a painting of a seated man with his arm halfway down the front of a seated lady’s dress, hanging on a side wall. She looks less than thrilled, and he is suspiciously expressionless. We joked that they know no one is looking at their wall, anyway.

Zooming past the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame… Paris is an ideal city for doing the Tourist Thing. Big and exciting, it’s rich with history, culture, music, and endless winding, walkable streets to discover and consecrate.  

We country gals are getting different but equal experiences. Living in smaller cities, we’ve both repeatedly experienced the kindness of strangers-turned-friends – people who’ve opened their homes and introduced us to regional specialties, and quirks of language and culture that we wouldn’t discover on our own.

And I always know where to find Mona. After all, I saw the signs.

Mooncakes à la Mode

A funny thing happened on the way to my favorite salon de thé.

It actually happened inside the tea parlor, but catchy openers trump truth in my book.

I had just poured a steaming cup of honey-chestnut-flavored oolong tea (a mystical-sounding variety called Shadow of the Wind) into a small, handle-less tea cup, and was daintily lifting it to my lips, when the server approached our table carrying a small tray. On the tray were two little plastic packages.

Eh ben, qu’est ce que c’est? Oh my, what’s this? I asked the server.

Yeah! Free treats! is what I was thinking.

She pointed to the plastic packages. These are gâteaux (can mean cake or cookies) for the Chinese New Year, she told us. I noticed the shiny red and gold wrappers covered in Chinese lettering. C’est pour ça. Ok, that explains that.

The explanation continued.

Each gâteau has some paper inside, she said, and you must be VERY careful not to eat this paper. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to open the plastic wrapper, carefully extract the paper from the gâteau, and then eat the gâteau. Repeat: the paper is NOT edible.

Maybe it was because she was speaking quickly, or because I was distracted by the red-orange-tinted lights, or because I couldn’t conceive of a pastry that required such a thorough explanation, but her words didn’t resonate with any gâteau experience in my memory. I shrugged and accepted the plastic package that apparently contained a potentially toxic paper-filled cake, straight from China.

I inspected the specimen before me. The wrapper said biscuit de porte-bonheur, which at the time I thought meant “cookie that brings happiness.” How cute. (I later learned that a porte-bonheur is a lucky charm.) On the back, the ingredients were listed in French and English: wheat flour, egg white, sugar, water, colza (rapeseed) oil, palm oil, butter, flavoring (what does it mean?), and no preservatives. Nothing struck me as out of the ordinary.

I think I was expecting to find either a gelatinous blob or a copiously gooey pastry – something requiring nimble fingers, an alert mind, and great patience, to extract the paper inside. I braced myself for the ticking cookie-bomb.

Ladies and gentlemen, I opened the wrapper and found … a fortune cookie.

Nothing more, nothing less – exactly what you’d find in the sack with your Chinese take-out, or on a silver platter with the check at a Chinese restaurant.

I threw my head back and let out a resounding HA!

Arianna, the Italian, was looking quizically back and forth between me and the cookie. Haven’t you had one of these before? I asked her. No, she replied. I explained that in the U.S., fortune cookies are a dime a dozen and don’t come with instructions. The paper fortune is an indispensible yet unmistakably inedible part of the fortune cookie experience.

She smiled but didn’t seem half as amused as I was.

I broke the cookie in two and extracted my paper fortune. Tell me my destiny, le cookie!

En humour, mieux vaut jamais que trop tard. In humor, better never than late.

It’s better not to tell a joke at all than to deliver a badly-timed punch line? Disappointing. This was no fortune, nor did it bring me happiness. But then do they ever?

Back at the ranch, I did some quick research into the fortune cookie’s origins. Its exact provenance is not known, but modern-day fortune cookies started appearing in California in the early 1900’s. As for the inspiration, there are a number of charming legends (I love legends) such as how, in the fourteenth century, the Chinese threw off their Mongol oppressors by hiding messages in rice mooncakes, which the Mongols did not like. And how during the American railway boom of the 1850’s, Chinese railway workers came up with a substitute for the mooncakes they couldn’t buy in the US: homemade biscuits with good luck messages inside.

But long story short, there is ample evidence that it was actually Japanese immigrants in California who invented today’s crescent-shaped fortune cookies, Chinese immigrants who marketed them in their restaurants, and Americans (in its broadest definition) who tasted them, loved them, and would be utterly lost without them.

