Man cannot live on fromage and baguette alone

When people hear (or read, as in this case) that I live in France, they automatically assume that all I feed my family is wonderfully runny cheeses and heavenly artisanal baguettes day in and day out.

Let me clear up this misconception right now.  We are one of the few families I know that never puts bread out on the table (unless we have guests over, then it's a noblesse oblige kind of thing) and it's been awhile since I've brought home a good stinky époisse.

When I first moved to France, I was really gung-ho about doing everything like a native.  I shopped uniquely at the marché (never a supermarket!  That would be treason!) swinging my little net bag (your rarely see these anymore and that's a sad thing), and practicing my poor French with the vendors.  It was one of the best immersion experiences you could get outside of a classroom.

Oh little net bag, how I miss ye.  Although I don't miss people seeing what I've purchased.

That attitude lasted for years, probably a a couple of decades.  By the time I got married and had a couple of franco-american kids, I figured I'd assimilated as much as I was ever going to, and could start being my bad American self, which meant (among other things) buying American products without hiding them from public view.  It wasn't the taco shells that were going to betray my origins anyway; it was more likely that my less-than-svelte morphology and wild curly hair were going to scream AMERICAN as soon as I walked out my door.

You can tell an integrated expat by how they just don't give a damn anymore about passing for Parisian.  It's like we've come full circle...one day I was all about the little blue and white striped marinière; flash forward 20 years and now I just pull on my big old college sweatshirt.  Seriously, I'm never going to fool anyone into thinking I'm French (unless I take up smoking and wearing fur, and even then...).

 Avoid wearing this with a beret, unless you want to look like a mime.

So it was without one ounce of guilt or skulking about that I went  to check out the new mall SoOuest.  Which means SoWest.  What a stupid name.  This reminds me of a really-poorly named soup you can find at Picard* called SoSoup.  What genius brander came up with that name?  "Hmmm.  This soup is really....soup.  No!  It's more than soup.  It's SO SOUP!"

Anyway, SoOuest.  That doesn't mean it's like a "western-themed mall" by the way.  It just means it is situated in Levallois, which is a suburb in the (you guessed it) western part of the Paris region. 

SoOuest houses one of the new Marks and Spencers, a department store that had been banished from France about 10 years ago due to declining sales but I suspect it was because they asked their French employees to actually work and that was against union rules so rather than try and negotiate this**  the Brits pulled out of the French market.  But now they are back HALLELUJAH so I took the girls out there and it was like a little slice of heaven.

SoOuest has an anglo-saxon feel to it.  It's light and airy--there's a glass ceiling which gives you the impression you are in a lovely greenhouse--and all the employees have been trained to be nice and friendly.   For a moment I thought I was back in the USA until we needed to go to the toilet and of course there was only one set of toilets on one floor of the mall, situated at the complete opposite end of where we were.  Now that's just crazy because you often go to the mall with small children who always need to pee RIGHT NOW and the French are just setting themselves up here for children relieving themselves in the fountains, greenery, corner spaces, etc.  

 Don't complain, SoOuest, when people start using your potted plants as urinals. 

We were thrilled to see a number of American and British offerings amongst the food purveyors.  We chose Pret-A-Manger which despite its name is English (we like to go there when we go to London).  I fed the three of us for 30 euros, a bargain here.  The girls enjoyed these muffins, and I had a slice of carrot cake with my sandwich.  Carrot cake is something that freaks the French out in the same way that pumpkin pie or zucchini bread does, so you just can't pass it up when you see it for sale.

 Big muffins nicely served on a silver tray by really friendly people

Then it was on to Marks and Spencers where I descended into the food hall and decided I wanted to take up residence there.  They bring the food over every.single.day on the earliest Eurostar (a freight one, not the one people ride in) and everything is just like it is in the UK down to the takeway curries and oddly-flavored crisps.

 I bow down to your anglo-greatness.  And your cinnamon pecan rolls.

We stocked up on American-style cakes, breads, crackers, and mexican food and I can't wait to go back.  It's not too far from us--we live on the western side of Paris, or should I say the SoWest side of Paris so it's a quick trip when we get tired of French food.

Which really doesn't happen that often.After all, there's a billion things you can do with horsemeat.

Wow.  I thought you could only find horsemeat in frozen lasagne.  But no, at SoOuest you can buy it freshly ground.  Neigh!

*Purveryor of horsemeat  frozen foods.

**See the recent brouhaha with Titan tires.

Monoprix and the flow of food items.

I love pita bread. I average 1 pita bread/day, either as an embracer for sandwich fixings, a base for low-cal pizza, or--my personal favorite--pita chips. (Cut up a pita into quadrants, separate the layers, spray with PAM and bake 8 minutes until crispy. Serve with salsa and 4% crème fraîche. It's my standard starter course).


