Suzanne à Grenoble

As promised, a glimpse into the French Sunday lunch. First off, despite the fact that they don’t use the Internet and therefore will never read this blog, I have to give a shout out to G’s grandmother and aunt, who have had us over for lunch nearly every day since I moved in with G at the end of April. It was not until today that I truly understood the work that goes into making a hearty lunch for (at least) four people.

The French déjeuner is the main meal of the day. Whereas we Americans tend to have a substantial breakfast, light lunch, and substantial dinner, their typical daily eating schedule goes like this:
• 8:00am (huit heures): Small breakfast (bread/pastry with butter and jam, coffee/tea/hot chocolate)
• 12:00pm (midi): Large lunch (l’entrée (usually a simple salad with a light vinaigrette or raw radishes served with bread, butter and salt), le plat (a meat of some sort served in its own juices and cooked vegetables on the side), du fromage (an assortment of cheeses of which you choose a few knifefuls and eat with bread), le dessert (usually during the week we just have some yogurt or fresh strawberries)
• 20:00pm (vingt heures): Light dinner (take out the entrée and the cheese plate from above).

Today’s lunch was pretty standard, save for a few family dramas that forced us to wait until after 1 pm to eat, and led to the clearing of one place from the dining room table (don’t ask, it’s better that way). In fact, it went amazingly well, considering the stress level during the meal preparation. We were supposed to wake up early to prepare the lunch with enough time to not get stressed out about it, but I had slept with my earplugs in and eye mask on, so I was dead to the world until about 10:15 am. We started preparing the tarte aux legumes (vegetable tart/quiche) first. We had decided on a pre-packaged crust, to “make things easier,” but when we put the crust in the pan and precooked it, it turned out that the crust was not big enough for the amount of filling that the recipe called for. Luckily, G’s mom came to the rescue by whipping up some dough at the last minute and we had a tart large enough to serve everyone multiple portions. I have to give a huge shout out to her, because she really saved the day. It’s too bad she didn’t stick around long enough to enjoy it (hence the aforementioned reference to “family dramas”). The rest of the meal basically prepared itself (that’s what happens when you have family who arrive early “without realizing it.” You have extra eyes scrutinizing your preparation techniques, but you have extra hands to help out, as well).

G’s grandmother, aunt, and uncle appeared to be impressed and sated, and that’s all I could have asked for. After plowing through the salad, tarte, bread (made by G’s mom), cheese, chocolate mousse (made by G’s mom) and tiramisu (made by G’s grandma & aunt), I realized that even the best of meals are difficult to prepare all alone. Even though we wanted to prepare the entire meal, from cutting the vegetables to doing the dishes, without the aid of anyone, and even though they rarely let us lift a finger when we eat chez them, we ended up accepting their help gladly, because we had bitten off more than we could have chewed. But in the end, what we chewed tasted pretty damn good.


**Flunch is the name of a chain of cafeteria-style restaurants in France. I love saying the word Flunch. Try it! Flunch Flunch Flunch!