Submitted by Coding Notes.
by Carmella Guiol
I never knew I felt a connection to the pressure cooker, until yesterday. I’m an ocean away from where I grew up, visiting my dad on the sailboat he calls home. Over our typical lunch of bread and cheese, we wondered what to do for dinner (in true European style, always thinking about our next meal). I suggested the stew; it was an easy meal, and it would feed us for a few days. We both agreed it would be a good way to use of some of the random vegetables we had floating around our kitchen.
Growing up, my father would make some incarnation of his famous “stew” at least once a week. Whatever vegetables were on hand got tossed in, a handsome amount of liquid to cover them, some meat or sausage thrown in for good measure, a dusting of herbs and salt, and that’s all there was to it. It is the perfect one-pot dish, one that my dad learned while sailing and having to cook in tiny galleys. Plus, it made this terrific racket, as if we had a steam engine chugging through our kitchen, or an airplane revving its motor on the runway. “Fasten your seatbelts, we are ready for take-off!”, it seemed to scream. My sister and I would dance around the kitchen with our hands covering our ears as it wailed plaintively for as long as my dad deemed necessary.
As kids, we were taught to eat what was in front of us with no complaints, though we always managed to find something in the stew that was not to our liking. “Why is there a leaf in my dinner?” my sister would ask, fishing out a bay leaf. “I don’t like these round things,” I would whine, lining up capers on the side of my plate. But it was the best way to get us to eat our vegetables and we usually went back for seconds, regardless of our protests. Today, I’m twenty-five and a veritable vegetable enthusiast. The stew is one of my favorite dishes, although I’ve never attempted to create it without my father by my side.
In the tiny kitchen aboard the boat, I set to work. I searched around the cupboards and in the depths of the fridge to see what I could salvage, understanding placidly that no matter what I did, it would be delicious. I found a few sturdy carrots, three old potatoes with shoots blossoming from the eyes, some limp celery, a lone leek, and several perfectly respectable onions. I cut them up and threw them into the pot. There were some dried herbs in a bag on the counter that he must have picked up at the market a few weeks ago: oregano gone to flower and a bunch of rosemary, both of which grow in wild abundance on the dry coastal hills nearby. I crushed a handful of each and sprinkled them on top of the growing mound. Then, I poured in some dry lentils and let my dad do the rest; the mechanics of the pressure cooker scare me and I never know how much liquid to put in.
I left on my jog just as my dad turned on the gas stove to start simmering the soup. I know exactly what came next; I’ve seen him do it a million times. While he waited for the vegetables to soften and the juices to mingle in the pot, he fried up the sausages in a skillet, being sure to cover his pan with a grease screen to avoid the inevitable splatter. In went a can of diced tomatoes, several cups of water, and a dash of red wine. Finally, the sizzling sausages were speared and stirred into the pot. When all that was said and done, he secured the lid tightly, turned up the heat, and went back to whatever he was doing while he waited for the magic to happen.
As I approached the glowing boat, I slowed my pace to a halt. In the dark night, the smell of onions and sausages wafted out to greet me, the familiar whistle of the pressure cooker floating out from the galley window – music to my ears! All of a sudden, I was eight years old again, dancing around our yellow tiled kitchen, being of no help at all while my dad put the finishing touches on our dinner.
Carmella Guiol is a community food activist and writer from Miami, Florida. Read her blog: renouncerejoice.blogspot.com.
by Binh Nguyen
RECIPE The gunmetal look of the sky opens the scene to this late fall afternoon. Soon after, snow rushes down outside the kitchen window as if fleeing from the incurable grayness of the clouds. In here I watch the fire on the stove waving its tiny tongues wildly—like some ghost intent on telling it all in the confessional stall of the blaze. —Or like a devilish coquette who sticks out her tongue, flutters it, as a way of saying hello. The flame keeps reaching its yellow -blue tips upward toward the bottom of the pot, tickling the thing, making the soup I’m now stirring with this ladle to boil in no time, which I then serve into a small bowl, adding a sprinkle of salt and pepper—a light kind of supper for this type of weather.