Our humble crescent cookie got me thinking about identity (it’s all I ever do these days). First, I associate fortune cookies with Chinese food, but they’re actually a Japanese-American creation. Second, I was surprised to learn that the French give dissertation-length explanations (sorry, the cookies make me exaggerate) prior to fortune cookie consumption. Third, conversations with my friends and resident French Culture and Identity Experts (FCIE) – Myriam, Vincent, Anais, and Benjamin – have alerted me to the fact that American multi-culturalism is something I take for granted. Immigrants have trouble integrating – melting, if you will – into French society because France is an old man compared to the infant United States; French identity is less flexible, less fluid, less flou (blurry, fuzzy). In the U.S., a fortune cookie is an essential Chinese-Japanese-American treat. In France, it comes stamped with an OTHER label.

I’m not saying we’re all holding hands and singing Kumbaya in the Promised Land, U.S.A. Amy Chua had Americans up in arms over her depiction of Chinese child rearing traditions and her rejection of what she sees as American parents’ unnecessary coddling and self-esteem boosting. To me, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and its rocky reception suggest cultural tension and US and THEM labeling on both sides. And terrorist racial profiling - ! And it's not as though we're welcoming our southern neighbors with open arms. But on the whole, it's easier to melt into the American pot.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, as the saying goes. (Or the French equivalent: Ce n’est pas à un vieux singe qu’on apprend à faire des grimaces. You don't teach an old mokney to frown...because he already knows how). Just as I'd like to think you can teach an old dog new tricks, I’d like to say that France is sloooowly turning that frown upside down concerning immigrant integration. But my wise French friends seem to think otherwise.

Maybe a fortune cookie is what the old monkey needs! Just make sure he doesn’t eat the paper.

Nice legs, Kermy baby

The news hopped in over Sunday lunch. “Tonight we’ll eat cuisses de grenouille.”

Two words, my friends: Ribbit. Ribbit.

I was seated across the table from Annie and Yvon, the early-afternoon sun doing pirouettes on my shoulders and two glasses of rosé dancing the tango in my stomach. Lunch had been a lamb’s lettuce salad with mustard-vinaigrette dressing, some white fish in a light butter sauce, soft goat cheese on crunchy baguette, and des oeufs à la neige, or eggs in the snow – meringe swimming in vanilla custard and caramel.  

It was while we sipped our petits cafés that the chef herself calmly informed me, “Tonight we’ll eat frog legs.”

I knew I liked the idea of eating frog legs in France. But did I actually want to eat frog legs? It didn’t much matter at that point, because I was staying for dinner, and dinner was frog legs. I chuckled at how stereotypically French it was, and therefore how decidedly eeeexcellent.

I didn’t notice them at first, soaking in a bowl of milky water off to the side of the counter. Twenty or so, just havin’ a soak. I thought instantly of a scene in the animated French movie The Triplets of Belleville in which a set of triplet-musicians scarf down bowls of frog soup, slimy green legs spilling out of the pot, falling off their spoons, and dangling out of their mouths. It is truly revolting. 

The bowl of legs in Annie’s kitchen was not revolting, per se, but I did squeal quietly upon pulling one out of the water by its little webbed foot. Annie looked over and smiled. Ca va, t’as pas trop peur? Not scared, are ya?

The funny thing about frog legs is that they look like miniature chicken legs, about one inch wide and two inches long when you stretch the legs out. When you buy them (as opposed to, say, catching them in your backyard), the legs are folded like pretzels and look like crossed arms. I pictured the frog mid-sentence: “No thanks, I’ll just hold on to them, I’d really rather not –”

Sorry, Kermit. France likes your legs. France wants your legs.

The first thing to know is that frog leg meat has very little taste, so the dish is all about the persillade –  a sauce composed of parsley, garlic, and butter, in which the legs are cooked.

I watched Annie scoop three generous lumps of butter into the pan. Note: This is the part of French cooking where you look away and whistle, pretending the butter just adds color, or better yet that it’s a figment of your imagination.

As the imaginary butter was heating, she rolled the little leggies in flour so that they would turn golden brown when cooked. Then she carefully placed each mini pretzel-leg package into the pan, and let them sizzle away for a good fifteen minutes before sprinkling on the dried parsley and finally throwing in a heaping handful of garlic cloves. Needless to say, I didn’t pick up any chicks, nor was I assaulted by vampires later that night.

We ate them with our fingers, clasping the little feet with a thumb and forefinger. I should say we nibbled, really – it was a delicate affair that required a tall stack of napkins. In the end, frog legs taste like parsley, garlic, and butter, with a texture somewhere between chicken and shrimp. I ate two.

The whole time the leggies were kicking – er, cooking, – Yvon was glued to the TV set, watching a bad American movie (dubbed) called “The Stepfather,” about a kid whose new stepdad turns out be an assassin. I didn’t join him (the legs were my peep show for the evening), so maybe I’m not a fair judge. But I’m going to judge based on what I overheard: this movie was not worth its weight in dubbing fees.

