Letter From Paris
Paris Kiosque - May 1999 - Volume 6, Number 5
Copyright (c) 1999 Harriet Welty-Rochefort - Used with permission.
May is a wonderful month in France, a month of holidays in which the French
take as many "ponts" or "bridges" as they can to have the longest week ends
available. This year they're out of luck: only one of the May holidays
(there are four) is on a Monday or a Thursday this year. Too bad. Some
years the May holidays fall so conveniently that you wonder why anybody
bothers to go to work at all!
My favorite May holiday is May 1 which kind of kicks off the season. While
May 1 evokes Maypoles in the U.S. and a show of military might in Russia,
in France it is a day for people to offer each other lilies of the valley
(muguet) as porte bonheur (purveyors of happiness) and for unions to take
to the street in their traditional May Day celebration of this Fete de
Travail.
In regards to the giving of muguet, there are a few rules to observe: you
don't offer the lily of the valley before or after May 1 and you don't get
lazy and NOT offer it for whatever reason if you want to keep your in-laws
or other members of your family happy. Let me give you my experiences on
both these points: For some reason (perhaps because my bank account was
not in the red for a change!!) when I was at the bank on April 29, the
teller offered me a little bouquet of muguet which I accepted with
pleasure. I walked happily down the street with it to the bakery where the
boulang=E8re almost fainted.
"Why do you have it now?" she asked, pointing to my humble lily of the
valley. "It will bring bad luck," she continued, adding that "Someone
gave me muguet before May 1 one year and my mother-in-law went straight to
the hospital. No, no, you mustn't have it before", she told me, shaking her
head as if I had brought the evil eye into the boulangerie. Feeling
deflated and confused, I put my pretty-smelling bouquet in my newspaper on
the way home and then carefully put it in water where it waited, hidden
from the world, until May 1.
As I sit writing this in our country house an hour from Paris, I have three
bouquets in a pretty vase - one from my mother-in-law, one from my sister-
in -law, and one from my husband. They, of course, had bouquets from us and
my husband offered me a bouquet. It would have been unthinkable for us not
to have offered each other this little symbol of "bonheur". In fact, it
might have even brought bad luck! As for who sells muguet and where the
proceeds go, you find everyone out there on May 1 in front of their little
stands, from florists to ordinary men, women and children trying to pick up
a little extra money to Communists selling for the Party. Speaking of
political parties, the tradition on May 1 is for the trade unions to march
from the Place de la Republique to Nation. In recent years the extreme
right National Front has also taken to the streets on May 1 - to celebrate
the Fete of Joan of Arc in front of her gilded statue.
May is also the moment when people start thinking about how they are going
to look on the beaches in August. Since most everyone has put on a few
kilos from overeating in winter, there's a huge market for "produits
d'amaigrissement" (slimming products). In fact, I just read in this
morning's paper that all those "slimming creams" and "light" yoghurts and
"slim meals" represent a market of 10 billion French francs. Hey, I
thought all those French men and women were thin without working on it,
much less spending all that money. Foiled again! In fact, according to
the article I was reading, one out of four French men or women (but mostly
women) tried to lose weight during the last year.
I know some French women who seem to have their own techniques for
remaining slim.
Take the dinner we had on Friday night. Our guests were longtime French
friends of my husbands, a lovely couple, he is his sixties, she in her
forties, both of them slim and trim.
Now here's what I served them: an avocado stuffed with grapefruit and
shrimp served with a vinaigrette, followed by lotte a l'americaine
(monkfish with a tomato and wine sauce) and rice, a green salad, two
wonderful cheeses, a Brie and a chevre, and for dessert, strawberries and
raspberries accompanied by two cakes. A normal French meal. Our guests
ate little but I was particularly fascinated by the woman, who eats like so
many French women and gives us the answer to "how do they eat all that food
and not get fat". Now let's take a look at what she ate and drank and in
what quantities. She ate all the avocado (because it would have been
impolite not to), took a microscopic helping of lotte with hardly any
sauce and a spoonful of rice, a reasonable helping of salad, and a portion
of Brie about the size of three of my fingers. When we got to dessert, her
eyes lit up. "Oh, I love cakes," she exclaimed enthusiastically, looking
at the selection, a chocolate one and a cinnamon and orange one with
raisins. Ah, thought I, NOW she's going to go to town. Mais non. She
took Lilliputian helpings of both with a petite helping of the fruit and
that was it. Oh yes, she sipped the glass of red wine and didn't take a
refill. Hmmm..
