C'EST LA VIE - THAT'S LIFE
Living in France for 3 months with Jeannine & Roger
Aubuterre 10th April
After a gruelling historic sightseeing tour yesterday we are having a home day. This included going into Aubeterre and buying some produce and meat from the locals. Therefore there is no new town, no history lesson or cache discovered today.
Our French word of the day is faux filet = Sirloin steak, not false steak as I interpreted it. We bravely or stupidly went back to butcher who doesn’t speak English and ordered some steak and schnitzel. In France butchers have a large chunk of meat and slice off what you want. Hand signals can indicate the thickness but knowing whether it is stewing or frying steak is merely done by looking at the price. Meat and fish are the same price per kg in NZ and France, that is, if 1 Euro = $1, however 1 Euro equals NZ$2, so it works out quite costly, that’s life.
Most restaurants in France offer Boeuf Filet et frites, which is steak and chips. I assume this is probably not a national dish but what the restaurants believe the English and Americans want to eat. So to turn our faux filet into a French dish we are serving his with a blue vein cheese sauce from Auvergne and mine a tomato sauce from Heinz, France. Frites aren’t on the menu and after France’s worst winter the vegetables for our salad sadly came from Spain.
Jeannine & Roger
A couple of people who decided to try living in France for three months, to absorb some of the culture and to try a diet of Baguette, cheese and wine.