French Kids Eat Everything (5 page)

Preparing the table to receive the food in this way might seem a little old-fashioned. But it has a marvelous effect on children. They react as if a stranger in uniform has shown up at the front door: it immediately puts them on their best behavior. This effect is heightened by the rules concerning
how
the French eat. Food is never eaten standing up, or in the car, or on the go. Food is not eaten anywhere, in fact, but at the table. And food is only served when
everyone
is at the table. “
À table!
” is a summons that brings most French children running. Everyone waits for everyone else to be served, and for the ritual “
Bon appétit!
” to be said before beginning the meal. As children almost always eat with their parents, these habits sink in early.

So eating—even everyday meals—is treated like an occasion. And it is, above all, a social occasion. The French never eat alone (at home or at work) if there is someone else to eat with. And because French food tastes so good, it is an occasion to look forward to.

French food—even the simplest of foods—really does taste wonderful. I still remember the first yogurt that baby Claire ever tasted in France. We bought it at the local supermarket, so it was nothing out of the ordinary by French standards. Except that it was an extraordinary experience for Claire. Served in a little ochre-colored natural clay pot, capped with a crinkly gold wrapper embossed with a reproduction of Renoir's famous milkmaid, her yogurt looked like an intriguing Christmas present. Clutching her spoon, she peeled back the wrapping, dipped into the pot, tasted her first mouthful, widened her eyes, bent her head intently, and didn't look up again until every inch was scraped clean. Creamy, rich, tangy without being bitter, French yogurt is simply delicious. This is true for most of the food you find in France. So imagine how French kids feel about it. Food tastes great, is served with a sense of occasion, and is fun because it's social. The table is where parents and children relax together. It is where they appreciate not only food, but also one another. This makes the rigid approach to food education more bearable for children.

And food education is not something that most French parents view as optional. Because eating is so central to French culture, French kids have to learn
how
to eat the French way if they want to fit in. It is as important for a French child to learn the food rules as it is for an American teenager to learn how to drive. It's a rite of passage and a precondition for successfully navigating through society. So food, unsurprisingly, turned out to be our social entrée into village life.

When we first arrived, I would drive half an hour to the nearest large town grocery store to buy my groceries and do errands (
les courses
), comforted by the familiar act of rolling up and down the aisles with a grocery cart. But the aisles were empty, and the grocery store felt vaguely antiseptic and lonely. So after a couple of weeks, I became a faithful visitor to the village market, which was held twice a week in the cobblestone plaza in front of the church in the heart of the village.

I first had to overcome my resistance to shopping at the
marché
. My first impression was that the market was an incredibly inefficient way of shopping for a family. My mother-in-law, however, did all of her shopping there. Janine's typical
marché
visit would include purchases at the vegetable stall, the fruit stall, the cheese stall, the bakery, the fish stall, the butcher shop, and the honey stall (yes, there was a stall just for honey). She would spend, on average, between three and five minutes in each of seven or eight separate lines. At each stall, vendors would cheerfully greet each customer, meticulously choose their produce, carefully pack it, and slowly count out the change. I fretted and even pouted at waiting in line and longed for the online grocery delivery service that brought everything to our house back in Vancouver.

I also griped, at first, at how inconvenient it seemed to shop at the
marché
. Buying enough for a family of four for a week meant lugging heavy
paniers
(the straw baskets also used in supermarkets, as plastic bags have been banned in French grocery stores). Because the stalls spilled out into lanes and streets, cars were banned from the center of the village until the market was over around noon (in order to allow everyone to go home for their two-hour lunch,
bien sûr
).

This meant a long walk back home. At first, I struggled with my overloaded
paniers
, huffing and puffing back up the hill to our house—feeling slightly embarrassed as gray-haired grandmothers briskly sailed past me with their wheeled caddies. But lugging the bags provided some exercise, which I desperately needed: French women rarely work out (schlepping groceries being enough of a workout, apparently), and there was no gym within twenty miles of the village. And Janine taught me to buy smaller amounts and shop more frequently, as the French do. I even broke down and bought a caddy with a gaily-colored Scottish plaid motif that seemed out of place until my father-in-law pointed out that Brittany had actually been settled by Celts fleeing the invasion of Britain by the Anglo-Saxon tribes. (This gave me new insight into the French dislike of the “Anglo-Saxons,” a category to which I apparently belonged, and into which Germans, British, Americans, Canadians, and even Australians are usually lumped.)

There was another advantage to buying food at the market. Food was fresher this way, Janine explained, because it could be purchased at precisely the right moment. This transformed what had been one of the most frustrating market rituals into one of my favorites: watching the fruit and vegetable vendors ask, “When do you want to eat it?” The customer's response would identify not only the day, but also the meal at which the item was to be consumed. “Tomorrow for lunch!” Or “Dinner on Saturday!” The vendor would then conduct a painstaking search (customers never being allowed to touch the produce themselves) through the avocados (or melons, or tomatoes, or pineapples, or whatever it was) until the perfect one was found. The logic of the long lines slowly became more apparent. If this much care went into planning every meal and choosing every item, no wonder it all took so long.

