Places

Bella and the VIPs

Posted on by MELewis

bella04Meet Bella. This bovine beauty was the mascot of this year’s Paris International Agricultural Show.

Aside from good looks, she and I have a few things in common. She comes from the Rhône-Alpes region of France, although a little further south in La Savoie. She’s one of a sturdy breed of cows – Tarantaise – not the biggest but among the most hardy. Adaptable, she’s known for keeping the grassy slopes of the Alps trimmed in summer which helps prevent avalanches in winter. And which also produces some of its best-known cheeses: Beaufort, Tomme, Reblochon, Abondance…

(I’m going to stop the analogy here – although I’ve been called a cow, I’ve never stopped an avalanche and don’t produce anything but words!)

But I’m sure that Bella, along with the hundreds of other animaux de la basse-cour – farm animals – who found themselves in Porte de Versailles over the past two weeks, felt like a fish out of water. I know I did when I arrived in Paris. The lights! The crowds! The rude waiters!

Le Salon de l’Agriculture International, as it’s now called, is an annual celebration of food. And of what the French call ‘terroir,’ meaning the ability of a specific place to produce a specific product. Saucisse de Toulouse, quenelle de Lyon, jambon de Paris: it took me awhile to understand the importance of terroir. Surely a sausage is sausage, no matter where it’s produced? Mais non! The Appellation d’Origine Contrôléé is a gauge of quality when it comes to the designated origin of French produce.

Terroir, in a nutshell, explains the philosophy of French gastronomy. It is why wines are named after their regions rather than their grapes. It is why a cheese called a Saint-Marcellin (a creamy, raw-milk cheese so fragile it has to be contained in a little cup) can only be produced there.  Or a poule de Bresse, a specific breed of chicken with its own label, can only be raised in that region.

And It’s what makes it so much fun to discover France. Because as you travel around the country, you will stumble upon all those magical places that produce the wonderful products…like Roquefort (ah, it’s a town, not just a cheese?). Champagne (a whole region for producing the bubbly?). Just about every bled (slang for town) has its own culinary claim to fame in France.

The small town I lived in for years in the Côteaux du Lyonnais was known for a kind of peach I bet you’ve never even heard of: la pèche de vigne (vine peach). A much deeper red in the color of its flesh, it’s the peach equivalent of a blood orange and makes a velvety juice like no other.  Every year the whole town celebrates this fruit at the Fête de la peche de vigne.

And all of these wonders are celebrated each year at the Paris International Agriculture Show. Along with the hundreds of different breeds of pigs, cows, chickens….and since it became ‘international’ a few years back, produce from Italy and other European countries.

I’ve never made it to the show myself, but every year the media regales us with stories from the salon and les coulisses (behind the scenes). Politicians petting farm animals is the French version of kissing babies. Here’s Hollande in action.

The organizers even made their own version of the ‘Happy’ video featuring the VIPs – Very Important Paysans (with a cameo appearance from the French Minister of Agriculture).

It is what we call ‘un grand moment de la culture française.’ And one year, I’ll go. Although, like Bella, I’ll probably need several weeks to recover.

Check out David Lebovitz’s blog for a true foodie tour of the show.

Chez soi: There’s no place like home

Posted on by MELewis

I love how the French word ‘chez’ describes home. It even sounds welcoming: Viens chez nous. Come over to our place. And you don’t go to the butcher’s shop, you go ‘chez le boucher,’ ‘chez le boulanger,’ etc. You learn this one early in French as it’s a classic mistake to say ‘au’ instead of ‘chez’ when referring to shops with a person behind the name.

The concept of house and home is very dear to the French. And to me: I’ve always been a homebody. They call this being ‘casanier’ in French. I like having a place to hang my hat. This means I’m not a huge fan of travel and indeed, cannot travel light. My husband always laughs when I carefully unpack my clothes in hotel rooms; he’s perfectly happy living out of a suitcase. But for anything longer than a weekend, I pack a pillow and have been known to bring the toaster.

Ever since I arrived in France I’ve been like Dorothy, tapping her heels and saying ‘there’s no place like home.’

My first chez moi was in the seventh arrondissement of Paris, a one-bedroom sublet with a partial view of the Eiffel tower (you had to crane your head out of the kitchen window to see a bit of it sticking up over a neighboring rooftop). It was furnished in someone else’s taste (there was a lot of pink). We lived there for less than a year and it never really felt like home.

