Almond joy

I’ve never been a huge fan of lunch. Breakfast, yes; dinner, definitely; but lunch ... meh. Uninspiring. I’d even dare say depressing. Just something we do in the middle of the day because our bodies demand nourishment. I realize this anti-lunch attitude is very un-French of me, but considering that I will never actually be French, I’m OK with that. So is my distaste for the midday meal an American thing? The running perception on this side of the world is, after all, that we Americans don’t eat lunch, or at least don’t eat anything worthy of being called “lunch.” We’re supposedly more of a sandwich-at-the-keyboard kind of culture. I’d try to argue otherwise, but since I obviously cannot cite myself as a counterexample, what’s the point?

Actually, that looks pretty good!

My parents aren’t big lunch people, either, which is probably where my lack of enthusiasm began. Lunch at their house is, for want of a better word, “nonexistent.” If one happens to be hungry in the middle of the day, one opens the refrigerator and forages. Possible finds include salad greens in various stages of decay, giant Costco cheese blocks, ancient tortillas that no one will ever eat, and an astounding—no, a stupefying—array of condiments. In the freezer are raw cranberries and a year’s supply of nuts. But again, since no one in my family eats lunch, the lack of actual food in the kitchen is worrisome only to my husband, who, being French and all, has no desire to subsist entirely on inferior cheese and frozen almonds until dinnertime (which is also pretty sparse). I say, where’s his sense of intercultural appreciation? At least there’s no need to worry about any holiday weight gain!

We are what we eat.

I will acknowledge that living in France has helped me to take lunch more seriously, even if I still don’t necessarily enjoy it. When I was a regular employee, I appreciated the midday breather that la pause déjeuner represented, as well as the proximity and variety of solutions to those pesky hunger pangs. But now that I’m my own boss, I’ve kind of returned to my ambivalent roots. Lunchtime rolls around, I’m hungry, and I have neither inspiration nor patience. Happily, there is an obvious choice: I really like cheese, which, France being the alpha and the omega of dairy products, we have aplenty. I also really like this pre-sliced packaged bread called Harry’s “American Sandwich” (which is actually quite popular among the French, who are more open-minded about bread than one might imagine).

Maybe it’s the American spin that my subconscious finds comforting, or maybe I’m just lazy, but I can’t get enough of the stuff! It probably accounts for about a third of my daily caloric intake. I do opt for the “whole wheat” variety, so I figure it’s not so bad. I mean, yeah, I’m eating straight up industrial bread in France, but hey—it’s from a French supermarket.

Plus you can’t do that with a baguette.

To make a long story short, I eat a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches: way more than I ever ate while living in the US, actually. I use coconut oil instead of butter (virtuous), real cheddar cheese (semi-virtuous), and Harry’s bread (it’s whole wheat!). I know I should eat some veggies with that, but when it’s already 3:00 pm and Babykins could go into meltdown mode at any minute, I don’t have the presence of mind to go concocting some amazing salad of organic produce, which I would have carefully selected that morning from a quaint farmers’ market while humming “Little Town” from Beauty and the Beast. So instead I eat a tomato. Whole. Like an apple (less cutlery to wash). Ironically, I often do this while watching reruns of Masterchef or Top Chef or some other cooking-related show, whose participants would probably be horrified by my dietary deconstructionism. But I figure watching real food being prepared counterbalances what’s actually on my plate and besides, it beats frozen almonds.

Les Misérables

Last weekend, I skipped the country and discovered Luxembourg City: close enough to Paris for a weekend, yet far enough away to feel exotic. Most of my entourage raised an eyebrow when I announced my weekend plans, as apparently the going rap on Luxembourg is that it’s a) small b) boring and c) unsexy. Whatever. For those of you contemplating a visit to Luxembourg, it is none of those things. In addition to being gorgeous, G. and I found it to be plenty big (it’s the damn capital, people! 50 square kilometers—get with it!), plenty interesting, and ... well, it may not be sexy per se, but what do you want? It’s wedged between Germany, eastern France and Belgium; it can’t have everything. What it DOES have is money. Lots of money. And an entire army of invisible street sweepers who keep the place impeccably groomed. That, my friends, is one clean city. Even the fallen leaves look somehow artfully fallen. There is no “5-second rule” in Luxembourg; if you should let any food fall to the ground, you could probably pick it up whenever you felt like it and keep eating. No worries.