And thanks to Mrs. Singer’s sophomore year English class, all I could see were two fancy-pants SAT words in flashing neon lights: IRONIC JUXTAPOSITION! Because I can’t think of many things more culturally contradictory, more ironically juxtaposed, than consuming frog legs in your kitchen and exported American rubbish in your living room.

I commented on it to Annie and she just laughed. Effectivement, ils sont bêtes, les films qu’il regarde. Yep, the [American] movies he watches are beastly (literally)/silly/stupid. American movies are not all beastly, but somehow all the beastly ones get eaten up in France.

What strikes me is that the rules and regulations of French cooking are left cold at the kitchen door; the quality controls don’t seem to apply to movies and TV shows that people watch – the stuff people feed their brains! From my spot at the table, I see fierce national and gastronomic pride in one room, and an unquenchable fascination with American culture in the next.

I'll hang here in the kitchen.

These are a Few of Their Favorite Things, Part II

Way back in October, I made some observations about things the French love. Three months later, a wee bit savvier and god knows how many pounds of cheese given the grand tour of my digestive system, it’s time for an encore.  

C’est parti. Here we go. The French love:

1)    Coffee breaks. The school day goes from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. (for the students, not for me), and at 10 a.m. it’s time for a ten-minute pause and a gobelet of coffee. (It’s not what you think, if you’re thinking what I was thinking. A gobelet is a little plastic cup that pops out of the coffee machine, not the decorated medieval goblet I was picturing.) During the morning pause, my favorite group of handymen comes into the teachers’ lounge for some coffee talk. They see me and smile, saying jovially, Bonjour! Comment vas-tu, la petite américaine? We stand by the windows with our gobelets, shooting the breeze like seasoned coffee drinkers, watching the students run around like maniacs. We chat about the weather and they ask me about life in Le Mee-soo-ree. They lament the fact that young people aren't learning to cook, because this means the demise of French culture.

2)   Kissing. No no, not that kind. The other kind: la bise – the Kiiiiiss. Upon saying hello and goodbye, the French faire la bise by exchanging kisses on alternating cheeks, touching cheek-to-cheek, not lips-to-cheek – an important detail to avoid sending mixed signals. You also have to be careful not to swipe lips as you go for the other side. La bise is done by old friends and complete strangers alike – two people introduced by a mutual friend often faire la bise, particularly young people. Consequently, I’ve been in shockingly close contact with more French garcons (dudes) than my mother would probably care to know. For them, c’est normale, c’est la politesse. The amusing part comes when a person joins or leaves a large group and is expected to make the rounds, often taking four or five minutes to cheek-air-kiss each person goodbye. A word of advice: build some time into your departure if you’re on a tight schedule. Or say you’re sick.

3)   Singing in English. Just picture it: International Karaoke Night. The players: American, Bolivian, English, German, Italians, Taiwanese, and a handful of French representing the Motherland. After snacking on quiche and Italian-made pizza, I stood up and popped in the karaoke DVD. Alright, who’s going first? I asked. No one moved a muscle. I clicked through the songs, choices were slim! and landed on “Like A Virgin.” How’s this? I asked, and got a collective nod of approval. Turns out they knew EVERY word. Same thing happened with Alicia Keyes and the Beatles. Edith Piaf and Claude Francois (wrote "Comme d'habitude,” the original version of Sinatra’s "My Way”) were also hits, but what was the loudest-sung song of the night? Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” France (and the world, dare I say) is inundated and infatuated with English music. What does it mean? Analysis forthcoming. 

4)  Pronouncing foreign words with heavy French accents. You can’t get the full effect here, but I can offer you a few to try on for size: Mar-tahn Lu-ter Keeng (the man). Le bon fee-leeng (to have a good feeling about something). Look-y Strike (cigarettes). Le pla-neeng (a schedule). Sahn Louie (gateway to the west). Wait – that's French that we make a mess of. And then there’s renday-voo, day-zha voo, bon appa-teet…and zee leest gohz on.

5) Vacation. Everyone loves vacation, but the French LOVE vacation. They have quite a lot of it and talk about it nearly as much. The calendar revolves around les vacances scolaires (granted, I'm working in a high school). But I do think there's something behind this Spanish proverb: "It is best to be born in Italy, to live in France, and to die in Spain." I can't speak to an Italian birth or a Spanish death, but I can say that life in France is slower than the on-the-go lifestyle many Americans lead. Slower doesn't mean better, but it does mean more coffee breaks.    

Well would you look at that, time for a goblet o' Joe. I'd kiss you all goodbye but I have somewhere to be tomorrow.

Tomaydo, Tomahto

A snowy month has passed since the Festival of Lights and now it's a whopping 50 degrees outside. This won't last, they tell me. "Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes." They say it over here, too.

