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

brandy-soaked plums), followed by darkly sweet, nutty mignardises made from traditional spelt, buckwheat, and chestnut flours.

Although they can’t get enough of good conversation at the table, the French only rarely give speeches or toasts. But Eric summoned up the courage to speak in front of the guests. “Wherever you go, and whether or not you return, you all have a little bit of Brittany in you now,” he smiled. And we drank a toast: “Toujours le vin sent son terroir.” Later, as we all walked down to the beach (a family ritual that I much appreciated after hours at the table), Philippe tried to translate this proverb for me. “A good wine smells and even tastes like its terroir, the landscape where it was born. And people are the same: where we come from is always part of who we are. No matter where we go, we’ll take a little bit of Brittany with us.”

Vancouver has a way of buoying your spirits, even when you’re in the worst of moods. As we flew over the downtown, ringed by mountains and the ocean, Philippe perked up, likely imagining himself summiting some icy peak. I perked up too, imagining myself eating a fresh warm sesame bagel slathered with cream cheese. Even Sophie cheered up when we visited with her old friends later that week. They were charmed by her French accent, her polished manners, even her clothes: our rapscallion child had been transformed by her year in France into someone straight out of the pages of Madeline.

Claire had a harder time. Her wide-eyed looks made it clear that she was completely baffled by the “new” language spoken around her. At least she had stopped scowling and saying “Non, Maman!” when I spoke English to her. Listening intently to the foreign sounds everyone was suddenly making seemed to take up all of her energy, and she became intensely clingy. It seemed as if August was going to be another long month.

Even I had a hard time readjusting. I had been longing for the “convenience” of North American–style shopping. But by the time I drove the girls to the supermarket (through traffic much worse than I remembered), found parking, wandered up and down the endless aisles, waited in line, loaded the groceries into the car, and made it home, I was exhausted. Doing my shopping at the marché, I realized with chagrin, took me less time—with the bonus of getting exercise, being outside in the fresh air, and socializing with other people.

Plus, the things we bought at the supermarket didn’t seem nearly as fresh as in France. Philippe swore (putain!) at the smell of the chicken when we unwrapped it. After a year of farm-fresh produce, I was surprised by the slightly unsavory smell, and the overly smooth, slimy skin, like something that had been wrapped in plastic way too long. Cooked, the meat was tasteless and strangely limp. Even the organic chickens had some of the same whiff about them (plus, they were so expensive). Philippe was so put off that he threatened to turn vegetarian, sparking a search for a new supplier. Eventually, we found a local butcher who brought in chickens from a Mennonite farm (their wings, plucked and primly folded, did look as if they were tucked in a little prayer). I realized that I would miss our village marché more than I had thought.

Even more surprising were my reactions to the food habits of people around us. I had never noticed the number of people eating while wandering through the streets. Now I found the sight oddly disconcerting. I was surprised to see the slow trickle of children emerging every lunch hour at one of our neighborhood schools to be handed a McDonald’s drive-thru takeout meal by their moms (who were comfortably waiting in their idling cars). At work, I was amazed when a colleague entered the room for a midmorning meeting, opened a bag of chips, dumped them on a piece of paper on the table, and calmly announced: “This is my breakfast. Anyone want some?” Our office lunchroom, where I now reheated my homemade, two-course lunch every day, was deserted; people were hunched over their computers eating sandwiches. Was this how it was before we left? I wondered. And how come I never noticed?

Sophie faced her own challenges at school. She quickly became aware that she didn’t eat like the other children. Much of this had to do with snack foods. At first, I didn’t want to send her to school with a snack at all, planning to feed her the afternoon goûter as usual. But when I picked her up after her first full day of school, she looked wan and upset. “Maman, I’m huuungry!” she sniffled. Puzzled, I opened her lunch box: carrot soup in a thermos, baguette and butter, yogurt, and slices of apple. Almost nothing had been touched.

“Why didn’t you eat your lunch?” I asked.

“I didn’t have enough time,” replied Sophie, bursting into tears.

It was true that we had been a bit surprised by the schedule that the school had sent home. They had allocated all of ten minutes for lunch, from precisely 12 noon to 12:10 P.M. This included time for unpacking and packing up. “But zat ees rrreedeeculous!” my husband snapped, when I showed him the schedule (his French accent, which I still find unbearably cute, is more pronounced when he’s upset).

“How can she possibly manage to eat her lunch in so short a time?” he went on. “She’ll be hungry, and she won’t be able to concentrate on her schoolwork!” I had a strange sense of déjà vu.

“She’ll just have to eat quickly, like everyone else,” I said firmly but (I hoped) calmly.

“Humph!” snorted Philippe. “They’re training them to rush while eating, and to eat bad-quality lunches at their desks when they grow up. Now I know where these terrible habits come from,” he concluded disdainfully.

I agreed with him, but (just as in France) there was not a lot