They also have really big cheese.

Oh sure, there is poverty in Luxembourg. We learned all about it at the city museum, currently featuring a temporary exhibit cleverly entitled “Poor Luxembourg.” Over the course of a really quite elaborate series of displays and installations, including full-scale models of a homeless camp and a “social” grocery store, we learned that “poverty” in the Grand Duchy is not so much a question of true financial insecurity, but rather of coping with limited access to social pleasures (fewer extracurricular activities for one’s children, for example). We also learned that the gross minimum wage is roughly €1,800 per month—by far the most generous of the EU. In other words, indigence is such an oddity in Luxembourg that it’s worthy of an entire museum exhibit.

France is not Luxembourg. France has plenty of poverty—as well as a fairly conspicuous homeless population. I would know; I was sat upon this week by one particularly conspicuous specimen. Sat. Upon. I was taking the métro home from work with a friend, when an extremely alcoolisé gentleman sporting rags and a half-consumed bottle of whiskey staggered onto our train, screaming what can only be translated as, “You bunch of #@*$!! I #$$& this &$*@ piece of #$$& world of @$#!! Go @#$% yourselves!” Everyone in the wagon stopped talking and stared at him, at which point the doors closed and the train took off. The sudden movement was obviously too much; in slow motion, he toppled backward ... right onto my friend and me, strategically seated as though we had intended to serve as a human safety net. It was nice.

Enter at your own risk.

Like the subway of your average metropolis, the Paris métro has quite a population of “residents.” Some drink themselves into oblivion; some peddle illicit merchandise; still others beg. Of the beggars, I count three categories: the passive, the proactive and the performing. The passive find a spot somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels and stations and just camp there, with or without a puppy/child by their side, silently admonishing you to spare a dime. There is one such woman who hangs out at the station Opéra, at the foot of the stairway leading to the line 3 platform, just glaring at each and every person who walks by, her eyes boring right into you as you attempt to breeze past nonchalantly. I once fearfully offered her a few lunch vouchers—the fabulous tickets restaurant—and she actually turned out to be way nicer than I had imagined. I almost wanted to give her some marketing advice about the whole catching more flies with honey than with vinegar thing, but thought better of it. If I were homeless, would I take advice off some random commuter? Probably not.

The proactive métro dwellers go ahead and climb aboard the trains themselves, passing from wagon to wagon, shouting over the din about who they are and why they need your contribution. Some are polite; others are frighteningly belligerent. Consider this: back at home, my parents are harassed day and night by phone calls from perfect strangers soliciting money, but here in Paris, you can get the same treatment face à face! Who says urban living is impersonal?

Finally, there are the performers. Some dance; some sing; some play musical instruments. Some are quite good; others are so ear-splittingly bad I would pay them to just STOP ALREADY. And while I’m at it, I would also happily, happily pay them to cease and desist massacring such cherished oldies as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Hotel California,” anything by the Beatles, and the perennial favorite, “El Cóndor Pasa” (yes, I realize the tune predates Paul Simon. That’s no excuse to screw it up). There are also plenty of métro gypsies, but they enter more into the “nasty pickpocket” category than the “unfortunate homeless” one.

For the record, I do not have a heart of stone (plus I’m a Democrat; I’m like obligated to at least feign sympathy). Although, with the price of Paris’s monthly métro pass likely to increase to a whopping €78 over the next year, there comes a point when those of us who do use the public transportation system for ... transportation ... are perfectly justified in demanding, I don’t know, the right to not be sat upon by drunken homeless guys for example. I’m just saying.

Say cheese!

This entry is the second installment in a 3-part series on the crown jewels of French cuisine. Last week, we covered the wide world of Parisian bread; next week, we seriously get into the vino. But today it’s all about the cheese.

As Meg Ryan’s character says to Kevin Kline’s character in French Kiss (one of my all-time favorite movies, even if it is a bit … cheesy. Har har), “Did you know that there are 452 official government cheeses in this country? Don't you think that's incredible? To come up with 452 ways of classifying what is basically a bacterial process?”

