to think that the French can't cook?

[Idratherbemuckingout]

I base this on experience, as I live in France. Okay, they have lovely restaurants, but the general public CANNOT cook.
My friend Dominique has just told my husband that she has bought a turkey for her family. She is going to boil it. He explained how the english cook theirs, but she thought it sounded too complicated.
Hmmm.
In the supermarkets you can of course buy fresh food, but having stood behind french people at the till countless times and seen their mountains of ready prepared meals, I doubt that many of them actually BUY the fresh food. Or if they do, that they cook anything interesting out of it.
I have a friend called Isabelle who is quite mad. We asked her once if she liked spicy food, thinking to cook her a curry. She declared that she did, but that she would bring us her signature dish. Chocolate Chicken. Yes, I kid you not, it was like chicken in chocolate sauce and it was NOT very spicy.
She also once asked us if we liked eating snails, and foolishly we said yes. "Ah," she said, "I 'ave a secret recipe zat I will cook for you. I shall collect snails in my garden (!!!!) and put zem in my snail 'otel and feed them special food and zen we will eat them together."
Well, the first year they died (silent sighs of relief) but the second year she did it again, and we were duly invited to her house. The kids refused point blank to go. DH tried to but I made him come with me. She had cooked us 200 snails. TBH they tasted much like all the other snails I have eaten - snaily. Not enough garlic in my opinion. That wouldn't have been so bad, but she followed it up with duck with apricots (very rich too) and then American Peach Pie. We had indigestion for days.
ANd they can't make coffee either. Never have I been to a french house and had a decent cup of coffee, or tea either if it comes to that.
They don't seem to possess kettles you see, so they heat the water in the microwave, to not boiling point. Then they give you the cup of hot water and a sachet (I kid you not) of instant coffee to stir into it, or a teabag to dunk.
My DS was at the local primary school and after the Christmas (not) spectacular, we stayed for the buffet meal. Poo Sausage was the highlight. You know you are mixing with peasants when the offal is high on the menu.
Poo Sausage (my DH called it that)is actually called Andouille, and is a bit like chitterlings, should any of you know what those are - ie made of some horrible bit of the insides of an animal.

I could go on, but I won't or this is going to look like an essay.

Up until about 18 months ago one of our neighbours was a little old lady and her daughter, who was handicapped in some way. I had coffee in their house (hot water in a glass, plus sachet of nescafé) water heated in a pan.
Their house was being propped up outside with long bits of wood, the entrance was via a barn door beneath some very dodgy looking stonework, and their floor was made of beaten earth.
They had one room to live in. There was a long trestle table, benches, two enormously high old beds, a sideboard and a wardrobe and what we call a "suicide sink". You can buy these in most DIY shops. They consist of a mobile double unit with a sink on one half and two electric rings RIGHT next to the taps. So you can have your hands in the water whilst also turning on the rings. Underneath is a tiny fridge.
We once stayed in a french gite in a very posh castle near Poitiers where the only things in the kitchen were a suicide sink and, balanced on top of the microwave, which was on top of a wheeled trolley, another two ring electric hob. The kitchen was in one of the tiny towers (we were in the donjon) and there was no room in it for more than one person. So I guess we couldn't have staged a mass suicide.
So obviously no-one staying there was expected to do any serious cooking! Luckily we ate out most of the time, but you don't always want to do that on holiday, do you? Nights in are nice. Preferably with something to eat.

I lived in France for several years. I think it is easy to get good, simple food there quite cheaply. The supermarkets seemed to have a better array of cheeses/meats etc

However - agree re the pain de mie sliced bread. Fucking revolting - really sweet. And the lack of fresh milk always struck me as really weird given that most of France is rural.

I spend a fair amount of time in France, and adore eating out there. For 10 Euros you can have a really good meal. What can you get in the UK for the same amount?

As for eating and drinking at the houses of French friends, no-one has ever (NOT EVER) offered me instant coffee and they all seem to be able to cook.

So I'm concluding that your sample size is too small to extrapolate from.

We just spent a week in France and the food was very good although that was a hotel so that is not really what the thread is about. When we've stayed in gites and seen the farmer's food etc that seems pretty good too.

.

This thread is hysterical! No bacon or fresh milk in the supermarkets! The fucking French! How very dare they! Spoiled holidays because you couldn't have a bacon sandwich for breakfast? Go to Brighton next time, take it with you, or try a croissant for a change.

Some French people do eat a lot of shit. But so do some British people. My upstairs neighbour seems to exist almost entirely on microwaveable croque monsieur. I have a British friend who eats microwaveable burgers. I shudder at both. I love Picard for frozen veg, fruit, ice cream.

I've never had a bad meal in a French restaurant. I've had a mediocre one, in a touristy area, but most food I've had here has been fabulous.

Its still tough to find vegetarian food when eating out. In Paris I generally go to the Algerian places.

alicia kudos to you for growing your own veg. Sadly the insects pollinating it will be crossing over from the sprayed fields you live next to.

Isn't it basically the snobbery people are most put out by? Chirac's quote on our cuisine, the way they look down on the rest of Europes eating habits and then serve nescafe in a sachet. Hysterical....

Perhaps we love our crap food, bacon sarnies etc but we are not disparaging their food on a national level are we?

How many French have timeto cook? Really?

They work a maximum 35 hour week don't they? Shouldn't they be the nation with the most time to cook....?

Some of the best food I've ever eaten was cooked by DH's French family in their homes (though I did find the idea of pouring everyone a very small glass of the wine matched to that particular course and then putting the bottle away rather frustrating ) you're just hanging out with the wrong people!

OP, would you care to reference your statement that the French use more chemicals in agriculture than any other nation? I find it really surprising, it does not seem to match the UN or PAN figures I've seen.

