French Kids Eat Everything Karen Billon (romance novel chinese novels txt) 📖

like the several-hundred-piece Big City Hospital Lego set that Philippe bought “for the girls” and that they politely watched him assemble.)

Three weeks into our new phase of The Plan, things seemed to be going almost too well. The girls weren’t requesting snacks very often any more. They had seemed to settle into their new routine. We didn’t even have to continue making up new snack menus, we decided. On weekends, they’d flip through the cookbooks and pick a couple of new things, but they were mostly happy (as was I) with the things that they were already eating for snack.

Most surprising of all, they didn’t seem to miss the bedtime snack. I missed it, though. I missed those moments of quiet complicity we had at the table late at night when I nibbled alongside the girls—who were sleepy enough to be well behaved. We’d dim the lights, and a magical calm would pervade the kitchen. And I missed the second bedtime snack I was used to having later with Philippe after the girls were asleep. But Philippe and I found other things to do together. Jo, who was more than happy to support our transition to French eating routines, would often come over to babysit on the weekend after the girls had been put to bed. Philippe and I started going out to movies—although they were only shown once a week, in the local village hall that doubled as the community center, theater, marriage reception room, and indoor gym. We went out for drinks with Eric and Sandrine and met a few other couples. It was amazing how much Philippe cheered up after an evening outing; we hadn’t been on “date nights” since Claire was born.

Banishing snacks, it turns out, was easier and happier than I had expected—at least for Philippe and me. But I still wondered how the girls really felt about giving up snacks. Were they happy with the new routine? I had my answer (and knew we’d really turned a corner as a family) when I overheard the girls talking to each other late one afternoon.

“I’m hungry,” whined Claire.

“Me too,” echoed Sophie. “But don’t worry!” she continued brightly. “That means you’ll really appreciate your dinner. It’s in two hours. Let’s go check what’s on the menu.”

And they did just that.

8

Slow Food Nation

It’s Not Only

What

You Eat, It’s Also

How

You Eat

Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman,

Ce qui cause mon tourment.

Papa veut que je raisonne,

Comme une grande personne.

Moi, je dis que les bonbons

Valent mieux que la raison.

Maman! I need to tell you

Something makes me feel so blue.

Papa wants me to reason

As if I was a big person.

Me, I say that my candy

Is worth more than rationality.

—This eighteenth-century French song, still one of the most popular songs for French children, is the original source of the melody for “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

By the end of April, nine months after our arrival in France, our family food experiment was well under way. The girls were eating more new things than I would ever have imagined possible. Our meals were on a good schedule (the French four square meals a day). Food was no longer a bribe or a reward or a distraction. Instead, it was a source of pleasure and family closeness. And “eating French” had turned out to be less time-consuming than I thought; the simple recipes I was using didn’t actually take that much time to prepare. True, backsliding happened once in a while. At the end of a long workday, I’d sometimes just cook a pot of pasta. The girls sometimes still whined and fidgeted at the table. And although we were eating a more varied set of menu items, I’d fallen into a bit of a rut; new things weren’t being introduced at the same rate as they had been earlier in the year. But overall we’d made progress; our family mealtimes, though far from perfect, were a lot more fun.

However, I had to confess that I still didn’t look forward to spending time in the kitchen. I’d usually leave cooking to the last minute, then rush around throwing things together. I thought of this as part of my personality: I walk and talk quickly and am often impatient when things move slowly. In fact, I felt perversely proud of my brisk eating habits. Why waste time eating when you could be doing something else? So I would often eat quickly and get up from the table and wash the dishes even before everyone else was finished. Philippe despaired of the fact that I couldn’t shelve my multitasking tendencies. He wanted to relax at mealtimes, like any Frenchman would. But when he protested, I resisted.

“It’s normal for me to eat this quickly!” I shot back at my husband one evening after he had chided me for jumping up too soon from the table. (To be precise, he had ordered me, in an exasperated tone, and in front of our wide-eyed children, to “sit down and stay put!”)

“I’m busy! We don’t have the luxury of a thirty-five-hour week back home. I don’t have the time to sit for hours at the table. I like working hard!” I triumphantly concluded, and then couldn’t resist adding, “And harder than the French!”

This was a strategic error. Within a day, Philippe had the statistics to prove me wrong. He had asked Véronique to double-check them, and then he printed them out and cheerily posted them on our now-crowded fridge (Note to self: Try to look on the bright side of having a Parisian economic journalist as a sister-in-law).

Working Mothers (Full-time) in France versus the US

Percent of mothers who work (full-time)

Average length of workday (full-time)

France

66%

8 hours

US

70%

7 hours

As Philippe pointed out, both French and American mothers work (and hold full-time jobs) at about the same rates. And, he eagerly added, the average length of the workday is actually shorter in the United