Sur place ou à emporter?

Bonjour de Nantes, France. What better place to begin than with the proudest, most coveted, confounding, and succulent aspect of French life: la cuisine.

I ate my first French meal at 8h00, le 3 septembre, in the Charles de Gaulle airport -- a ham and cheese sandwich. The bread was a long baguette, softly pointed at both ends, a tasty multi-grain that was crunchy on the outside and soft inside. No dressing or veggies, but the meat and cheese provided for a satisfying breakfast experience. The sandwich label assured me that it was "homemade in accordance with strict hygiene and traceability rules." A few meals later, I learned that traceability really means something in France. All the meat is labeled with the name of the region that it came from. Whatever the region, the pig/chicken/cow/lamb/frog did not spend its short life in a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation), or factory farm. That being the case, I've decided to throw vegetarianism to the wind for the next four months. So far, it's been delicious.

My first French meal was also when I learned the phrase"Sur place ou à emporter?" which means "For here or to go?" So now I am ready for MacDo (think golden arches).

Our IES program orientation was in Vannes, a city in Bretange (Brittany) in the west of France, right on the coast. We ate our dinners at the hotel each night and oh la la, were they good. We gleefully sipped wine (le vin) as waiters brought out French bread and salad, then the main course which was either fish (le poisson) or another seafood (le fruit de mer), and then the real main course: dessert.

I wish I had taken food critics more seriously so that I would have the culinary/artistic lexicon to describe these desserts. Sometimes moist, other times flaky, the different tastes and textures were each done with just the right amount of zip or zest or whatever it called for. The chocolate mousse cake was rich but not too rich, and the fruit tart sweet but not too sweet. Slivered almonds sprinkled on top were a savory bonus. Raspberry sauce drizzled in abstract designs were a reminder that the food is as much about presentation as it is about taste (the eyes get hungry, too).

Back in Nantes, baguettes abound. To buy one, you can walk to the nearest patisserie (bakery). To see one, you can simply look around and find one tucked securely under the arm of a little old lady, a boy on a skateboard, a businessman, a police officer, a skinny jean-clad woman, or any other French person who has at least one arm. Throughout the day, baguette-tucking pedestrians are a constant reminder of France's remarkable food culture. The heavenly smells wafting from the patisseries help, too.

The number of patisseries and cafes in the Centre Ville de Nantes makes Starbucks's takover of Manhattan look like child's play. Each block boasts one or two of each. They are full of people at all times of the day, people buying bread/pastries for later or sipping shot-sized espressos (the idea of a venti is as ridiculous to the French as Hummers are to... well, anyone with any sense at all. I saw an H2 parked on the sidewalk while on a walk with Dany, my host mother, and I asked her what she thought of it. Her response was, "C'est ridicule." That sucker was the only SUV I've seen so far.)

Dinner with Dany and Rene Aubineau begins at 20h00 and lasts about 1 hour 15 minutes. Rene comes home from work (as a dentist) around 19h30 and we watch the news. He sits in the comfy chair in front of the TV and Dany stands behind the hammock next to Rene, leaning on it and swaying back and forth. I usually sit on the floor in front. They make little side comments and I hold on for dear life, trying to follow the announcer's words. Dany goes into the kitchen periodically to check on the food. The final music plays on the news program and Dany claps her hands and says "Op! A table!"

First we have some sort of salad, soup, or vegetable. My favorite so far has been the cream of zucchini soup. Dany and Rene both really like saying the word "zucchini." It's a fun word to say, I suppose.

Next is the main course, which is always meat and vegetables. The portion sizes are much smaller, so as not to crowd what's already been eaten and to leave room for what's to come.

And that would be the cheese. Keep in mind, the bread stays on the table throughout the meal, to be nibbled, dipped in the soup, or enjoyed with some butter. But only when the cheese comes out does the bread really get its groove on.

A highly useful piece of information: the French never put the bread on their plates. The bread only accompanies the meal, so they put it on the table to the left of their glass. It makes for a lot of crumbs, but so it goes.

After the cheese comes the dessert. It's never extravagant, usually fruit or some kind of pudding or mousse. A few times we have had cantaloupe, and it is always incredibly sweet. I asked where it came from and Dany said it is from a few hours away. No wonder. The mousse that I really like is chestnut-flavored. There is actually a chestnut tree right outside the dining room window (not where the mousse comes from). I asked if we could roast them (though I actually said something like "Can we cook them like at Christmas") and Rene said yes. Youpie!

Breakfast is very simple, usually a few pieces of toast (the baguette from the previous day) with jam. My favorite is Dany's apricot jam. I also have un cafe with a cube of sugar, which they keep in an old tea pot. They drink orange juice with lots of pulp so I am being reeeeeaaaalllly flexible and drinking that too. Yum, pulp.

I will finish this bit with my first authentic cafe experience, which happened a few days ago in Vannes. I was with three new friends (other Americans on the program), and we were speaking French with each other, saying "eeuuhh" a lot and trying to convince the people around us that we were French. We sat down at a table outside the cafe and when the waiter came I said calmly, without missing a beat, "Bonjour, monsieur. Un cafe, s'il vous plait." He brought it out, all 3 ounces of it, and it tasted like success.

It wasn't a lot, but it was a bonne journee.