Everyday life in France is like a “moveable feast” said Hemingway, and how accurate he was! Staying at a French family’s country house indeed I found each day to be structured around food: where to buy the best “pain”, which local market stocks the finest foie gras and where you can find the juiciest seasonal fruits.
At breakfast, lunch and supper tens of millions of French people gather round a table at the same time to share in the joy of eating. And it is not just a quick meal that we usually have at home here – the consumption of food, in fact, is treated more as a ritual.
Children, adults, the elderly, sisters, brothers, cousins, second cousins et al congregate at mealtimes, and it is as though an invisible conductor raised his baton to mark the start of festivities. Each meal can last for several hours with conversation flowing from one topic to the next. This ritual is so deep-rooted that the French almost find it mundane. For foreigners, on the other hand, it is like something from another world.
Having toddlers that constantly run around and can barely sit at the table for more than 15 minutes, I found the whole routine near impossible to stick to. However, French people are rather clever. From a young age they teach their kids to sit together cordially with adults and to eat their meals at a fixed hour with no snacking in between.
In France meals are strongly associated with good company and sharing.
Meal time serves as a fantastic opportunity to bring all the family together. Maman, a mother and grandmother in the house we stayed in, the patron of the maison, said to me with the utmost conviction that food to them is not just any functional activity – it is loaded with cultural values, symbols and identities. It is almost a form of communion and the concept of sharing is a key part of the process.
People may think poorly of the guest who doesn’t partake in the main course or who only eats gluten-free or carb-free foods. And isn’t that the perfect excuse to roll out the potato dauphinoise, the plumply stuffed aubergines, the charcuterie and fromage a plenty and of course le gateaux au chocolat?! Vacation in France is truly a festival for the taste buds! Naturally I threw the diet plan out the window so as not to perturb my gastronomic hosts.
And then at the end of each meal there is the mandatory discussion of what is to be had tomorrow, and which cousin will be cooking next in the neighbouring chateau!
So if you are on a diet I’d forget about France … you will be fed from one meal to the next and should you have the audacity to sit a meal out, well, I suspect that you will not be invited next time!
