My Life In France

Posted by Lynsie Watkins Thu, 14 Sep 2006 03:34:00 GMT

“My Life in France,” the most recent publication of the biography of Julia Child's life spent in France during the 1950s and early 60s, is a perfect way to begin to describe my love affair with Paris. much like Julia's, my life in France was, in fact, a single life in its own rite. I immersed myself in French culture for one year. I learned a different way to live, to eat, to drink, to see-however, most importantly, I allowed myself to change. By the time I was set to leave my new-found home, I felt more French than I did American. Perhaps that sounds strange, most assuredly for anyone who has never transplanted themselves into a new and different culture. However, to those of you who have had this experience, I do appreciate your empathy.

In essence, even though I had been cooking long before my arrival in France, I can say without a doubt that I learned to cook in France. Why? How? I learned to cook because for the first time in my life, I was introduced to cooking's foundation: real food. Every morning I stepped out of my apartment directly into one of the most favored open air markets in Paris: Le Marche Mouffetard. I watched the farmers and market men (as I called them) pull in at 5 am and begin unloading their trucks. I watched the natural cycle of fruit and vegetable availability in conjunction with the seasons. Everything was ripe, naturally sized (no state-fair pumpkins), and most of all-the taste of everything that I tried was different and better than anything I had ever found at my neighborhood grocery store in the U.S.

As a culture, we are so incredibly numb to the notion of local produce, local availability, even harvest. We are far removed from our farmers and our land. Our produce comes from Iowa, Argentina, Mexico, Madagascar. We never lull over the fact that our fruit is labeled with stickers that say Chile, Fiji, Canada. In France, this does not exist in the way that we know it. Why else are the French so tied to their food? Because they know quite intimately where their food comes from. Their carrots come from a farm next door to where they spent their childhood, their apples from the coast where their Grandmother lives. This intimate connection defies reason for us as Americans. Sure, Great Uncle John farms corn fields in Davenport, Iowa-but do we see his corn in our supermarkets? No, not in Virginia. Probably not even in Iowa. John's corn is sold to processing plants where it is turned into high fructose corn syrup, which is then added to our favorite soda or candy bar, thus evolving quite rapidly from natural food to, as Michael Pollan puts it, industrial food. Undoubtedly, John's corn goes to the Lance cookie and cracker factory, where it is processed and packaged by his cousin Jeff! The way I like to think about it, industrial food is anything that the average person would be unable to create in his/her own kitchen.

None of us have the ingredients or means to produce Snickers bars, Honey Bunches of Oats, Oreos. Hell, most of us can't even make a loaf of bread. What has happened to our culture? When did we lose this precious information? And why have the French maintained it? Industrial food does not only exist in the U.S. It does exist in France, too. I witnessed its use with my very own eyes when I lived with a host family for my first three months in Paris. For dinner, I ate trout that had been frozen in a plastic bag and subsequently boiled (or poached as they liked to put it) in its same protective pouch. To accompany the fish came hollandaise sauce of some kind, also having been boiled in a plastic bag, slit, and poured over my pulpy gray fish and haricots verts from an aluminum can.

To say that industrial food is strictly an American problem is harsh and untrue. I do not mean to poke my finger accusingly at the American public for our uneducated eating habits. I grew up in and am a part of this culture too, and I know why we do what we do. What I do hope to do is open our minds to the possibility that there is a way out. Currently in your very grocery store, approximately 40% of what is sold is industrial, meaning it has been processed using preservatives (partially hydrogenated oils) and has been sweetened using high fructose corn syrup. It has been prepared in huge, unappetizing batches, where the original recipe has been multiplied by 100. It is made by machines, it has trotted and wiggled along conveyor belts, and has sadly only seen the presence of human hands when inspected, for “quality control,” of course. And still, we marvel in this technological majesty. We visit the factories, we go on tours, we watch the PBS and Food Network specials, and still...we eat these products.

When Julia Child was asked to collaborate with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle on her most famous (and first) cookbook entitled “Mastering The Art of French Cooking,” she was refused by three publishing houses in the U.S. Who, they asked, would want to go to the store, locate ingredients "scattered" throughout the store, and return home only to spend hours slaving away in the kitchen when they could just as easily buy dehydrated and processed ingredients in a single box and prepare it in their crockpot or microwave, even, while they got along with their busy day? Who? More like What American? What Julia was experiencing at this time was the obvious shift away from real food that America was taking. While unhappy with it, Julia complied with this notion, which is why still today you can watch her shows or read her cookbooks and find companion recipes to her French ones, designed of course for crock-pots, pressure cookers, and microwaves. Julia was advising on equipment that she didn't even have in France! If you try hard enough, as I believe I do, you can even sense an annoyance in Julia's voice when she takes her aside to deal with those of the American public who, even though they could take time out of their busy schedules to watch her show, still refused to put forth the actual effort to create what it is they were learning about in the first place. The French weren't using these devices, because cooking was still about the food, and no compromise to the integrity of the food they ate would be made.

Once on my own in mon propre apart, I decided, sans cookbook, to allow inspiration to take hold. I prepared meals every night from scratch with food that I had purchased at the market that day. There was no “buying in bulk” Sam's Club visit for me. I purchased what I needed, and appropriately enough, what I could carry. Still today, when shopping at the grocery store in Charlottesville, Va, by myself, I carry a basket and not a cart. Important to note, also, is that grocery carts aren't as big in France as they are in the U.S. In some cases they are double in size in the U.S..

While my abilities as a cook improved, I began taking on more daunting delights. Before I knew it, with the fortunate help of friends and a few choice recipes, I was making bread, pie dough, custard, I even attempted yogurt! And do you want to know the truth? It wasn't as mysterious as my upbringing had urged me to believe, it was actually easy! All I needed was the proper instruction. I needed the methods, the tricks, the advice. Upon my return to the U.S., my creations only became more elaborate. With each new endeavor, I held to my original purpose and inspiration: research a dish or recipe until I traced it to its foundation, its roots. Use the best ingredients in their raw form. However, as fantastic as everything tasted, I was living in Northern Virginia, where the closest I came to an open air market was a Whole Foods. Upon learning of the installation of a Wegman's, it was all I could do to not march straight in and apply for a clerk's position just for the sake of being close to this semblance of a Parisian market. But the truth is that it wasn't a Parisian market. It was a grocery store parading around as a Parisian market. Still, I took what I could get. Then, I moved to Charlottesville.