But there was another reason people liked the long and multiple lines: they were a core part of the village's social life. People didn't enter into idle conversations at the local café (as I discovered after a few cold shoulders). There were no chairs for sitting down in any of the stores. The village was too small to have a library. In fact, there was almost no common space anywhere in the village apart from the central square in front of the church that was used as a parking lot when the market wasn't being held.

Where, I wondered in the first weeks we were there, did people socialize? The market lines—which recomposed themselves rapidly as people moved from one stall to the next—provided, I discovered, one of the only opportunities for the normally reserved Bretons to banter and chat. If people were in a hurry, they'd come early (before the crowds) and be done in a few minutes. If they wanted to socialize, they'd come later.

By the end of the summer, I started coming later more and more often, as I learned so much from the conversations I struck up. These would often revolve around the food in front of us. How were the garlic shoots this week? What were the radishes like last week? Why were the local mackerel so small this season? Going to the market twice every week gradually introduced me to the local food culture. I had no idea that this variety of food could be available in one place. And I encountered lots of new tastes:
huîtres
(oysters, which I finally consented to eat, much to the approval of my father-in-law),
moules
(mussels, which soon became a favorite, cooked simply with white wine and a little parsley), and
cidre
(Brittany's famous apple cider).

Gradually, I learned that asking about food was a great conversation starter. I found that the best way to initiate conversations was to innocently ask: How do you cook this vegetable? (Or, more often than I'd like to admit: What
is
that vegetable?) A chorus of voices would respond, offering recipes, debating cooking times, suggesting spices. The ice would be broken, and we would move on to other topics.

The local fisherman was one of my first allies. By the time the market was setting up at 8:30 in the morning, he had already been up for hours, as the in-shore fishing boats left and returned before sunrise. But he had endless energy and a soft spot for kids. “Furr zee baybee” he would say smilingly, carefully filleting the fresh fish in front of us.

Everyone in the line discreetly listened to my answers to his gently curious questions about life “
en Amérique
” (English Canadians are, whether they like it or not, lumped in with Americans when abroad). Knowing that September was just around the corner, I would ask him questions about the local school, which his children attended—and where Sophie would be going. With Sophie hanging on every word, he would give upbeat answers with an encouraging smile. And no matter how much I insisted, he would never accept payment for any of the fish I chose for our daughters. He did this with all of the locals, but not the tourists who were still crowding the market, and I felt proud when I realized that this was a sign of acceptance.

The market was an education for the girls as well. At first, I tended to avoid the “messy” stalls if I had them with me. The butcher's stall—with the hanging pigs' heads and the decapitated still-furry rabbits—was a no-go zone. The
poissonnerie
—where the fish were beheaded, gutted, and de-scaled at the request of each customer—also made me nervous. So I made these rounds without the girls, usually entrusting them to my father-in-law, who would take them for a walk around the square.

But Jo soon grew impatient with my queasiness. One day, he gathered Claire in his arms and brought her over to the fish stall. Her eyes widened. Raising a chubby finger, she pointed at a particularly large specimen:

“
Poisson!
” (Fish!), she shrieked.

“
Coupe! Coupe! Coupe!
” (Cut! Cut! Cut!), she continued, turning her hand sideways and making a sawing motion in the air. By now, she had the attention of everyone in the line.

“Yum yum!” she gravely finished, pointing to her mouth to the sound of approving chuckles.

My daughter already knew, even better than I, how to make friends and impress people in France.

—Traditional French nursery rhyme

By the beginning of September, we were all looking forward
to the start of the school year. No one had been awaiting
la rentrée
more eagerly than Sophie, who desperately wanted to meet kids her own age. So on the first day of school, we were there bright and early. Sophie walked clutching my hand, followed by my mother-in-law, while Philippe brought up the rear with Claire, dressed to match her sister (precious, but I couldn't resist). Janine had drawn my attention to the fact that French schoolchildren, even in a little country village, were much better dressed than their American counterparts—so Sophie had gotten a new outfit only days before. She looked adorable in a dusty rose shirt-dress with taupe leggings; I had judged earth tones—a popular choice amongst French parents—to be the safest bet for my kids (although lots of French children wear white, which mysteriously stays spotless).

Sophie and I had gone together in one of our first-ever mom and daughter clothes-shopping outings. On the drive home, I had reassured her that this year—her first in full-time school—would be just great. At the back of my mind was an image of eager village children being fascinated by
l'Américaine
, falling over themselves to befriend the new girl. But I had forgotten what kids could be like. And I had no idea what a small village could be like (having lived in big cities all my life). I soon learned: if you don't know the rules, you're the village idiot. As I was about to learn, my daughter didn't know the rules. And neither, apparently, did I.

The first inkling I had of trouble was the small white sheet posted on the front door of the school. The contents of the piece of paper were impossible for me to decipher. It was marked with today's date. It seemed like a list. It had lots of strange words that I couldn't recognize. But I did recognize the days of the week. Maybe it was a list of after-school classes?