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| Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ wondering what he should have in his packed lunch |
Not since Harold stood with both eyes looking out over the English Channel in October 1066 has a French invasion been so fearfully anticipated.
I was thinking this yesterday as I stood in front of a selection of pates and cold meats in Tesco, wondering what to buy for our French exchange student who arrives tomorrow. As I stood there, deliberating over a packet of Brussels pate and wondering if he’d mind that it wasn’t from France, I was joined by a friend of mine who is also having a French boy to stay and was therefore looking equally stressed. We both had croissants in our trolleys.
It’s a dilemma. Do I try and give the young lad some traditional British fare, so that he is immersed in our culture and heritage, or buy some French treats to make him feel at home? A bit of both, I think. Hence I’m cooking a beef stew and dumplings for his first meal tomorrow night but have bought him his favourite chorizo sausage for his packed lunches (though it’s Spanish, which kind of muddies the water.)
The packed lunch saga has been my main worry, truth be told. Rory, for the last few years, has been allowed into town at lunchtime so his midday meal is a Greggs’ steak bake or a bag of chips. But the French students will be on trips to Cambridge and London so I have to supply a pack-up. It took me an hour today to hunt out a Tupperware box; twice as long to find the corresponding lid. I’ve bought Walkers crisps in every variety plus some traditional British treats, namely Club biscuits and KitKats but then went off on a tangent picking up Port Salut and Boursin cheeses.
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| Maybe he’d like a chip pizza like this one we had in the Dordogne in 2010. |
I may just open the fridge, point, and let him choose. Let’s face it, there will be a considerable amount of pointing going on unless Jean Pierre speaks good English. By the way, Jean Pierre is his nom-de-plume (wow, did you see what I did there? Even thinking in French now). As I mentioned in a previous post, The French are Coming, I don’t want him googling himself and becoming anxious about his host family.
I daren’t tell JP I studied French at A level. That might lead him to think I’m able to speak the lingo when, in fact, my spoken French is pitiful. Give me a copy of Voltaire’s Candide and I’ll make a decent fist of summarising the story, but ask me to use verbs and string a sentence together and I’m scuppered. I was always a bit of a noun girl: liked to memorise the words in my vocabulary book. I remember ‘le mouchoir’ is a hankie and ‘le parapluie’ is an umbrella but ask me to say, “I have lost my hankie; maybe it’s where I left my umbrella” and a long silence will ensue.
Having said that, I was quite proud of myself last night watching University Challenge. Jeremy Paxman asked the following question:
“Putting the English preposition ‘in’ into the French word for ‘an inn’ gives the name for which fruit, eaten as a vegetable?”
Both Manchester and Newcastle University contestants said, ‘pineapple’ and ‘tomato’ respectively, but I shouted out ‘aubergine’ and was correct because I knew the French word for an inn is ‘une auberge’.
I may try and tell this story to JP tomorrow evening but, I fear, it may lose something in translation.
He's coming over to perfect his English too, don't forget. I'll never forget the trip I made to see my French penfriend and spent 2 weeks speaking English because they all wanted to practice their English and I was way too lazy to object. My parents were furious.
You'll certainly get him converted to fresh British bread, my boys absolutely love the stuff.
I have a feeling Rory may be like that on the reciprocal visit: his verbal French is dodgy too!
I decided I wouldn't buy baguettes but have our favourite white squashy rolls from our local baker, but may get some bog standard white sliced loaves from supermarket for a special treat then!
Definitely make him eat British – if only because he'll probably turn his nose up at a Tescos croissant… Not exactly the same is it, after all?
My french exchange was called Marine Hazard. Honestly.
And if she googles herself, am sure she'll enjoy your blog.
Of course, if she googles herself she'll have to wade through pages and pages about off-shore reefs and the The International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code* before she finds your blog, but you never know, she might get lucky…
*That's a real thing – I just googled my french exchange.
You are a wise woman, indeed!
I did buy Raymond Blanc's Finest croissants – he says on the packet they are the best he's tasted outside his own kitchen. So if JP complains, I shall summon Raymond, tout de suite 😉
Bonjour, Marine! Comment ca va?