Binh Nguyen studied literature and creative writing with the poet Jim Crenner at Hobart College, where he founded and edited SCRY! A Nexus of Politics and the Arts. In 2006, Binh was enrolled in an MFA poetry workshop in New York City but was in a near-death accident which prevented him from completing the degree. He now lives in San Diego.
CULINARY LUMINARIES: Joseph Baum, Restaurant Impresario
THE NEW SCHOOL | http://www.newschool.edu
Mention the name of Joe Baum (1920-1998), and the restaurants that come to mind—Windows On The World, the Four Seasons, la Fonda Del Sol—tell you he was a man of big dreams. It took a huge personality and force of will to execute some of the most extravagant restaurant projects ever seen. Joe Baum had a tenacious attention to detail and a flair for the spectacular, with the ability to pull people together to solve seemingly insurmountable obstacles. A true visionary in the spirit of those previously honored as Culinary Luminaries: James Beard, Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher, and Craig Claiborne. Meet the people that knew and worked with Joseph Baum and learn how he changed the industry.
THE NEW SCHOOL FOR GENERAL STUDIES |http://www.newschool.edu/generalstudies
Participants include: Milton Glaser, Graphic and Interior Designer on many projects for Joseph Baum.
– Hugh Hardy, Principal and Founder of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, LLC.
– Michael Whiteman, President of Joseph Baum and Michael Whiteman Company.
– Kevin Zraly, founder of Windows on the World Wine School and author of Kevin Zralys American Wine Guide.
Moderated by William Grimes, author of Appetite City, former New York Times restaurant critic
Sponsored by the Food Studies program |http://www.newschool.edu/ce/foodstudies
* Location: Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall. 03/16/2010 6:00 p.m.
THE NEW SCHOOL | http://www.newschool.edu
Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, master food writer, worked with many American food celebrities, including Julia Child, James Beard, and Alice Waters. In the year of the centennial of her birth, a panel of distinguished guests celebrate her life. http://www.newschool.edu/writing
Panelists include Amanda Hesser, editor, New York Times and author of the foreword to M.F.K. Fisher Among the Pots and Pans: Celebrating Her Kitchens; Judith Jones, author of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food; Joan Reardon, author of M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, and Alice Waters: Celebrating the Pleasures of the Table; Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher, and M.F.K. Fisher Among the Pots and Pans: Celebrating Her Kitchens; and Kennedy Golden, Associate Dean, Mills College, and the daughter of M.F.K. Fisher. Andrew F. Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, moderates.
Visit http://www.newschool.edu for more information.
*Location: Wollman Hall, Eugene Lang Building, 65 West 11th Street.
Monday, September 22, 2008 6:00 p.m.
The New School for Public Engagement is a division of The New School, a university in New York City offering distinguished degree, certificate, and continuing education programs in art and design, liberal arts, management and policy, and the performing arts. | http://www.newschool.edu/public-engagement
Called the nations preeminent food journalist, Mississippi-born Craig Claiborne trained in Switzerland as a chef on the GI bill after World War II. On his return to the United States, he began writing articles for Gourmet and became an editor at the magazine. His career skyrocketed when The New York Times hired him as its first food columnist in 1957. Claiborne’s columns, reviews and cookbooks introduced Americans to a wide range of international and ethnic food. Other newspapers followed The New York Timess lead, and soon a cadre of authoritative newspaper food writers helped attune millions of Americans to the finer points of good food and cooking.
Our panel explores Claiborne’s life, work, and his seminal influence on food journalism in America. With Molly ONeill, former New York Times columnist, and author of the New York Cookbook; Betty Fussell, author of The Story of Corn and Raising Steaks; Anne Mendelson, author of Stand Facing the Stove, and Milk: the Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages, and a contributing editor to Gourmet; David Leite, publisher/editor-in-chief, Leite’s Culinaria, and author of The New Portuguese Table; John T. Edge, Director, Southern Foodways Alliance, University of Mississippi, contributing editor, Gourmet, author of Southern Belly. The panel will be moderated by Andrew F. Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, and Food Studies professor.
