Category: Food

Categories
Food France

Lo Phat?

Due to something I haven’t yet been able to correct, no pictures for a while. Hope that’s okay with everyone!

I want to say some more about food. French, and American. There are plenty of fat people in France, but it’s not the norm, as it is in the US. And, I believe, the American obsession with low fat foods is largely to blame. (I’m stealing ideas left and right here, but they are public domain ideas.) Sometime, I think in the current century even, researchers experimenting with dogs demonstrated that fat has a flavor. If that sounds gross, well, don’t eat this post and you should be fine. I’m pretty sure that is true, and furthermore, fat is a good flavor. And, I suppose that all fat isn’t created equal, I’ll have to grant that. Milkfat (butterfat) buffers the effects of sugar ingestion. At the University of Minnesota in the 80s they were experimenting with foods that cause a sugar rush. Honey was, they said at the time, the best (or worst, if you don’t like sugar rushes.) The food that they could never get anyone’s blood sugar to spike with was ice cream. This was good news for Minnesota’s dairy industry. The reason was good old milkfat. Other fats don’t do that. Crisco and sugar is about as good as sugar for making a sugar rush happen. And, yummy, huh?

Recently (within a few years) it has come out that the US sugar industry paid researchers to find things that made fat bad for us. Some of it may have been real, some of it they actually did make up. But, fat tastes good, and if you take it out of food you lose a lot of good flavor. So, to make the stuff palatable, you add, what else? Sugar! Sugar does taste good. I eat the stuff, but not in the amounts in which I was eating it in the US. Because in France, fat is okay. The main base underneath a lot of French cooking is butter. Not margarine, but butter. Fatty, slippery, gooey, tasty butter! And butter contains what? Contains? It mostly is milkfat. Which is, in fact good for you and tastes good too. French people eat a lot of butter, but they aren’t as frequently obese as Americans, who tend to use low-fat alternatives. Think about that. Whole milk and butter taste really good, they help you stay thinner, and they reduce the need to add sugar to everything.

And added sugar in everything is the problem. Read the ingredients label on the food you buy. Most of it has sugar in it. It can be very difficult to avoid sugar in the US, unless you’re rich enough to afford Whole Foods! In France, the sort of thing Whole Foods sells is just what they sell in most supermarkets. And it isn’t expensive, either.

I’m not trying to preach; I’m just trying to lay out some reality. The rule of thumb is that you weigh ten pounds less in Europe than you do in America. I think I know why that is. Sweets, anyone?

Categories
Food France

French Food

I did eat some of this. Gallettes made with gluten free wheat. They’re French.

That photo is of a real menu from a real restaurant where I once ate. I liked it okay, my wife not so much. Anyway, that stuff is French food. Prior to the 1930s, when an Italian chef named Boyardi (sound it out) introduced America to Italian food, America’s favorite cuisine was French cooking. My mom was a home-ec major in the 1920s, and she learned French techniques (not necessarily all that well, to be honest.) For her, pepperoni was too spicy to eat, which is true of anyone who is a confirmed lover of traditional French cooking.* Maybe it’s because I lived for so long in the Southwest, first near Denver, then in Paradise Nevada, that I like a little heat in my food. Traditional French cooking is only hot if it’s straight out of the oven, as it were. French spices are subtle, and include salt and pepper on the table, just like the US of A.

This is not to say that French cooking is bad. In fact, some of the best food I’ve ever tasted has been prepared in the kitchen of a traditional French restaurant, served elegantly, and in portions designed to delight rather than engorge. (Topic for another post there.) But, I do crave a little heat once in a while. I brought a big bottle of Cholula with me, so I can spice up anything I want to. I haven’t seen Cholula for sale in France, but I did see some Tapatio, which is almost as good, some La Victoria (from New York City!) and, in local supermarkets, Tabasco. Tabasco makes sense because, well, “New Orleans = Neauveau Orleans”, Orleans being a French city once home to a famous teenaged general. Tabasco therefore is arguably related to France. Somehow. However it is, they do sell Tabasco, in the foreign foods section.

Bacon. Yummy bacon. Sure, but in Europe, “bacon” refers to cured meat. Technically, ham is bacon.** But, what if I want a few slices of crispy goodness in France? I’ve known for a while, but today I confirmed it. Yesterday I bought quatre tranches of poutrine fumé. Poutrine is what they call pork belly meat in these parts. I tried some a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t cured. It was okay, but not great. Today, though, I fried up those four slices of smoked pork belly and ended up with four slices of crispy bacon. I fried some hash browns and and egg to go with, and had the first actual savory breakfast I’d had since the first Sunday in May. (Two days after that I came to France.) (I miss the Omelet House 50s Diner.) I haven’t checked, but I have read that pepperoni is available in a humongous store called Carrefour, which means “intersection,” in the foreign foods section. I was there, but didn’t even find the foreign foods section, which I’m sure is extensive.***

So, if you want your favorite foods from America in France, you are not entirely out of luck, but you will probably have to go to some effort to round them up. We went to an “American Diner” in Confolens, but it was run by Brits, who tried, I’m sure, but they aren’t familiar enough with American diner food to really pull it off. I’d like to find an American to open an American diner, if possible. (I can’t. I don’t have a work permit.) There is a chain called Buffalo Grill that serves actual American food, too. Or, you can order online, assuming that they have what you need.**** Then again, I live in France, the wine is all good, there are a variety of beers on tap (even Budweiser) and all-in-all, the food is pretty good. And now, I have bacon. Mmmmm. Baaacon!

*They don’t sell pepperoni in France. Instead they use chorizo, which isn’t Mexican but Spanish, although Mexicans seem to like it a lot.

**This explains Canadian Bacon, which Canadians call “back bacon.” It is bacon from the pig’s back, rather than the pig’s belly. And yes, it is more or less just like ham, isn’t it?

***Carrefour is about the size of three normal Walmart Supercenters, and has similar merchandise.

****There is, of course, McDo, as McDonalds is usually named. The fries disappoint, usually.