... how to eat like the French girl

Bonjour mes amies,

I think we will start off this post having just another little word about wine and food.

For starters, the French girl thinks a great deal differently about her food that the average North American does. In essence, she has a love affair with her food. In France, food is a topic on everyone's lips. The French love to eat their food, talk about their food and be totally immersed in their food. And pourquoi pas? It is certainly some of the best food in the world. 

I can attest to that having spent a never to be forgotten month eating my way around the country. And the best part, I lost weight while I was there! Imagine that.

So you would think then that the French should be a nation of overweight people with numerous health issues. After all, they tuck into cheese, cream, pastry, butter and chocolate all the time. But they are not, most especially the French girls. Now why is that?

The very fact that the French appreciate their food as much as they do means that they respect it. And while we are on the topic of food, let's talk about what their food is. Or, perhaps I should tell you what it is not.

It is not processed food, junk food, pre-packaged chemicals that have the life span of granite. Oh no my friends. What the French eat is real food. Glorious, delicious real food. My favourite way to describe what food should be is to say that if it did not grow from the ground or have a mommy and a daddy, then it is not food. 

We eat real food in our house, just like the French girl does. The only types of "pre-made" food you will find in my house are possibly a can of Habitant soup (read the label - it is all real food), cans of low sodium beans and tomatoes and I sometimes buy salad dressing but only Renees, again, read the label. We do not eat chemicals, we eat food. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. 

I want to explore in much greater depth not only what the French eat but HOW they eat it. That is a huge part of how they manage to eat what they do and be as healthy as they are.

For example. I was alone for dinner tonight. I decided that I wanted something fresh and light, yet substantial enough to be considered supper. Perhaps une salade.

I used fresh romaine lettuce, English cucumber, hot house tomatoes, black olives, goat cheese, dried cranberries, hard-boiled egg and sunflower seeds. The dressing was from Renee's - Mediterranean.  I arranged my salad on the plate to be as attractive as possible. After all, we eat with our eyes first, no? I have a friend called Donna who makes some of the best salads I have eaten. She always chooses wonderful ingredients, taking her time to be sure everything is just right.

Although I was eating alone, I still set the table in the dining room with a napkin, cutlery, a nice (small) glass of red wine and my companion for the evening, a wonderful book on Virginia Woolf's garden. It was not fancy but it did show that I was serious and respectful about spending time enjoying my food.

It took me 40 minutes to eat that plate of salad. The whole while I sipped slowly at my small glass of wine and enjoyed my book.  At the end I had a small piece of Brie cheese and then a square of chocolate. I was feeling very comfortable, not stuffed or over-full at all. Just right.

This is the type of chocolate that I eat, twice a day, after lunch and dinner. Just one square. I just let it slowly melt in my mouth and it signals to me that my meal is over.

We should also perhaps address the question of wine once again. The French consume vast quantities of wine, often with both lunch and dinner. However, they do not abuse it. They savour it. I very much enjoy a glass of wine with my meals but I certainly do not have wine every time I eat. Only once in a while. Whether you decide to have a small glass of wine with your meals is a personal decision for each of you. Remember another very key principle of French eating ... moderation in all things, wine included.

So that is how the French eat. You want to savour each and every bit of your food and taste how delicious it is. You want to allow it to linger in your mouth and chew it slowly. 

We are going to talk a lot more about this in the coming posts.

But for now, I will say au revoir, à demain. Goodbye, see you tomorrow.

... time for lunch

Bonjour mes amies,

If we are going to explore what makes a French girl tick so that we can claim the very best of her way of life for ourselves, we need to start with food.

Anyone who knows me knows I am passionate about good food. In this aspect, I am at one with the French girl. We do not like to eat rubbish.

So I was thinking about what I would want my post to be about today when I realized from the little growl in my tummy that it was time for le déjeuner.  I do not usually make a big fuss over lunch. There is usually some sort of leftover to be found in the fridge and I make my lunch from that. It was impressed upon me at a very early age that wasting food was not to be tolerated. That came from both my mother and my grandfather.

Today though, I would have to make something from scratch. After a quick look in the fridge I decided on une omelette.  I chopped up 5 Cremini mushrooms, grated a wee bit of Parmesan cheese and cracked two eggs into a bowl. I briefly cooked the mushrooms in a bit of butter over medium high heat to get them nice and toasty, transferred them to a bowl, added more butter to the pan and got it searing hot.

I poured in the eggs and moved the pan around quickly to set them. An omelet takes less than a minute to cook and I prefer mine on the soft side. In went the mushrooms and the cheese and I folded it up. 

You can see from this photo that it is browning. I do not really like that but I was taking the photos so it cooked a bit longer than I like.

It is a well know fact that we eat with our eyes first. It is therefore a wonderful thing to create for yourself a pleasant eating environment. Now I realize that if you work outside the home, your lunch space may be less than ideal. However, if you have the chance, at least sit down and enjoy your lunch, slowly, bite by bite.

For me today, I set the table in my dining room, poured myself a tiny glass of red wine and enjoyed my lunch. Now if you take a look at my glass, I might have 4 ounces in there at the most.  Red wine is very good for your heart and it took me 20 minutes to eat that omelet and sip that wee glass of wine.  This has tremendous benefits for those wishing to shed a few kilos, but more about that later. Please note that I am NOT suggesting that you consume wine with your lunch, it is simply something that I do occasionally but certainly not everyday. And yes, it is very French to do so.

I finished my lunch with 3/4 of a lovely ripe pear (I shared the other quarter with my two dogs), one square of chocolate and a small cup of coffee with cream. Probably 6 oz of coffee, no more.

I would say that my entire lunch time lasted about 35 minutes. My usual lunch companion is a book if I am eating alone but today the sun was shining and we have a bird feeder outside our dining room window so I watched the birds instead.

Learning to eat like a French girl is all about taking the time to truly appreciate good food, even if it is something as simple as my omelet.

Thanks so much for visiting with me. Adieu. 

... Bienvenue

Bonjour and welcome to my new blog about all things French girl....

I suppose I can actually claim to be a French girl as it is a part of my heritage. A part of my family is from the famous hexagon, namely the area around Marseilles, down in the south.

My mother was a lover of all things French.  She studied the culture and the history and passed on her love of all things French to me.

One of the greatest thrills of my life was to spend a month in France back in 2008. I can assure you, I did not want to go home. I would have been content to remain there the rest of my life. You see, it is a different sort of life there. 

I have tried to incorporate a lot of what I experienced in France into my daily life here in Canada.  Sometimes it is easy, sometimes it takes a bit of work. But it is always worth it.

What I want to do in this blog is to share some of those things with you.

French girls are famous for many things, namely, how well they look after themselves, their love of exquisite food and wine and the style with which they live their lives. We will explore all these things together so we can all seek out our inner French girl and live the French life.

So, I will say to you all, à tout à l'heure et adieu.