Caught up/Home-stay cookin'

I am finally caught up to the present. It feels pretty good. Now, since I don't have past events to talk about, I can write about whatever I want to.

Today, I am choosing to write about how French food is not really that good.

(Note: this does not include bread, pastries, or dessert crepes.)

Breakfast in France seems to be a contest regarding how much chocolate a person can eat before leaving the house. The cereal has chunks of chocolate in it, nutella (chocolate and hazelnut spread) is put on toast far more often than jam, and pain au chocolats (chocolate croissants) are commonplace. This morning, for example, I was eating a bowl of cereal when my host mom said to me, "Take a pain au chocolate. Do you want any toast with nutella?" As in I am supposed to eat all of these things every morning. My host mom has chewed me out a couple of times for not eating enough breakfast. Lucky for me, on weekdays by the time I have to wake up, everyone is out of the apartment. I usually eat a bowl of cereal or make toast, then grab something else to eat later when I am actually hungry again, that way she knows I, in fact, did eat enough for a family of four.

The bad thing about breakfast in France is that they TOTALLY eschew protein. I mean totally. No bacon. No eggs. Nothing remotely not sweet. Omelettes are for after noon or dinner. Quiche too.

Lunch here is pretty repetitive: ham and cheese sandwiches. Not that I dislike the ham and cheese sandwiches here. The cafeteria at my school sells them very cheap. They're all on baguettes too (yum). But lunch-type food, outside my cafeteria, is not cheap in Paris. You will see a cafe advertising for lunch at a fixed price of 17 euro. A $25 lunch? No thanks. Maybe if I don't plan to eat for the rest of the day. I have taken to, about once a week, taking the metro in between classes to a pizza place that sells by the slice. I don't even know what they call the kind of pizza I get (It's got what I think is spinach on it, but I could be wrong), but it is amazing. Nothing as good as what I could get in the US where I am spoiled by insanely frequent consumption of it, but it reminds me of home.

Dinner is interesting for me. I don't get meals served to me every night by my host mom (my housing contract is set up that way). So, most of the time, she doesn't cook for me (this is usually when her kids aren't here. When they're here I'm usually invited to join them). When she does cook for me, the results are mixed.

I hate tomatoes. I hate all fish that is not deep-fried by my father (except tuna). I am not the biggest fan of vegetables. I knew that, since I am intruding on someone's hospitality for 3 and a half months, I am going to have to deal with my pickiness and eat stuff that I usually wouldn't.

My first meal here was with just me and my host mom. She doesn't cook much from scratch (she does her vegetables, but the entrees are pretty much frozen stuff that you just toss in the oven. I don't mind this at all.) so when I got a nicely reheated chicken cordon bleu, some salad, and some rice I thought "Wow! great meal." Then there was the ratatouille. Sure it's a kids movie, but it is also a traditional French vegetable dish. I would describe it as an exotic vegetable medley. I took a heaping spoonful and had eaten almost all of it when my host mom grabbed my plate and put three more spoonfuls onto it (completely covering it). It took me an hour to finish it all!

My next obstacle is what I call, for lack of a better name, cold fish with skin on it and bones in it. Yes, I understand that the French love their seafood. I do not. So when all I got for dinner one night was half of a cold dead fish and some salad, I was irritable. I hid my emotions in the carbs that were provided. About three weeks later this fish dish reemerged. I stared down the smallest half I could find and managed to get through it without thinking too much about the fact that I was eating scales. I figured, "great, there's that over with. I won't have to deal with that for another 3 weeks."

Wrong. It was my dinner the next night. And guess what? Both nights my host mom nor her kids ate it. They all had pasta with cheese on it. I was PISSED. The next day was my first pilgrimage for pizza to remove the horrible memories.

The most recent offense was when I was served chicken pate that looked like canned cat food. Seriously. It probably tasted like it too (I've never eaten canned cat food...) I had just enough to be polite and thought that was the end of it. The next night, there was a dish of whole tomatoes stuffed with that liver stuff! No sir. Not this girl. I figured since I was eating a bunch of other vegetables, and since her kids didn't take one, I wasn't going to be forced to. I've eaten tomatoes in my salads here to be polite, but that was too far.

I have eaten some interesting things that did not make me mad though. I was taught how to eat steamed artichoke, and I even ate pasta with mussels in it! They were in the shells! They didn't really taste like anything though--just rubbery pasta.

Dessert here is very different than in the U.S. Here, I do know that some of my friends in homestays get served traditional dessert-y things, but almost everyone is offered either cheese or yogurt, or both. I get both. It's pretty good (especially since I essentially eat dessert for breakfast).

The biggest problem I have here is the lack of anything at all spicy! They are not into bold flavors. Sometimes at night when I am really hungry, I dream of enchiladas or sesame chicken from Egg Roll King. I never knew how much I'd miss mexican food! Oh well. Just a few more months then I can revel in all of the delicious American roast beef/cheeseburgers/pizza and eat all of the food I miss so dearly.

In another post I will talk about the food that I have had away from the apartment. I'm sure you can't wait.