It is incredible, all this French cheese. Not to bash my motherland or anything, but let’s face it: American cheese is a joke. I mean, I like sharp cheddar as much as the next guy, but let’s be honest: our cheese comes in two colors—orange and off-white—and we turn it into such oddities as string cheese, cottage cheese, hamburger cheese, low-fat and non-fat cheese, soy cheese, spray cheese, Velveeta and my personal favorite, Cheez Whiz (at which point it is no longer appropriate to refer to the product as “cheese” per se, but rather “cheez,” just to truly express the extent of the denaturalization to which it has been subjected). Sad, I tell you; sad, sad, sad.

Some will point out that America also makes delicious farm cheeses and that I’m being too harsh because Wisconsin and Vermont and even my own California all make great American cheese. Just look:

I have never understood this ad campaign. California makes incredible wine, grows delicious avocados and citrus and also produces some really tasty almonds. But I’m sorry; never have I been wowed by the cheese selection at any of the many, many, many Californian grocery stores that I have frequented.

France, on the other hand, will never be beat when it comes to cheese. Mmmmm. Walk into any French grocery store, no matter how small, and you’ll be offered a range of cheeses that commands respect. And those are just the grocery stores! Fromageries are a whole other category! I can actually smell the cheese just thinking about it. Oh wait, that’s because my boyfriend just opened the refrigerator. (Side note: I think I’ll start referring to him in this blog as “G.” so as to semi-preserve his anonymity while avoiding overuse of the sophomoric term “my boyfriend.”)

Yes, it’s true: French cheese is stinky. Delicious, mind you, but stinky. G. and I keep our cheese selection in a Tupperware container in the refrigerator, next to an open box of baking soda (sold only in pharmacies here, incidentally; perhaps to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands?). But do you think that has any real effect on the odor? Not really, no. However, the alternative—cheese elimination—is unthinkable, and so we ignore the odor. Or rather, I ignore the odor. Being French, G. probably thinks that that’s just how cheese smells. And if we’re being technical, he’s right; that is how cheese smells … when you haven’t pasteurized the hell out of it (eh-hem FDA). What is so scary about raw-milk cheese? The French have been eating it for centuries, and the last I heard, raw-milk cheese consumption has yet to have any impact on French mortality rates. So what’s the deal? On the flip side, you can of course get pasteurized cheese in France, too (Pasteur was French after all), but it only serves as a bland—albeit less stinky—alternative to real cheese.

As we celebrated Thanksgiving this past week, I think the following cheese and Thanksgiving-related story is appropriate: in 1999, I was living with a French family just outside of Paris while participating in my university’s foreign exchange program. At the end of November, my brother flew out from California to spend a few weeks with me and celebrate Thanksgiving à la française. Over the course of his stay, he had many opportunities to sample a wide array of French cheeses, all of which he just LOVED but, sadly, none of which he could find in the US upon his return. 

So two years ago for Christmas I thought I would surprise him with a real raw milk camembert. I lovingly selected it at the airport boutiques at Charles de Gaulle airport, had it double wrapped in tinfoil and put into a little container that I had brought along with me to mask its odor. The flight went just fine; I even put the bag in the overhead compartment so as to avoid any telltale scents from escaping. However, as is often the case, my connecting flight was canceled due to poor weather (which the airline naturally classified as an “act of God,” as if God Himself had wanted to teach me a lesson about smuggling unpasteurized dairy products into America). The result was that I had to spend the night in a hotel near the airport and take the first available flight the next morning. Did the hotel room have a refrigerator in it? No. 

By the time my cheese and I finally touched down the following day, I was more than ready to hop into my brother’s truck and begin the 90-minute commute to our parents’ home in the mountains. However, after greetings and hugs, my brother’s first comment was something along the lines of, “WHAT is that smell?!” Terribly proud of myself, I answered, “I brought you a surprise!” His response: “You’re not putting that thing in my truck. I just cleaned it.” So we put the cheese in the truck bed with my suitcase and headed off. In the end, my family was touched that I had gone to such lengths to bring them this cheesy treat from across the Atlantic, but no one wanted to eat it. “It smells like sweaty feet!” was my mom’s first reaction. “Pheeeeew! Something's ripe in here!” was my dad’s (of course, by that time the cheese had been traveling for something like 42 hours. How would you smell?). Being the good sports that they are, though, they at least tried it. The verdict? The taste was great, but the odor was just too overpowering for their uninitiated noses. So in the end, we brought the cheese to the annual Christmas party thrown by some very dear friends of ours who know and celebrate France and its 452 glorious cheeses. They loved it.