Sponsored by the Food Studies Program at The New School |http://www.newschool.edu/ce/foodstudies
* Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor. 06/11/2009, 6:00 p.m.
The New School for Public Engagement is a division of The New School, a university in New York City offering distinguished degree, certificate, and continuing education programs in art and design, liberal arts, management and policy, and the performing arts. THE NEW SCHOOL FOR PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT | http://www.newschool.edu/public-engagement
2012 ASFS/AFHVS/SAFN Conference: Global Gateways and Local Connections: Cities, Agriculture, and the Future of Food Systems
Keynote Address: Marion Nestle – “The 2012 Farm Bill: A Case Study in the Intersection of Agriculture, Food, Culture, and Public Health”
Food Studies | http://www.newschool.edu/ce/foodstudies
The Inquisitive Eater (New School Food) | http://www.inquisitiveeater.com
Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, which she chaired from 1998 to 2003. She is also Professor of Sociology at NYU and Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H in public health nutrition from UC Berkeley. She is the author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health; Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety; What to Eat; and, most recently, Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics (with Malden Nesheim). She has also written two books about the pet food industry. She writes the Food Matters column for the San Francisco Chronicle, blogs daily (almost) at http://www.foodpolitics.com and twitters @marionnestle.com
Location: Tishman Auditorium, Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall
Thursday, June 21st, 2012 5:30pm – 6:30pm
The Food Studies program at The New School in New York City draws on a range of disciplines to explore the connections between food and the environment, politics, history, and culture. Food Studies |http://www.newschool.edu/ce/foodstudies
As public debate about childhood obesity rages, the complex relationship between children and food is in danger of being obscured by sound bites. This panel explores the importance of school meals, new approaches to children’s eating and nutrition, and the political and cultural issues that influence school meal plans.
The Inquisitive Eater (New School Food) | http://www.inquisitiveeater.com
Panelists include Lynn Fredericks, founder of FamilyCook Productions; Lisa Sasson, nutrition consultant for Nickelodeon and two children’s cookbooks; Stefania Patinella, Director of Food and Nutrition Programs at The Children’s Aid Society; Janet Poppendieck, Hunter College professor and author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America; and Phil Gutensohn, Executive Director of The International Culinary Center’s Future Cooks Initiative.
Moderated by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, assistant professor of education studies at Eugene Lang College.
THE NEW SCHOOL FOR PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT |http://www.newschool.edu/public-engagement
Sponsored by the Food Studies program of The New School for Public Engagement.
by Erin Eisele
One of the most recognizable and symbolic phrases ever attributed to royalty could be Queen Marie Antoinette’s infamous quote, “Let them eat cake.” Although there is no historical record of these words having ever been uttered by the Queen, the quotation is claimed to have been voiced in response to the widespread famine under the reign of her husband, King Louis XVI. Bread, a staple for the peasant population, was scarce at this time in France due to a countrywide grain shortage, among other injustices. As the popular story goes, when alerted that the peasants had no bread, Marie Antoinette replied, “”Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.” This translates into “Let them eat cake,” as “brioche” is a bread made with eggs and butter. During famine, finding any food, let alone eggs and butter to make brioche, is an outlandish notion. “Let them eat cake,” whether truly spoken or not, serves to demonstrate the obliviousness and ignorance of the French monarchy to the peoples’ plight during that time. Marie Antoinette, in particular, became a symbol for the excess and overconsumption of the nobility while the poor suffered under the monarchy’s regime.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the wanton extravagance of the 18th century monarchy splashes across the big screen in Sofia Coppola’s loose adaptation of Marie Antoinette’s life in her 2006 film, “Marie Antoinette.” Coppola’s Hollywood treatment of the French Revolution is more about style than substance, with lavish French pastries featuring prominently on the Versailles set. Marie Antoinette unabashedly pops beautifully made bon bons while she spends thriftlessly on haute couture gowns, shoes, and jewels. These pastries are the picture of sweet perfection, and are enjoyed immensely by Marie Antoinette while people go hungry outside of the gates of Versailles.