But a crisis has occurred at Monoprix. There is no longer any pita to be found on the shelves. At first I thought it was an inventory snafu; I was sure that during a future trip to the store, I'd find my flatbread in its usual spot stocked between the brioche and the pain au lait. But still no pita when I returned a week later! Maybe they had moved the little round bread to a special head-of-aisle display; maybe there was some kind of "Highlight of the Foods of the Mediterreanean" promotion going on? On my third trip--three weeks into my quest--I asked the fellow stocking the breads: "What's going on with the pita?" I inquired. "The what?" "The pita. You know, that circular pocket bread that is usually placed here on your shelves" "No idea. I am The Responsible for Harry's," he answered. (Harry's is an ersatz-American line of what the French think sandwich bread looks like.)

Six weeks later, and I have now been to every Monoprix within walking distance of home and work. Pita has become an obsession. My colleagues, eager for the Pita Update, greet me with "Find any yet?" each morning. "The pita problem persists," I scowl as I put away my lunch in the office fridge. (A lunch lacking in sandwich for obvious reasons.) I mull over possible reasons for the pita shortage. "Maybe it is a boycott. Maybe it is France's response to the crisis in Syria?" I asked a friend. "But pita is Greek, or at least common to ALL mediterreanean countries. You still should be able to find it, despite the Syrian situation," he countered. Hmmm. Pita is not being used as a political pawn, I guess.

Withdrawal was setting in. I had to take desperate measures. I ventured into the Franprix, another supermarket I detest. Not only is the food bad quality, but the market itself is filthy. The only redeeming quality of a Franprix is that it sometimes carries odd, off-the-beaten-track foods. Food no Monoprix shopper would want.

Yes, they had pita. Not a genuine pita, mind you (this one is manufactured in a Paris suburb rather than in the Mediterreanean basin) but a pita nonetheless.

This pita incident is not an isolated one.  Among the many things that drive me crazy about Monoprix is their Food Item Inventory Control Master Plan To Make Me Nuts.  Items that in a normal world aren't rare, or even seasonal...yet they still can't get a handle on keeping them on the shelf at all times.   It is not uncommon to go to the baking aisle and be unable to find something as mundane as vanilla extract.  (In fact, vanilla extract seems to fly off the shelf at Monoprix at an alarming rate.  I've taking to stocking up on it.  That's a sad statement.)  Same thing with something as run-of-the-mill as diet 7up. Diet 7up!  It's not like it's a rare vodka imported from Russia that is only available during the holiday season!  Who sells out of Diet 7up for weeks at a time?  Monoprix, that's who.

Guess what else they can't manage to restock?

 Kidney beans.  Not available because they just aren't in season at this time of year, or so they'd like us to believe.

See that vast empty space next to the chickpeas?  In a NORMAL store, that space would be occupied by kidney beans.  But not at Monoprix.  Kidney beans are now the rare food item, which, once sold, can never be replenished.  No chili tonight, my friends.

They didn't even have the courtesy to put up their "UNAVAILABLE DUE TO CRISIS IN KIDNEY BEAN KINGDOM" sign,  (Here it is indicating something gone wrong in green bean land.)

Don't believe that "momentarily out of stock" bit featured on the sign.  If this is anything like the pita crisis, we won't be seeing green beans until summer.

Bonne Année

How thoughtful of my local supermarket to position the alcohol breathalyzer tests next to the New Year's Eve party supplies.  That's what I call one-stop shopping!

Les Etrennes

My concierge has been making herself more and more visible lately which can only mean one thing. Actually, two things: the building's lobby is perpetually being cleaned, and it is the moment for the annual étrennes. Les étrennes, or strenae as the Romans liked to call them, is cash given at the end of the year to service personnel. My evenings are currently interrupted by knocks on the door by the Firemen (who, in exchange for their cash, gave me a sexy Firemen 2013 calendar), garbage collectors (no token offering given, thankfully), the Postman (old La Poste calendars are seen by some as collector's items) and sewer-cleaners (just take my money and go away...please).

The envelope given to the concierge (now called la gardienne, a more politically-correct title) is a sizeable one. Although fewer and fewer Parisian apartment buildings maintain a fulltime gardienne, (the cost of her salary and housing is borne by the building's inhabitants and it is now cheaper to outsource her duties), those of us who have an onsite gatekeeper know that it is in our interest to stay on her good side. Flowers, wine, chocolates-- while nice gestures (and never refused throughout the year)--these won't do it. You have to give her cash and a fat wad of it. If you neglect to slip her these alms, you can be sure that your mail will go astray, your guests will be directed to the wrong floor when they come to visit, your garbage will not be taken out with the rest of the building's and your Fedex deliveries refused. Les gardiennes are frequently uneducated and often barely literate, but they are powerful players in the neighborhood. They know everything--"être concierge" means to be a gossip--and will make your life miserable if you don't pay them handsomely.