I know it's rude to watch listen in but that exchange (see what 'I' did there!) has had me in stitches 🙂
Very clever that woman. Glad to have amused. Can't take any credit for Marine of course.
It's the white bread from Sainsbury's they love, the farmhouse, etc., not so much the Mother's Pride.
OOh right, I've got specifics now! May have to buy an assortment and get JP to test them out.
Just ask him how the economy is doing and how his credit rating is. That should kill conversation stone dead and put him off all types of food.
Et voila……sorted.
x
I think that goes beyond my grasp of the language but I'll give it a try! We are a family fond of charades, however, so you never know…
(ps – is this you again, Sally, having trouble signing in??)
I did French A level too? DId you have Mrs Johnson? I loved her. It reminds me of the text book (O level I think) with the story about "le sanglier" (wild boar) and do you know, I have never been able to find a place for it when conversing to Parisian taxi drivers and hotel people.
I did have Mrs Johnson. She used to have a French evening at her house, serving frogs' legs: tasted like chicken.
Now I know what the word is for a wild boar I shall impress our young visitor. In fact, I shall make a point of trying to shoe-horn it in sometime this week.
Do hope you have Wii for your young Frenchman when he arrives. Apparently a refusal offends.
Think about it.
Oui, we 'ave Wii.
I, for one, cannot wait to read the report once he gets there. I realize he's French and therefore has different gastronomic standards and all, but my experience with teenage boys of a variety of nationalities is that they eat pretty much everything – and quickly. I believe it will all go swimmingly.
The voice of reason. Thank you, I shall calm myself and just shovel all food his way.
I think you should have 'Allo 'Allo in constant reel on the tv and greet him in berets – after all you know how famous the French are for their sense of humour!!! On the upside he's a young lad..he will eat 30 packets of crisps an hour, anything that looks like a biscuit and well, the entire contents of your fridge really 🙂
I bought a value 24 pack of Walkers crisps but that's not going to last long, at the rate you mention. May need to go on regular Tesco/Sainsburys runs to stock up.
Sanglier tastes like stringy roast pork. It's all in the gravy, oops, I mean sauce.
So some years back, we had a charming young French kid stay with us, and his cousin stayed with friends of ours. They adored: all the different varieties of American chips (crisps), our canned and frozen juices, esp. frozen orange juice, fresh orange juice as well, milk shakes that I made in the blender, anything grilled outside, birthday cakes with real butter cream frosting which to my shock was nothing like French buttercream. They loved big slices of ripe watermelon. They loved our shrimp cocktails. They were teenage boys, they ate everything.
Aubergine– well done!
It's bloody freezing outside so he can think again if he wants things 'grilled outside' and 'ripe watermelon'
(If I do him a pork chop I could pretend it's wild boar, get my sanglier word in and win the bet with Expat Mum!)
Ha ha ha. There you go. And then you could do your Eddie Izzard impersonation whereby he manages to say "Le souris est sous la table" at every opportunity. (And just pray it isn't true.) In fact you can find that on You Tube and run it when he gets tired of "Allo allo".
Oh, this is turning into a bloggers' collective effort if ever there was one.
I love that Eddie Izzard routine. In fact I was going to have 'le souris est sous la table' or 'le singe est dans l'arbre' as my title but wasn't sure if people would know what I was on about! So pleased my cousin is on the same wavelength!
I'm loving all the comments, it's been such a giggle.
You'll do fine. Be yourselves — you sound like a wonderfully entertaining family anyway and food in Europe is so internationalised these days anyway that he probably eats much the same thing in France… It wouldn't have been like that 20 years ago, I guess, but I always get pretty disappointed by how uniform supermarket fare is (except that ours here in Cyprus are so poor compared with what you can find in terms of local and fresh stuff on the Continent). I'm sure he'll have a great time, and go home with plenty of stories whatever you give him.
Excellent point, Asproulla. Whenever we've been to France lately it has been an international cuisine and, you're right, the supermarkets are very similar.
Picking him up this afternoon and looking forward to seeing him. He's never left France before so want to make his stay in England as fun and relaxed as possible.