There is lots of dreadful food in France, and lots of brilliant food too. The array (breadth/depth, quality/quantity) of fresh product in some of the street/covered markets is way superior to anything you find in England, IMO, unless you are buying direct from a farm. I have very rarely been to a French person's home for a meal and found the food inedibly disgusting, but I have eaten quite a lot of unexciting meals. I have, however, frequently found British food to be inedibly dreadful.

The 35 hour week only applies to some people. If you are a 'cadre' you have to work the hours required to get the job done. DH works min 40 hours a week and usually about 50.

35 hours a week is pure marketing and bollocks. The factory workers etc. do 39, then get some days back in lieu and the higher qualified workers ("cadres") usually do anything upwards of 45 hours, as sommewhereelse says whatever it takes to get the job done. I usually do 50 hours a week, sometimes more. And I may have to work weekends and bank holidays for no extra pay.

To give you an idea, I rarely get home before 8pm - so no, I don't have loads of time for cooking. I usually reheat something I made at the weekend.

I was basing the 35 hour week on my 25 stores across France, consisting of managers, asst managers, supervisors and teams, plus area manager. Yes some weeks they work late but as mentioned they then get the time off in extra holidays. Generally they won't work over those hours and the organisation is a nightmare.

Must be a different world for retail then.

I think that there is a lot of truth in what the

I think that there is a lot of truth in what the op writes. Many people live on disgusting, vile, additive ridden foods that are as far away from the image of French cuisine as is possible. They complain that good food is expensive in France (including the markets) and tbh it bloody well is - therefore, the fact that they are feeding their children absolute crap is never really considered a problem. The distinction between the best and worst places to buy food is a lot more obvious and extreme than in the UK.

I think that there is also a lot of ignorance about what constitutes 'healthy' food in France - the simplistic 'little bit of everything doesn't do you any harm' school of thought which would be considered criminal in yummy-mummy enclaves chez nous. Fast food is probably cheaper in France than in the UK particularly the hydrogenated fat, colour ridden shockers such as Mergez and fried chips.

Your comments re microwave tea and frozen chips are spot on, unfortunately although I don't think they consider it necessary to know how to prepare good tea. If you don't drink coffee, too bad for you.

Mind you, it is just as well there is US-style fast food available as compared to the french equivalent, Flunch, it is positively haute-cuisine. Think vegetables boiled to death swimming in hot water, overboiled pasta with segments of boiled grapefruit ...vile.

French birthday parties are inevitably big, additive-ridden cakes with tooth-rotting bonbons galore - never did it for me.

The level of foodie-literacy in the general population (incl oldies) is shockingly low, even more so wrt international cuisine. Even when they push the boat out on a Sunday, they would not know how to make a basic roux-type sauce and would buy it in a pouch to accompany their roast meat. The same with pesto, biscuits. Baking as a home activity is rare. But they do drink a lot of fruit juices (mainly sweetened with sugar by the manufacturer), get plenty of dairy through yoghurts and cheese (even if the milk is mainly UHT) and sneak in veg accompaniments as side-dishes or starters and dried fruits as desert.

dessert rather

Ooooh, merguez. Yum. :)

I'm sure that if society had stayed the same as how it used to be in France and Italy and places like that, and there were daily markets with the housewife buying the fresh food in daily and cooking it, then French people would still know how to cook.

But society has changed. Women work as well as men now and while it's a nice thought to be able to amble about a market and into all the different specialists shops each morning for that day's fresh stuff whilst chatting to neighbours you met, what modern woman has time for that?!

At least in the UK, it's recognised that women are time-poor these days and we have managed to actually produce some pretty decent supermarkets to cater for families where there is not a stay-at-home parent with free time to cook meals for the family from scratch.

I'm not sure that countries on the continent have quite caught up with the idea of women working full-time these days and so things like good supermarkets with decent fresh produce and edible ready meals HAVE to available if people are going to be e

......to be expected to cook a decent meal at home rather than go out.

People diss supermarkets in the UK but they save me a hell of a lot of time and hassle when each week day is taken up by work.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1507215/The-world-turns-up-its-nose-at-French-cuisine.html

THanks, Binfull, I knew I was right. However, isn't that referring to restaurant cooking? I have had some fantastic meals in restaurants over the years that I would never put down in any way. Done well, french cooking is good.

BUT - I guess if this survey says restaurant cooking is not all it's made out to be, what does that say about home cooking?

CurlyHairedAssassin - you are quite right. Frankly, if there are two things that would make a massive positive difference to my life as a mother in France, they are (1) Waitrose (2) full-service prep schools. The hours I spend chauffeuring and shopping are obscene.

People who can't find a good place to eat in their part of France, go and get the Gault-Millau Guide. It's in French, but it's solid gold, and runs the gamut from bistros to top top places. Michelin used to do wonderful regional guides, also in French - think they are no more but if you have a second home it would be worth seeking them out.

I NEVER eat a restaurant meal in France or in the UK without reading a guidebook first, ideally more than one. Voxpop sites like TripAdvisor are useless. As a result, I have NEVER had a bad meal in France (in 20 years of trips, some lengthy, mostly in Paris, Provence, and Brittany). The good food is there, but as here or in the US for that matter, you have to be willing to do a bit of work to find it. You can't just turn in to the first place you see.

I've often gazed in wonder at English tourists eating lunch on the boul St Germain - why would you EVER go to a resto on one of the grands boulevards, or near a big tourist trap like Notre Dame? Their footfall is such that they don't NEED to be good to survive.

But the OP is right about the decline of home cooking (for which y'all can go read Au Revoir to All That); my son had a miserable French exchange with a family in Aix. They served him frozen crepes in a plastic box and pointed to the microwave...