The Food

French Food – Love! ... at first taste.

In the words of my dear friend Cory – oh my heck. If anyone has come to Lyon they know the food is superb. Simply amazing, mouth watering, visually pleasing, guilt free, food. There’s cheese, wine, salads, tender juicy meat, fresh breads, tasty pastries, and so much more! But it’s not just the food – really it’s not, it’s the way they enjoy it, and talk about it – and it’s not the way they eat it, rather, it’s the way they experience it. Because you really don’t eat your dinner you experience it. It’s simply fabulous.

They’re whole economy and business world support the French’s passion of food there are certain norms (unwritten rules and/or customs understood in a culture) that preserve this passion. For example, lunch time is sacred and could last for 2 hours – easily. Things shut down at lunch time, don’t ever try to find a professor in their office at lunch time, some shops, even some grocery stores close at lunch time! And your expected to take that time, go out with friends and enjoy your food… there’s none of this silly hour-lunch like we have in our rushed society in Calgary. A sandwich is not considered lunch – that is simply just a sandwich. Wine is often seen being drunk at lunches and believe me it’s not taboo to return to work if you’ve had one or two or maybe even three glasses, heck! People probably function better and more happily with some good French wine coursing through their veins!

I do have some complaints two words - white bread. It is hard to find whole grain, high fibre, nutty goodness bread. Really I do miss it. White bread can only be an indulgence for so long. I have found some good baguettes with extra goodness added and I’m not really complaining it’s just different J.

One of the things that have become a favourite of mine is the way the French enjoy their food. It’s together, as much as they can. Dinner is for sure together, it’s assumed that if you’re home you’ll eat with them, and the first words out of their mouths when you arrive, or they arrive is ‘have you eaten yet?’ I love it. It’s considered rude (and bizarre) to eat alone, or (heaven forbid!) in your room. Although their eating schedule, like India, is late – supper is usually around 7 or 8pm and can last for hours.

Even the way all (thus far) of the houses I’ve visited are set up support a very communal eating place – the eating place is usually in the most common area (usually living room – usually no TV), and it’s just a big table, with chairs, and a cupboard that houses all the cups, plates, and utensils. Food is prepared in the kitchen and eaten in the company of friends, and family in a comfortable room where you are set away from the mess (and stress for some of us) of the kitchen. (I know Doran – I should have been a sociologist eh?)

Oh! And the food and it’s schedule do drive me a bit nuts because I find that I eat late, and then go to bed with a full stomach (or close to) and then so all that food probably doesn’t digest properly so I wake up hungry and then eat all this bread (ie – this doesn’t work!) and then I’m continuously hungry all day it’s very much a continuous cycle and I really just have to stop eating! Additionally I find that since I’m cold all the time I eat because it’s kind of a comfort. I don’t know if that makes any sense at all – but c’est la vie! (I actually literally have written on my list of things to do ‘stop eating’)

The Dinner Parties

In my three weeks here I have been lucky to attend not 1 but 2 dinner parties. And believe me the French know how to enjoy their food and bien sur (for sure) their cheese and wine. (And not in that order).

The first suave dinner party happened at Chelsea’s apartment with two of her flat mates Dennis (commercial director of a big company) and Sebastian (masters student in Anthropology specifically dating artefacts from the Roman Empire Era – ie finds them, dates them and reassembles them) and a couple Laura (from America currently working in France) and Julian (cute French boy). We started with a sweet champagne, appetizers around 8:30pm, and eventually moved to the table where we started with a tasty salad (which was discussed – this is very much French culture to talk about the food as you enjoy it). We enjoyed a tasty main course (lentils, sausage, and other veggies) around 9:45pm and I happily enjoyed the illusion that my French was rapidly improving as the evening went on. However I’ve got a sinking suspicion it was due to 2 glasses of champagne on an empty stomach and the wine that kept re-appearing in my glass. Dessert was a sweet bowl of pineapples (10:45pm), which was leisurely chased with a large variety of cheeses (11:10pm), and then tea, chocolates and biscuits – if you really could fit anything more in (11:35pm).

Now let me just pause right here for a moment, when I say a ‘large variety of cheeses’ I don’t mean you’ve got cheddar (old, medium and mild), swiss, mozerella, and that nice cheese ball that everyone buys at Christmas because it’s covered with nuts but it so impractical because it always ends up crumbly or breaking your cracker as you attempt to ‘scoop’ the cheese onto it. Rather I mean there was little wheels and big wheels, and slices of huge wheels of cheese – from the south of France and north, east, south and west. There were bries, blues, camaberets, goat cheese, soft cheeses, cheeses with nuts, fruits, herbs, spices... and my knowledge of cheeses ends there. But I can assure they were amazing! Oh but I will tell you that when you eat cheese you always start with cheese that have the least strong flavour (ie the bries) and end with the strongest (ie. The blues).

Seriously the French know how to enjoy the food, wine and cheese and also how to enjoy an evening with good friends. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and left full – I was sure I wouldn’t need to eat the following day, or the day after that... or the day after that one...

I being my parents child had brought a bottle of wine to the supper but was devastated to find out the following day in one of my classes that it is rude to bring a bottle of wine as it implies that the host wouldn’t know how to pick a good one. And the same goes for cut flowers – it would be rude to bring them as it also implies that the host doesn’t know how to arrange flowers. Yikes! So for my second dinner party I made sure I didn’t make that mistake and picked out some nice jam for them.

La douzième

My second dinner party was something organized by the school where (for free) you could sign up to eat with a French family – I was obviously the first one on the list... Myself and 3 other students (a girl from Senegal, a girl from the Chez Republic and a boy from Brazil) all dined with Ansophie and ___. The food was very much as amazing as the first time, the wine flowed just as fast, and the cheese selection was again superb! As a side note dinner started with a wine from the south of France and ended with one from the North of France.

Our adopted parents (for the evening) were super hospitable and they readily shared many stories, having had a Canadian dine with them last year (Ryan Smith from Halifax), they also had a love for skiing and told myself and Orlando (the boy from Brazil) that if we needed any clothes to go snowboarding that we could totally borrow them! All in all it was another incredible night and I left just as full and certain that I wouldn’t have to eat ever again.