(but the blogging food banter is very entertaining, I must say)
I am pretty sure Jean-Pierre will not be expecting a chip pizza!! Just feed him what you normally eat, "full exposure" to a new country is fun! Bonne chance! 🙂
No chip pizza? I thought it would remind him of home hee hee.
I've been such a clucking hen the last few days, getting his room ready etc, it's like having another son.
Good luck! I think you are being so nice buying him things to make him feel at home. My French exchange involved being given lunchboxes filled with bizarre stuff like jars of babyfood fruit puree. As much as I had fun, the food definitely wasn't a highlight!! Emma 🙂
I think we picked up some pureed fruit when we were in France. Dougie thought it was a smoothie but the consistency was definitely like baby-food.
Getting a bit nervous – an hour to go!
Sounds like the start of a fun adventure for all of you….maybe he might cook? No? well yes just pile stuff up in front of him and let him take his pick….
That's a thought – he might cook! Right, over to you JP!
I am so excited to hear about your visitor I can barely contain myself.
I will agree with not going overboard with buying French stuff, they no doubt only export the crap stuff.
So glad you're excited for me. I'm beside myself!
Update: he is here,he ate all his dinner and is very sweet. In fact he looks just like Rory.
Have you tried the "In England we spread Marmite on everything" routine yet?
Your last response to VBiC is worrying – have you checked when your husband visited France?
No, but you should have seen him whack the bottom of the ketchup bottle this morning for his bacon buttie.
Now, was there some medical conference in France that year? Will ask.
When we had a German boy on an exchange trip a few years ago, he wanted to eat nothing but Pizza. Made life easy I suppose, especially as we had a massive building project going on at the time and no kitchen. The trouble is, his English was SO bad that I think he thought we lived amongst rubble permanently!
He enjoyed his beef stew last night so that's a good sign. I do have some pizzas in the freezer and have told husband maybe his classic haggis dish is pushing things a bit far.
I have a comment from my friend in Panama, Marion. she tells me she is struggling to comment as it keeps coming out in Spanish. That's all we need in this post!!
So here's Marion's two pennorth:
Whoooah, I am impressed, you beat two teams in an answer on University Challenge. You and me both, but mine was more than 30 years ago — I was so proud I remember it to this day — Christ Church Oxford against Trinity Cambridge and the question was "What is a shadoof?". I knew, they did not, I was so puffed up and proud of myself. So much for grammar school education in the UK in the early sixties, lots of useless information and the requirement of two pairs of shoes, one each in-door and out-door, plus two pair of knickers (under knickers white, outer knickers navy) for hygiene. But at least I know what a shadoof is — that knowledge has helped me make it through this life!!
Marion in Panama
(Marion doesn't tell us what a shadoof is but wikipedia says it's an irrigation tool!!)
Irrigation tool sounds somewhat "sexy-dirty". It is actually "a means to lift water from the Nile:. Long pole, bucket at one end and weighted at the other. When correctly balanced, the counterweight will support a half-filled bucket, so some effort is used to pull an empty bucket down to the water, but only the same effort is needed to lift a full bucket.
See, I actually did learn something at Barrow Girls Grammar School — probably the only thing I remember after all this time, primarily because I could answer the bloomin question on University Challenge.
Give JP a Cornish Pasty for his lunch when he goes on his trips. Anybody who doesn't appreciate those is sadly lacking in "taste".
Marion in Panama
Sexy dirty sounds good to me. Almost as good as a Cornish pasty!
This time it worked, guess my Spanish is improving.
Marion in Panama
Buenos Dias, Marion!
Oh lala! That lad is the luckiest exchange student ever getting that fab home cooking. I bet most places just put some eggs and beans in front of them (which er, actually I love too.) I tried to learn Latin but translated a war into a feast so that was the end of my other language exploits.
He's eaten everything up so far, apart from broccoli. I think I can forgive him that. The two boys are like peas in a pod: it's like having another son!
I did Latin too for a while and Rory is very keen on it: he even fancies doing it at University! I'll suggest he comes to you if he needs a hand then….