From Peas To Politics

Frozen Vegetables
It's tempting to say that the French don't have frozen vegetables but clearly some of them do; a more or less full range is available in most supermarkets. However, the only one I've ever seen used, or been served, is frozen chips. Frozen chips work well, as also do frozen peas, which taste, ironically, fresher than fresh peas. The chemistry of that is well understood. I remember thinking years ago, when my children were young, that they should at least once in their lives taste fresh peas. They didn't like them much and I had to agree that frozen peas tasted much better. French peas are invariably of the tinned variety, similar to the ones labelled “petit pois” in England, and do taste good but quite different from frozen ones. The larger marrow-fat peas found in England don't seem to exist in France.

Some vegetables, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions and leeks for example, are available fresh in the shops all year round. For the rest, the French will resort to tinned rather than frozen versions. It has to be said that, with the French emphasis on flavour, the way tinned vegetables are prepared does give them a good distinctive flavour. Tinned French beans here, for instance, (which you rarely see in the UK) work better in my opinion than the frozen version.

On the other hand, frozen broad beans and sprouts, which I like, never seem to be used here.

Complacency
Mana and Daniel came to eat with me tonight. I served them tandoori chicken, which they loved. Indian cuisine is a closed book to the French who, despite their devotion to taste, continually surprise me with their conservative approach to cooking. French cooking has a deserved reputation for quality which the French all know and are proud of. But culinary art isn't static and the French seem remarkably reluctant to experiment with flavours outside their domestic experience.

It is a similarly complacent attitude to their view on foreign travel, as explained to me by a French friend in England. She said that the French tend to think that they have all they need for holidays in France: coast, mountains, countryside, lakes, etc. So why travel abroad? This friend was struggling to explain to herself the difference in attitude towards foreign travel that she perceived between the English and the French (Heaven knows what she would have made of the Australians). What it came down to was a more or less complacent attitude among the French that, as Voltaire might have put it, all was for the best in the best of possible countries (France).

Politics and Naivety?
Conversation this evening got around to politics. Both Mana and Daniel are in favour of Hollande but not entirely confident that he will succeed. I ventured to suggest that whoever got power would be constrained by impositions from the world's banks. Daniel said that unemployment was the big issue and then astonished me by saying he thought that Marie Le Penn had some good ideas on that. Marie Le Penn is an unashamed if sometimes slightly disguised fascist and Daniel is nowhere near being a fascist. The links between unemployment and fascism are clear and well demonstrated in very recent history; indeed, they are one of my fears for the future. Yet Daniel seemed unwilling to acknowledge the link and took the attitude that good(?) ideas for resolving the unemployment issue were welcome from anywhere.

As conversation stalled I threw in that I had read that the Court of Human Rights in Brussels had declared that owning a satellite dish was a fundamental human right. I did this is a joke. Daniel and Mana immediately embarked on a discussion of whether satellite dishes should be allowed because they looked so unsightly. From Daniel's terrace there is a view across the village rooftops that, he said, is completely spoiled by satellite dishes. I found their reaction to my interjection surreal. Didn't they see the absurdity? So I appealed to Mana in terms that she above all should appreciate. When millions were starving and falsely jailed, wasn't this ludicrous? Her attitude seemed to be; why not rights to satellite dishes as well? I should have known; Mana has no sense of the ridiculous. To corroborate this I asked her if she enjoyed Jacques Sempé's cartoons. Sempé is for me, along with James Thurber, the master of the ridiculous. Her reply was “No”.

Grammar
A final note on grammar. I think my grasp of French grammar is pretty good; what I'm learning here, apart from occasional extra vocabulary, is the way the French tend to express themselves as distinct from phrasing that is grammatically correct but which they would be unlikely to use. But postings on the Internet often make me unsure. French Internet users are no more grammatical in their postings than are their English counterparts and I frequently find constructions that I'm sure are grammatically wrong. Or am I sure? Daniel, Mana and others to the rescue!