The language Coppola chooses to tell the story of the rise and fall of the notorious teenage bride is akin to a music-video style format. With this audiovisual design, Coppola captures the fantastic corruption and excess of the French nobility of that time with a modern approach. Antoinette’s outrageous sense of style, rebelliousness, promiscuity, and couture sweet tooth are presented larger-than-life for the viewing audience to indulge in. Food, boutique pastry creations in particular, feature in the film as metaphors for sexuality, extravagance, and materiality. Coppola uses the colorful, lavish creations from the famous French luxury cakes and pastries brand Ladureè. While tickling the fancy of viewers, these pastries make a statement on the privileged life of Antoinette and the French nobility, as well as the excess of contemporary Western society and material culture.
One of the film’s key scenes with the use of food is the “I Want Candy” clip. Set inside the Queen’s extravagant dressing room in Versailles, Marie Antoinette and her ladies-in-waiting prepare for a grande fête for later that evening, picking garments, trying on jewels, getting their hair done, playing cards, and eating sweets. Accompanied by a re-make of the popular song “I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow, the scene acts as an entertaining yet voyeuristic pause in the narrative of the film. Opening with the recognizable “Bo Diddley” drumbeat and guitar riff of “I Want Candy,” the camera sweeps across a line-up of designer high-heels, one pair after the other of jewel-toned and outrageously embellished shoes. Next, beautiful hand-embroidered fans and gorgeous fabrics tantalize the ladies, as they sit tapping their heels to the rhythmic beat of “I Want Candy.” Antoinette is flanked by her “girls,” and while checking out the merchandise and eating a bon-bon she exclaims about the merchandise, “Oh, it’s like candy!” Cue the pastry porn. A close-up of a Laudre confection echoing the same designer attention to detail as the shoes, fans, and clothing appears on the screen. To the beat of the music, champagne pops open and spills over the tops of flutes, as the girls swig and nosh, giggling amongst themselves while playing cards. The scene culminates with Antoinette’s hair-do for the party, a ridiculous up-do that is as tall as her husband King Louis XVI, with ringlets, curls, ribbons and bows symbolizing the apparent excess of the Queen who seems not to notice the plight of her subjects outside the gates of Versailles. “It’s not too much, is it?” she asks her fabulous hairdresser.
Coppola uses modern music video filming techniques in this “I Want Candy” clip, such as rhythmic cross-cutting, contrasting long shots and close-ups, and unusual shots and camera angles. This language, accompanied by the song, immediately signifies to the viewer that this sequence is akin to a promotional piece to sell the decadent goods (the pastries, shoes, jewels, the lifestyle of the rich and famous) to the characters as well as the audience. Layers of pastel and jewel tone colors, varying textures, patterns, lighting, and sound construct the richness and decadence in this scene. The sweeping shots give the impression of a hand-held camera, used often in music videos, and this motion continues to build and create excitement throughout the scene with Coppola’s use of accelerated montage. Shoes and pastries flash across the screen in quick succession, in time to the rhythm of the music. These shots are reminiscent of the pages of a Vogue magazine, or a Playboy, except shoes and cakes are titillating the audience, not women. Women are the main consumers of the goods in this scene, which is a shift in power and gender role reversal. In fact, the men in this scene are homosexual. Antoinette’s hairdresser marches in fuchsia shoes to the “I Want Candy” beat, coming to do the Queen’s hair. He is her trusted confidant to take charge of the important duty of her hair, and she air kisses him with gratitude after he’s finished.
The Ladureè pastries enter this clip center stage with a provocative close-up early on. The camera shoots still from above, down onto an over-embellished, lavishly decorated, perfectly arranged pastry atop a fine china plate surrounded by pastel almonds, golden accents, and fresh flower petals. Pastries are given grand attention throughout the scene, in almost every shot as a close-up or part of the interspersed action shots. The scene closes with an anonymous lady-in-waiting biting into a hard-shelled cake with reckless abandon, then finally a close-up of a pastry dish with open-sliced strawberries and powder sugar-dusted ladyfingers flanking a pink mound of mousse topped with a raspberry.