Meanwhile back in the jungle, yours truly, having shopped for and made the
meal and being in the mood to make merry, felt entitled to eating and
drinking just a tad more of it than that. In fact, just watching this
sterling example of moderation inspired me to wolf down about three times
the lotte and cheese and dessert. We won't even mention the quantity of
wine consumed, which went beyond our friend's moderate glass. Guess which
one of us is slimmer? Oh well, there's always the yicky diet food route
and since the French are spending 10 billion francs on it, maybe I'll
either join them one of these days or try to practice my French friend's
admirable moderation.
Speaking of food (which is what one spends a lot of time speaking about in
France), here's a thumbs up to what the French call the "plat unique". In
my book, French Toast, I describe how French meals progress through courses
and how it is unthinkable not to serve an "entrée", something to begin the
meal with. The exception to this is the "plat unique". These are copious
dishes which incorporate meat and fish along with vegetables and sometimes
pasta. They range from the Alsatian backeofe (a mixture of three kinds of
meats with potatoes) to choucroute (also Alsatian) to couscous from
Algeria to cassoulet from the southwest and pot-au-feu, meat and
vegetables which cook in a broth which is eaten as the soup. I'm becoming
more and more a fan of these heartwarming, stomachwarming dishes which cook
slowly and give such pleasure to the palate. They're no more trouble to
make than a steak, aren't fattening (if eaten with moderation), and spare
you the trouble of thinking about what to serve as an entrée, my personal
"bete-noire".
If you're in Paris and on the metro, you may get a copy of a "new
newspaper" called "A Nous Paris". A weekly, it is distributed free in the
metro to a captive audience of 7 million bored Parisians only too happy to
have tips (in French naturellement) on what to see, where to shop, and
where to go as well as articles on such burning subjects as "Rendre la
Concorde aux pietons" (Give the Concorde back to the pedestrians), a
mind-boggling seemingly impossible concept I'd be the first to agree with.
Apparently the Mayor of Paris, Jean Tiberi, is on the lookout for a way to
gain favor with his constituents. and has hit upon the idea of turning the
Concorde into a vast carless area where pedestrians and cyclists at last
can maneuver without fear of being killed. Did he really say, as was
reported in the new weekly: "It's no longer up to Paris to adapt itself
to cars but for cars to adapt to the new aspirations of Parisians". Let's
hope he did, and that he meant it... At any rate, if the Concorde
pedestrian plan doesn't work out, he can always try to grapple with the
problem of dog doo on the sidewalks. Bon courage, Monsieur le Maire!
Harriet Welty-Rochefort, a bona fide Midwesterner from
Iowa, visited Paris for the first time while in
college. She became so completely enamored of
France that she stayed - and has been there ever since.
Married to a Frenchman and the mother of two
Franco-American boys, Harriet Welty-Rochefort writes
on business, lifestyle and travel for major U.S.
publications. Her book -
French Toast
- is a lighthearted look at
French manners and mores.
Writes Leslie Caron: French Toast includes the most delightful barbs at France's
subtle but deep-rooted codes of behaviour...I read the book on the EuroStar between
Paris and London and wished the train had not reached its top speed of 300 kph!
Reviewed in the Los Angeles Times on January 2, 1998, French Toast
is published in the U.S. by St. Martin's Press.
You may contact Harriet directly at
101676.467@compuserve.com.
Editor's Note:
Dear Readers, while our writers are always
delighted to hear and to receive comments, both about their columns in the The Paris Kiosque,
as well as your experiences in Paris,
they are unable to answer any requests
for travel information.
Thank you for your understanding.