My Hanukkah socks are worn-in and the Christmas lights are gone. Thus begins the home stretch to May flowers and bike rides. 

I learned a great French idiom for “home stretch” the other day: Champs Elysées. After a run (un footing, as say zee French), a man in my running club exclaimed, “Bah, dis donc! ["Well, I do declare!"] I really pushed it out there on the Champs Elysées!" Wanting to be part of the conversation, I asked when had he run on the Champs-Elysées? A marathon, maybe, or a triathalon? 

Nothing like it. He meant the last half mile of our footing. I laughed loudly and heartily to show I had accepted my mistake in good spirits. Then I quickly stored it away in my brain's Department of Idiomatic Expressions.  

I’m starting 2011 with a powerful tool on my belt: Le Grand Livre des Expressions (The Big Book of Expressions). This little Tree of Knowledge contains the origins of a couple hundred French expressions, along with their proper usages. My plan is to speak only in idioms by the end of April.

What exactly is the difference between an expression and and an idiom? was the question your humble narrator posed. To save you a few clicks, an idiom is an expression with a figurative meaning.  In other words, it needs a native speaker's translation and explanation.

French is rampant with wonderful idiomatic expressions. One of my favorites is avoir un coeur d’artichaut – to have the heart of an artichoke, meaning to fall in love easily. The idea is that there are lots of leaves surrounding your heart and you give each one to a different person. Who doesn't like artichoke hearts? They're delicious. Motion to start saying it in English; all in favor say “artichoke.”

Language is sneaky, the way it swirls around without minding country borders or cultural boundaries. The winter vacation had my mind swirling.

I’d been thinking in French since the beginning of October and then BAM, just as Santa C. was making his last-minute deliveries, my family arrived on a plane in Amsterdam. We spent a weekend speaking English with a Dutch family (polyglots, the lot of them), traveled through Germany with Dad and Nathan speaking German and us ladies using English (without going hungry), then came back to France and spoke “American” (to-may-do) with an English family (to-mah-to).

One night we had dinner with Annie and Yves (remember them?), who don’t speak a word of English. Yet with my translation, Dad’s probing questions, and Yves happily shouting philosophe (philosopher)! at Nathan and infirmière (nurse)! at Thea, the conversation never dulled.

Upon returning to Roanne, Thea and Nathan came to my classes to get a taste of the exchanges I have with the students. One of them asked, What do you think of Obama? Nathan answered (call him for details) and then asked what the students thought of Sarkozy. One response: “Ee yeez a small sheet.” (read it out loud)

Little shit, small shit. Tomato, tomahto.

A few days after the Emmons Clan’s departure, I received another American visitor, Mr. Sandler of St. Louis fame. We spent a weekend in Lyon with Myriam (French), Vincent (French), Benjamin (French), Wu-Gui (Taiwanese), and Monsieur le Miew (Felis catus) and played a rousing game of Salad Bowl, a brilliant mélange of Taboo and Charades. We played in English – our lowest common denominator language, since Mr. Sandler’s Spanish only took him so far in French. He later commented, and I nodded my agreement, that it felt odd to have the upper hand in a foreign country. (Although, the others speak English and mime like pros. For a taste of our linguistic salad, try miming “ruthless crab.”)

Isn’t feeling lost and helpless part of traveling in a foreign country? I remember the first sentence we learned in Madame Berk’s French class: Au secours, je suis perdu(e)! Help, I’m lost! But the scary/comforting/sad/wonderful truth is – cue the movie music –  you’re not lost if you speak English. 

After our family’s winter travels and hosting non-French speakers in France, it has become that much clearer to me that English is everywhere. China may be on the verge of world domination, but English has become the Esperanto of the 21st century.

Fact (according to two Australians on a German train): It’s completely feasible to travel around Europe, and much of the world, speaking only English. Sure, our language has its roots in French, German, Latin, and Dutch (one word: apartheid). But who today speaks French, German, or Dutch, outside a few European countries, French islands, and former French colonies? A handful of eager-beaver high school and university students, that's who. And the French tourists in New York.

Qu’est-ce que ca veut dire?? What does it mean??

Well, for starters,

1) English speakers will probably not lose our reputation for being nul with foreign languages

2) the French, who share this reputation, should really reconsider dubbing all English films and TV shows 

3) English is taking over the world!!

4) I am an obedient cog in the Wheel of Anglophone World Takeover. And I'm ok with that.

As with all gourmet food for thought, I'm still chewing on this language question. For now I'll

1) continue preparing my lessons about Obama 

2) accept that the Dutch are linguistic geniuses thanks to natural selection – their survival depends upon it

3) continue registering French idioms until I can string them together into sophisticated paragraphs

4) start saying tomahto.

My artichoke heart beats with anticipation.