Table Matters

Our friends are very French. This means that my lovely hostess offers me coffee or hot chocolate in a bowl for breakfast. Since I'm not really a coffee or hot chocolate drinker, she instead makes me tea. In a bowl. This is actually photo-worthy to me, which entertains the French family greatly.

Even funnier to us, however, is cutting our fruit with forks and knives. I am wondering if general American manners make us look like Neanderthals to the rest of the world, since I consider it pretty normal to eat a hamburger, fries, and fruit with my hands. But here among the French, these are knife-and-fork foods. Good think they haven't seen Pippa eat sauteed string beans, which she does by the fistful.

This is our second experience visiting a French family, and they too have a deeply held belief in sugared cereals: Choco Puffs, Frosted Flakes, and Honey Balls. You won't hear the girls complaining. As with the other French family we stayed with in Normandy, cereal is sometimes eaten with milk but sometimes dry. Our sample size of two families leads us to the generalization that this is the norm nation-wide.

 

There is no snacking. This is a nation-wide truism that is even codified into law for schools (after preschool, there is no in-school snack time, sanctioned or otherwise). The only acceptable snack is the 4-5pm after-school gouté which is usually, you guessed it, chocolatey. Since we are on a French family's summer schedule that involves breakfast at 9am, lunch around 2 pm, dinner at 9pm, and bedtime close to 11pm (when the sun goes down here, you see, this far north and to the west of the time zone), you can imagine that the no-snacking policy is very difficult impossible for our American children. At 11am, when we are just packing up to head to the beach, I take my girls aside and furtively feed them bread, cheese, and fruit snacks when the French children aren't looking. I feel a little bit like a drug pusher, but I know that Pippa in particular will show an ugly side if she gets overly hungry (we call it "Evil Pippa" when it emerges), and with lunch starting at 2pm, who could really blame her? Her body is conditioned for lunch at noon, with only a half hour window till evil.

The saving grace for the 9pm dinner hour, beside the 5pm chocolate hour, is that according to French etiquette, the "apero" or "aperitif" is perfectly acceptable. This is not just an aperitif drink before dinner, that allows me to survive the evil more easily, but also a small course of pre-dinner hors d'oevres that allows the evil to be mercifully avoided. Because it's summer, that often means melon, olives, or nuts.

Along with the meal we have, of course, wine. And since it's a hot summer week, that generally means a rosé, often from Provence. Amazingly, these can be literally about as cheap as water.

The proper French meal itself is served in courses, culminating in either the salad and cheese course, or dessert, or both. As a thank you for a great visit, we go to the local patisserie and get a box of treats that we cut into pieces so that we can sample and share. I don't think this is a traditionally French way to do it, but since it means we all get to try four different pastries, our French friends go along with it quite happily.

 

 

When it's just the moms alone with the kids, I also introduce the concept of the meal of simple leftovers, all served at once, with very little fuss. My friend adores this, as it frees her from hours in the kitchen on a summer day, and she vows to continue it whenever socially acceptable. So, perhaps not all American etiquette is caveman. Then again, you should see our family eat chicken drumsticks.