Fast forward to Lyon, 3ème arrondissement. Our family’s first home in France was a roomy 3-bedroom apartment on the rive gauche of the Rhône, not far from the business centre of Lyon. Long on old-world charm, it had dizzyingly high ceilings with crown moldings, antique fixtures and floor tiles, herring-bone hardwood floors….but was rather short on modern conveniences (the ‘central heating’ was a single gas heater, centrally located in the front hall).

Although we were only renting, we (read: my husband) scraped off several layers of flocked and flowered wall paper from every surface (including the ceiling) and repainted before moving in. We had no balcony but our bedroom window overlooked a treed inner courtyard. It was only a few blocks to the nearest park for airing kids and dogs. We stayed for five years – long enough to feel almost at home.

Next stop: home ownership. After so much time in the city, we were ready for some fresh air. For several months we searched for something we liked and could actually afford. In the end, we bought a piece of land in a small town half an hour outside Lyon, found a builder and chose a plan for our new house. Building was cheaper than buying an existing house as you got a break on taxes.

Our first house was a typical new French single-family home. It was a brick construction set in a small housing development (lotissement) where several other families had each built a different house. It looked out over les Monts du Lyonnais on one side and a small farmer’s field on the other. It did not have finished closets, kitchen or bathroom fittings. Those little extras are considered as part of the décor; most new houses here are delivered as empty shells.  But we had a roof over our heads and could really see the skies for the first time in years. I felt like I’d arrived in Kansas.

Small wonder I never wanted to leave. But the day came a few years ago when we decided to uproot (for absolutely, positively the LAST time) and move on. More precisely, 160 kilometers northeast.

Our new house is on the French side of the border with Switzerland (after so much time and effort integrating here, I wasn’t ready to abandon la belle France). It’s located in another small town in the countryside, overlooking Lake Geneva on one side and the Alps on the other. We also built this house, buoyed by our first experience, equal amounts of optimism and, perhaps, foolhardiness. It’s similar in many ways to our first house – but on steroids.

It’s an A-frame wood structure with a lot of glass – based on what some call a ‘flat-pack’ or prefab home but customized and built by a professional builder (neither of us being handy with tools or implements other than those used for cooking.) It was a much bigger project – this time we were able to get a built-in kitchen and finish the closets. Even after a year and a half, we’re still working out some of the bugs.

As lovely as our new home is, it took me awhile to get over our old house. The one where our kids grew up, where we struggled through the lean years and put down roots. But I’m finally beginning to feel chez moi. Now that I’ve unpacked the toaster.

Fête des Lumières

Posted on by MELewis

lyon-fete-des-lumieres-bougies-490One of my favorite local French traditions is La Fête des Lumières – Festival of Lights – that takes place in Lyon every year around the 8th of December.

It is said that the city of Lyon was spared from the plague by the grace of the Virgin Mary in 1643. The tradition of lighting candles in return for the favor goes back to the mid-1800s, around the time the city erected the Basilica of Fourvière in her honor – perched atop the city’s highest hill and featuring a statue of the Virgin that seems to watch over the city and its central square, Place Bellecour.

I remember feeling homesick and a little bleak that first year we moved to Lyon after settling in France. The end of October came and went with nobody celebrating Halloween – I searched all over and couldn’t even find a proper pumpkin to carve for the kids, which I found strangely depressing. And then it was November, which for me is always the hardest month of the year – it’s cold and dark and you know the shortest days of the year are yet to come.

LumignonsColoresSo I was thrilled to learn about the Fête des Lumières. The tradition is that on December 8th the Lyonnais fill their windows with ‘lumignons’ – candles in squat glass holders – of different colors. Like most city-dwellers, we lived in an old apartment building with several tall French windows to line with candles. Everyone participates so the effect is quite stunning, with entire facades lit by candles. Then you go out and walk around and perhaps head over to le vieux Lyon, the old town, where les illuminations (light displays) are the most elaborate. The air is fragrant with the smell of roasted chestnuts.

The event has grown over the years, and according the city of Lyon now attracts some 4 million visitors. It’s been a few years since I last went but even then, the crowds had gotten too big for my liking. They now spread it over several days so as to get the most tourists in as possible. Some of the light shows are positively spectacular though – so if you don’t mind crowds, it’s worth planning a trip to Lyon in early December to catch the displays.

Fête des Lumières, LyonLa Fête des Lumières is perfectly timed to mark the start of the Christmas season – along with the collection of lumignons, I know it’s time to get out my holiday decorations and get serious about shopping.  Even though we moved away from Lyon a few years ago, I kept the candles and light them every year.

I’m not a religious person but I give thanks each year for this lovely tradition.