The Horrors of the French Marché

I remember the first market I saw in Paris.  I was heading to FNAC to buy a class book, when I saw it, on the corner of Rue de Rennes, close to Montparnasse.  

The market cleverly hides the horrors behind vegetables.

Because, I was hungry, per usual, I decided to poke around.  Within moments, I discovered the difference between the Whole Foods and the French marché.  The French know where their food comes from.  The market was rampant with chickens, feet and head still attached, feathers bedecking some.  

Example 1

This, I am happy to say, would never happen here.  Meat comes in sanitary packages, with no resemblance to the animal it once was, and this is how it should be.  Our meat definlety doesn’t come from the sweet chick or the lamb.  It springs preformed from the shelves of the store.

In Italy, this December, I made dinner for the family.  Chicken breasts and legs.  The breasts were good.  The legs and thighs put me off this form of chicken forever.  They had been improperly plucked.  I had to skin them, tiny feathers poking me, then…  I can’t think about it.  It was truly one of the worst moments I have ever had in the kitchen. 

Though my grocery store purchase in Italy was not nearly as gruesome as the headed and feathered chickens of the Parisian market, it made me wonder the same thing.  Are all of the people frequenting such places butchers?  One doesn’t come readily by the knowledge of beheading chickens and robbing them of their plumes.  It appears that the chickens are still in full possession of their innards, what of those? And what, exactly, does one do with the sheep faces?  They can’t possibly be edible can they?

They can't be... They really can't.

Why this fascination with animals in the whole?  I saw it around Place St. Michel, a tourist district.  On a spit, in a window, slowly turning was a whole rotisserie pig.  Snout firmly attached.  The French passed by without comment.   I stared in horror.  He was garishly displayed.  The proprietor of the store had bedecked his crackling nose with sunglasses. 

After that adventure, only Mexican food would do.  No questionable animals, just cheese and chips, both apparently bought in store rather than made in house.  This was a happy meal.  When I saw the butcher’s truck, loaded with sawed open carcasses, nothing would do but vegetarianism for a few days.

It's your luck that I'm not sharing that picture.  Shudders.

A Reflection on Bread

What is French cuisine?  When I arrived in Paris last January, I was unable to tell.  For my first three days, I ate nothing by Middle Eastern food.  Halal food galore, crepe not so much.  My first Parisian dinner was a halal kebab, from a Pakistani restaurant.  Then I had a sandwich cleverly named “sandwich chicken”, once again from a halal restaurant.  Then I had falafel.  Even in my second week, I didn’t have the time for anything French. 

This ended in Montmartre, where I had a Nutella crepe.  Still, aside from this, the only French food that is constantly a part of my life is baguette, both in France and stateside.  I should have seen it coming, the lack of diversity in my Parisian diet.  It’s what normally happens. 

Afore mentioned crepe

In France, bread is more than something you buy in a store, it has life.  The people appreciate every simple nuance.  Food is an enjoyment, not sustenance.  A boulangerie on every corner, pâtisseries more numerous than McDonald’s, this is where it’s at.

Bread has life.  It is made new each day.  Fresh butter, real butter.  Its scent reaches out into the street, inviting every passerby into the arms of the warm boulangerie.  Baguette in hand, the walk home is made enjoyable by bites off the top.  This should not be done in any manner, but delicately, with attention paid to the crumbs that are sure to fall into your scarf. 

It’s easy to forget in the US, that your bread had a life before it became yours.  Here, in Paris, that life consisted of organic flour and hours of growth.  Simple ingredients becoming superb.

Bread, the center of every meal

In France, bread is part of the history.  It tells of revolution and religion.  My fixation on bread began my first time in Paris, and continues now.  It inspired a poem:

"Our Daily Bread:"

 Crusty, hard on the outside,

The baguette sits—on the counter—

In the bread basket.

Yesterday’s crumbs still on the table.

A new loaf, the top nibbled

            Off—customarily—on the walk

Home from the boulangerie.

This culture revolves around pain

It was the cause of revolution

Now, a day cannot pass sans pain

Donne-nous chaque jour notre pain quotidien

Every day an eating of bread,

Mass— an eating of the Christ-body

Religion, like bread—

Hard to understand.  Inside comforting

But if forgotten for too long—

useless.

Penguins

I have a thing for zoos.  I’m not sure if it’s because I went to too few as a child, or too many.  Whichever the case, it expresses itself through a love of them.  Though I have yet to visit the zoo in Paris, I have visited Simba’s Safari in Sao Paulo, where an uppity emu tried to eat me.  After such an exciting previous visit to the zoo, I was ready in January, when I had a five hour layover in New York.  Within an hour of touch down I was in the Central Park Zoo, carry-on in tow.  I’d run across the park from the Natural History Museum, avoiding the frozen patches, skirting the perimeter of a police line, and finally skidding into line 20 minutes before the zoo closed. 

“You don’t get a discount if you enter now… and you don’t get a refund if you don’t get to see everything.”  The lady who said this wasn’t the nicest person I’d ever met.  She growled it.  And I handed her my money.  I skipped away.  Honestly.  Ticket in hand.

I wanted, no needed to see the penguins.  I hadn’t seen them.  The zoos I’d been to were focused more on giraffes and elephants.  But, I was immediately distracted by the sea lions.  They did tricks and looked for attention.  They would come up out of the water and wave.  They’d go under and twist.  They splashed us, asking for fish in their own way. 

Look at me!

Distraction passed, I ran to the penguin house.  It was dark.  It smelled bad.  But there were so many penguins.  They swarmed everywhere.  They stood frozen, it seemed.  They swam.  They preened and honked.  They were everything I had ever imagined, though separated by a disconcerting amount of glass.  

Miniature penguin!

I was the most excited child in the room, far surpassing the little French kids babbling away.  My “take a picture” cry was just as loud as any four year old's and my disappointment at not being to pet the dear creatures was just as strong.