The “food” looks more like the shoes, jewels, fans, and fabric than anything edible. Close-up pornographic pastry shots are interspersed with action shots of Antoinette and her ladies-in-waiting devouring the sweets. Other erotic shots and sounds include erect champagne bottles, moans of gastronomic pleasure, “cum shots” with remnants of cream on a cheek, and overflowing bubbly. Short action-shot clips are placed in between the long-and-short still shots of the “merchandise.” Champagne, which Antoinette is reputed to have a special affinity for, flows endlessly and the women drink with reckless abandon while they play cards and try on jeweled necklaces, which could be seen as foreshadowing to the “Diamond Necklace” scandal that eventually brings the Queen to her demise and unofficially signaled the start of the French Revolution.
The choice of songs is clear—Antoinette wants “candy.” The denotation of “candy” is a sweet treat usually consumed and desired by children. In pop culture, the word “candy” the connotation of “candy” is something to satisfy one’s desire, not need. Whether the desire is food, booze, sex, fashion, the word is generally used to express gluttony of some sort. For Antoinette, “candy” is shoes, “candy” is clothing, jewelry, fans, fabrics, champagne, big hair, and haute macaroons from a famous French bakery. Antoinette wants all of the candy. Coppola uses the pop song and its cultural connotation of “candy” to communicate ideas about Marie Antoinette and her ladies-in-waiting, as well as the larger problems of the French monarchy leading up to the Revolution of 1789. Yet the cultural connotations of “candy” can also be applied to Western pop culture and the modern-day obsession with food as fashion. The “candy”/”cake” that Antoinette actually consumes is fetishized and elevated to the status of the haute couture shoes.
In the terminology of semiotics, as extensively studied and discussed by Roland Barthes, the sign in this clip is the “candy,” communicated through the medium of music video filmmaking technique, and the signifier is the wanton extravagance of the French monarchy under King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette’s reign. The popular symbolic message attributed to Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat cake” is embodied in this scene, with Ladurée confections an obvious metaphor to the sugary-sweet life of privilege of the Queen. But Coppola uses a medium that also signifies the obsession our contemporary culture has with gastronomy.
The material culture of Western society is emblazoned in the subtext of this film. Food becomes a part of this material culture in Coppola’s adaptation of the life of Marie Antoinette. The budget for the film is apparent in the beautiful set, costume, and food design. Food plays a major role in this film, certainly at banquets and parties, but also in Antoinette’s more intimate moments of solitude. While lying in a room, having her toes painted, Marie Antoinette is surrounded by lavish cakes that that rise around her like totems. Her expression is listless and bored, and the cakes do nothing to delight her. They are plastic. Antoinette, dressed in her extravagant garb, looks very much like a confection herself. The lines of materiality are blurred, as in the “I Want Candy” scene of cake and shoes, and reflect a discourse of materiality and consumption in contemporary culture and society. Marie Antoinette could be Paris Hilton, or another real or invented socialite, heading to the Upper East Side to grab a dozen cinnamon-raisin macaron from the Maison de Ladurée. Coppola capitalizes on the fantasy and spectacle of modern-day socialites to tell the story of Marie Antoinette.
Furthermore, the 149-year old haute house of macarons, Ladureè is an interesting choice for the desserts featured in the film. Right away, there is distinction in this choice, distinction because Ladureè caters to a middle-upper social class in France and in the US. The average viewer has not or will not ever eat a macaron from Ladurée, in fact they may even confuse macaron with the coconut and evaporated milk “macaroon.” But viewers can experience the thrill of pastry porn and the nobility who consume them by watching this film. Similarly, in contemporary culture, many viewers who watch cooking shows never actually make the recipes featured on a particular show, which is a curious phenomenon.
