Les crêpes

Pancakes have always been my favorite breakfast food.  There's just something so completely perfect about a round, baked bread drenched in sugar and coupled with a warm cup of coffee and a mimosa on a dimanche matin (dee-mahn-sh mah-tun: Sunday morning), and it seems every country agrees with me.  Americans have buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup, the English have thin pancakes topped with castor sugar and lemon juice, and in India there are dosas: thin, crispy, flaky pancakes served with chutneys and curry.  But no pancake seems to be more celebrated or as universally well-known as the French crêpe (kreh-p: pancake).

Crêpes originate from the north-western region of France known as Brittany, but crêpes have been around so long, are so delicious, and so simple to make that they're ubiquitous throughout the country.  Seat yourself at any crêperie (krehp-air-ee: pancake restaurant) in France and you'll be handed a menu with almost fifty options of crepes to choose from:  savory crêpes or sweet crêpes, buckwheat or white flour, simple toppings like cheese or sugar, or more complex toppings like bacon or fruit and alcohol.

My own personal French classic standard is crêpe à la Nutella (kreh-p ah lah new-tell-a: pancake topped with nutella).  Actually an Italian invention, Nutella is a hazelnut and choolate spread slightly melted and drizzled on the inside of the crêpe before the pancake is folded into quarters and shoved into my mouth just as fast as I can chew: messy, sweet, chocolaty and absolutely perfect on any day of the week. 

French cuisine (ki-zine: food) is infamous for being rich, indulgent, and almost impossible to master, but to me the crêpe is the more honest symbol of typical French fare: simple, delicious, drenched in butter and works well when eaten with just about anything.  The French are well-aware that they have a legacy of complex recipes and seven-course meals, but any true Frenchie I've met would much rather run out and grap a quick crêpe from the local café than spend hours sweating in the kitchen over a hot oven.  Of course, this is a well-kept secret so don't tell anyone I told you.  All French people I've met claim to be great cooks who also happen to know whether or not a bottle of wine is going to be good just by reading the label on the bottle...I pretend to believe them.

Crise de foie

I can't say Julia Child didn't warn me: I'm suffering from la crise de foie (lah kreez deh fwa: indigestion aka an American stomach in France).  Try as I might to blend myself seamlessly into a life of la cuisine française (lah kwiz-een frahn-says: French food) my delicate American stomach has started its own vocal form of protest.

This started with the milk.  After having un café crème (uhn kaff-ee krehm: a coffee with frothed, creamy milk) to help me out of bed in the mornings, my daily routine then followed with hours of hunched-over mal au ventre (mahl o van-tre: stomach pain).  I shrugged this off as due to the fact that in France they don't refrigerate their milk or whipped cream, until I found that even my chocolate ice cream-filled crêpe (kreh-p: crepe) had me racing for les toilettes (leh twa-lett: the toilet) before I even had time to ask for l'addition (l-dision: the bill).  Even salad has become a culprit lately, though that might be because my body is suffering from a serious lack of vegetables.

The thing is, I haven't found my little town of La Côte Saint André to be particularly centered around fresh, high-quality ingredients.  And I say this from experience.  The only thing that stays open 24 hours around here are two vending machines dispensing Mars Bars and Coca-Cola.  In fact, it turns out that France is a bigger consumer per capita of McDo's (Mic-dohs: McDondald's) than even the United States.  What I have found though, is that whatever similar products the shelves of the French supermarkets carry compared to what's carried in Safeway, French food is just plain richer.  The dark chocolate is darker.  The whole milk is, well, wholer.  The bread is...breadier: a crispy melt-in-your-mouth yeast substance of the kind you could only possibly hope to find at a French boulangerie (boo-lahn-jerry: bread bakery) before noon.

So, like every American before moi, my stomach (weaned on soy milk, sliced sandwich bread, and pasturized everything) has gone it's own form of a French culture shock.  Just like my mind can't handle the fact that buses don't run on Sundays, my stomach can't seem to cope with the fact that the freshly picked vegetables I buy still have dirt on them.  It seems that the French are a bit more ruthless about their food than my poor American stomach is used to.

Thanks to reading My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme months ago, I'd be lying if I said I  arrived here without knowing that even the most devoted American food enthusiast runs into gastrointestinal difficulties in France, even Julia Child herself.  Naïvement (nih-eev-meht: naively), I still hoped I'd be the one American girl able to dive into sautéed crêpes aux champignôn (kreps oh shamp-in-yons: mushroom crepes) and tartes au chocolat (tart oh shoc-oh-laht: chocolat tarts) unscathed.  Unfortunately, if I've learned any lessons about French culture this far, it's that no good meal/hike/Internet connection/day comes without a fight.  But despite my stomach's protests, I'm determined to win this particular war.  After all, if I can't enjoy French food - all the way from the first bite to the last moment of digestion - than I've lost out on half the fun of being here.  Let's just hope my stomach eventually agrees.