Food culture in France

French gastronomy

Food culture in France

I could experience the daily food of the family when I stayed with French family.
My host family served breakfast and dinner.
Host mother was a working woman who came back home at 19:30
and the dinner started at 20:00.

She didn't have enough time
to cook, so during the weekday
she used frozen food
or cooked easy thing like pasta.

Just next door of our apartment,
there was a store called PICARD
who only sells frozen food.
It is like a convenience store.
They even sells frozen escargots!

More or less, this is the normal French dinner at home.
But on Sunday, she sometimes took longer time for cooking
and prepareed Pot-au-feu or Cassoulet, typical French home cuisine.

What I liked at the dinner, even though the food was simple,
I could drink red wine and they serve 3 different kinds of cheese every evening.
They change the plate when they serve cheese.
I found the importance of the cheese in the French people.

The wine was cheep one, costed only about 15 francs (300 JPY),
but I found the enjoyment having cheese with wine, during my stay.

In the morning, everybody left home different time,
so we eat bread or cereal by ourselves.

If you want to eat economically,
you shoud choose pre-fix course rather than a la carte.
Pre-fix course normally consists of appetizer, main dish and dessert.
There are usually several choices each.

For the appetizer, you can choose salads, soup, patty, escargot and so on.

For the main dish, you can choose meat (beef, pork, chicken, lamb, etc)
or fish (salmon, sea-bream, tuna, perch, etc)

For the dessert, you can choose, pudding,
burned pudding (Ameli liked it in the movie),
ice cream, cake (fruit tart, etc), fruit and so on.
You can also choose cheese instead of dessert.
This is very French!

I said economical,
but even the pre-fix course costs
at least 8 euros (1,000 JPY).
This is not cheep from the point of Japanese.

In Japane, we can choose many food
like Ramen (noodles), Gyudon (Beef rice bowl), etc, with very little money.
Japan is a paradise for the ordinary people.

You can eat snacks at cafe.
The typical foods are;
Sandwitch and
Clock Monsieur
(toast with ham and egg),

By the way,
the price of the coffee
is not always same
in the same cafe.
It depends on the seat.

The cheapest place is counter or standing place. There does't need a waiter.

Then, inside seat.

The highest is outside seat. I heard that there are 2 reasons.
Waiter has to walk longest distance,
and the cafe has to pay the fee to use the public road.
Before, I thought they set table on the street without permission.