“Marie Antoinette” can without a doubt be considered as representative of pop culture because of its music video film techniques, spectacle, fantasy, eroticism, and play on the current culture’s obsession with food as fashion and fashion as food. “Marie Antoinette” is also an especially enticing act of voyeurism because no one alive has seen or experienced life at Versailles, and this representation taps into the recesses of the imagination with stunning eye candy. The plight of the people is secondary to the music video treatment of the French Revolution and the haute couture style of the people of Versailles, mainly the scandalous beauty, Marie Antoinette. With political disregard and/or ignorance for the disadvantaged classes of society around the world, perhaps the 21st century version of the infamous phrase, “Let them eat cake,” would be “Let them eat macaron.”
Erin Eisele is a budding gastronome studying food culture and communications at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in northern Italy. She’ll graduate with a Masters degree in November, 2012.
by Mandy Beem-Miller
French Kids Eat Everything is a journey: part memoir, part research analysis, with a touch of “self help” mixed in, following author Karen Le Billion and her family as they relocate to France. The one-year experiment begins with a self-admitted romantic vision of French life and a legitimate desire to expose her young family to a new cultural experience. But, it quickly becomes apparent that fresh baguettes and butter -while enticing even to her young daughters, is not solely what the French experience is made of. Vacationing is not the same as living in her French husband’s quaint seaside home town. The reality sets in when the children are enrolled in school. Seven year old Sophie and three-year old Claire are faced with an entirely new set of standards in their French classrooms, the most challenging of which involve an unspoken list of food rules. Starting as early as pre-school, the French, both at home and in the classroom, spend a great deal of time and effort dedicated to ensuring young people develop healthy eating habits, in addition to proper manners surrounding meal times. As Le Billion tells us, “The French think about healthy eating habits the way North American parents think about toilet training or reading.” The result is, the author noted in her year abroad, a society in which even the youngest citizens recognize the importance of eating well. The underlying concept of the French food education model stems from an adamant respect for food. Respect not just for the ingredients, but for the mealtimes themselves.
As Le Billion tells us, “The French think about healthy eating habits the way North American parents think about toilet training or reading.”
Le Billion’s own two children are, much to the chagrin of her French husband and his family, particularly picky eaters. While this type of behavior is quite common among American children, their finicky eating habits are not well received in France. In addition to being expected to eat whatever is put in front of them, the girls are faced with new meal-time etiquette. At social dinners with their parents they are expected to sit through long meals. In school the many snack times often afforded American children, are unheard of in their new country, but for one late afternoon gouter, usually consisting of fresh fruit. This seemingly stringent new policy is not a welcome challenge, for either Le Billion to enforce or her daughters to follow. As the mother herself confesses, one way to ensure the girls were getting enough calories was to supplement their meals (and refusal of certain healthier foods) with mid morning, mid afternoon, late afternoon and bedtime snacks. Before coming to France there was lots of “short order cooking” to please her daughters, and very little, if any, of the “gentle authority” Le Billion observes in France, at getting the kids to eat the items they were refusing.
The distance from her comfort zone allows Le Billion a fresh perspective, and with new eyes she begins to re-examine the relationship her own family has with food. Ultimately she realizes that beyond being unacceptable for cultural reasons in France, the eating habits they have become accustomed to are detrimental to the health of her family. Snacking, in place of being expected to eat what was on their plates at meal times, was only giving the girls an opportunity to fill up on less healthy foods. Le Billion jokes that before their year in France, Gold Fish Crackers were considered a food group in her family. More broadly, she surmises, some of these behaviors are likely contributing factors to the obesity crisis we as a nation face in the US.
In concert with the inclusive French education model, the Le Billion and her husband are determined to “reeducate” their children, French style. Accordingly, the family embraces a set of “French food rules” constructed by Le Billion herself, attempting to qualify and quantify the many universally accepted French cultural norms. With much protest from Claire and Sophie, Le Billion attempts to adopt this new way of eating. She swears off short order cooking for her fussy eaters (the kids will eat what the adults eat), she puts a kibosh on the incessant snacking, and she attempts to enjoy first cooking, and then eating, the dinner meal, as a family, every night.