Traditionally Portuguese, with the job handed down through family or word-of-mouth, my gardienne is French, which makes her a rarity. Still, she personifies the concierge mentality, with her loge, or dwelling, filled with kitchy bibelots and beaded curtains. She spends much of her time talking with the older people in the complex, complaining about various building-related incidents (the latest being fingerprints on the brass banisters). She seems to have her eyes everywhere and holds on to potent information like an embittered wife.

Still, with the absolution offered by the annual giving of the étrennes, the odometer gets set back to zero. That noisy party I held over the summer? That cardboard box I neglected to flatten before putting it in the garbage can? The joyful sounds my children make as they enter the lobby? A thick envelope of crisp new bills and all will be forgiven. For this year, at least.

Culture-specific dreams

My youngest likes to tell us her dreams at the breakfast table. They are complicated, as dreams tend to be, especially when recounted by a child. They often feature castles. Today she spoke of a menacing lavoir, a communal washing hut which was central social point of France's villages centuries ago. There was one in the town where her grandparents' country house was, and the girls loved to catch tadpoles in the stagnant water there. It still shows up in her dreams from time to time.

I also dreamt of castles as a child. But mine were castles out of fairy tales, unseen in waking life. My children grew up in the shadow of Versailles. They walk through the Louvre, touch the archways of the Palais du Luxembourg as they rollerblade through its arcades. For them, there is nothing unremoved about the markers of nobility. They live in its vestiges and its archetypes appear, unremarkable, in their dreams.

Note to self: Don't buy fromage blanc for the next couple of days

 

Oh, Monoprix.  You never fail to disappoint.

 

See that four-pack of fromage blanc?  Some Monoprix shopper decided at the last minute that they didn't want it.  So they took it out of their basket and placed it behind the cash register.  Where it will sit for hours, days possibly, before someone returns it, spoiled, to the cold case.

 

 

 





Give us this day our daily, artisanale bread

 

Bread lovers are well-served in France.  Bakeries here are as ubiquitous as Starbucks are in the USA, and even if you were to find yourself in a lieu-dit--a town of fewer than 30 inhabitants--rest assured you'd still have access to the sacred baguette via the mobile baker who comes into the village a couple of times a day, announcing his arrival with several swift beeps to the horn on his truck.

 

 

It is possible, however, to find bad bread.  Not only possible, but probable, as more and more bakeries turn to industrial sourcing of dough which arrives frozen and ready to pop in the oven.  It's a cost thing.  As rent, salaries and employee taxes rise, the older, artisanale bakeries shut down, to be replaced by these mediocre vendors.  This morning I read with great sadness of the demise of  Paris oldest bakery, forced to close its doors due to a huge rent increase.

 

 

Here's a company which provides frozen baguettes, pain au chocolat and other baked goods to retail bakeries; they've got some "helpful hints" on how to make the goods look authentic:  "Sprinkle flour over the finished baguette." That reminds me of a novel I read where the working mother, learning she must supply a cake for her children's next-morning school bake sale, took a hammer to the package of Mr. Bakewells and found herself frantically tapping the prepackaged tarts at midnight, in an attempt to make them look broken and homemade.

 

For those who wish to avoid the mass-produced bread and cakes, it's pretty simple.  Don't buy your bread in a Monoprix.  (Obviously.)  Look for the words "Boulangerie Artisanale" on the bakery sign.  A mere "Boulangerie" or (shudder) "Dépôt de Pain" means the bread is not baked on site but trucked in either frozen (for the former) or pre-baked (for the latter).  Oh, and never buy bread in a gas station.  That's a thousand ways of disgusting. 

 

Not sure what you are getting is authentic?  A baguette made from frozen dough is really straight and frequently the underside will be cracked.  Speaking of undersides, an authentic artisanale baguette should still show the little dotted indentations from sitting on the linen fabric during its rising time; a frozen one won't bear those telltale marks.

 

If you are walking around and you see this going on, you'll know that boulangerie is making their own stuff:

 



 

See that white sleeve going from truck to the wall of the bakery?  That's bringing in the flour to the basement of the shop...where all the magic is made.  Nothing frozen going on in there!

Lastly, a real baguette will be a bit irregular.  French law says it should weigh 250 grams exactly, but an artisanale one will vary--especially one make with a dense flour such as chestnut flour.  And it will measure anywhere from 55 to 65 centimeters in length, whereas the imposter will always be 50 centimeters long precisely.  Which brings to mind a hilarious ad campaign that we were treated to several years ago; something that would certainly be censored in the USA :

I see they've sprinkled flour over that fake baguette.  Must have read the website.