In the meantime, Le Billion comes to terms with her own particular eating habits and how these behaviors affect her children. Before her French experiment, she tells us, she too had many foods she refused to eat, she also snacked between meals and rewarded her children with sweets for good behavior. Likely in an effort to avoid a condescending tone when harping on all of the “bad American habits” she reminds the reader that she, too, is guilty on all accounts. The self-deprecation becomes tiring, even coming off somewhat fabricated, but ultimately does not detract from the underlying message: quit snacking so much, eating so fast, refusing to try new things, eating alone, and missing family dinners because we “just don’t have the time.” We can always make time, we just have to prioritize.
We learn from Le Billion’s book it is not common for the French to snack, or eat meals alone. They generally don’t eat in their cars or on the train, or drink coffees on the street. The families in the Le Billion’s adopted village eat long meals together, at both lunch and dinner, and their kids join them and eat everything on their plates. There are no specials meals for the youngsters or kids who will only eat pasta or cheese. But the French work hard at achieving this. As humans we all have a penchant for the salty, the sweet, the fatty. But in France, they start from a young age, instilling a few basic tools to help navigate the food world. The official food guide for the country warns against snaking, and snack food ads on French TV come along with banners warning against eating between meals. The French emphasize restraint. Simplicity. Enjoyment. The children are encouraged to try everything and given no alternative options. Additionally, they get support- from school, from home, from society- to enjoy meal times. To savor their food. To slow down and just eat. The average lunch period in American schools is 30 minutes. In France, it’s a full hour, sometimes more.
Though Le Billion is met with resistance from her children at every turn, the girls do eventually slowly become more open to vegetables and trying new foods. With some parental enforcement, the kids learn to sit through family dinners together, and even enjoy this new activity. The book is encouraging: here is a “regular” North American family able to alter their bad food habits: couldn’t we all learn from them?
Perhaps with an altered view of food, and consumption, we could steer ourselves away from the cliff, shrink our collectively expanding waistlines.
We hear about the obesity crisis a lot these days. But maybe we don’t need to create laws taxing sugary beverages or banning particularly unhealthy oils, as some health advocates are pushing for. Perhaps with an altered view of food, and consumption, we could steer ourselves away from the cliff, shrink our collectively expanding waistlines. Food behaviors, like other good and bad habits, are learned. We do have some modicum of control over what our kids do (and don’t do), will and won’t eat. Still, as the author herself admits, the French “rules” do not always translate well back home. Short of some type of cultural revolution, complete with education reform and the restructuring of the American work/school schedules to include time for longer French style lunch break, many of the French food rules become difficult to comply with. But Le Billion makes it clear: there is an art to raising healthy eaters, and you can never start too soon. Our nation’s children are becoming increasingly overweight and French children are not. In 2008, the CDC reported that more then one third of American children are obese, a number that has more then tripled in the last three decades. These troubling statistics are inspiring the re-introduction of scratch cooking in many school districts, a Farm to School movement, and legislation like the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act, which aims to improve the quality of the National School Lunch Program. Still, what Le Billion’s book reminds us is that the food education of our children needs to be comprehensive. It must start at home, around our own kitchen tables.
If, like myself, you too have fantasies of living abroad, French Kids Eat Everything may revitalize your own dreams of becoming an expat. Along with the author and her family, you may picture yourself eating fresh warm baguettes with butter and mussels caught that day and bathed in little more then a crisp white wine. At the same time it could make you think twice about this romantic notion , exposed to the possible isolation of a big move. Though the book is centered on kids and nutrition, the take away is something more. At the core it discusses is “mindful eating”- a practice that both the author, myself, and undeniably many other Americans do not always adhere to. While the book, in title and content, will undoubtedly appeal to parents of young children, the message is ultimately universal: it’s hard to deny that we could all benefit from snacking less and eating together more, essentially practicing the ingrained cultural idiom, long one of the stalwarts of French culture, of enjoying, savoring, and truly appreciating the food we eat. In this fast paced world sometimes a good meal is the best way to slow down. And I for one, am OK with that.
Mandy Beem-Miller is a recent graduate of The New School where she took classes in the Food Studies Program as well as several in the Writing Program.