French Kids Eat Everything

So, too, did participating in village rituals. We faithfully brought Sophie and Claire to the regular Fest Noz (night parties) held on the quay of the small village fishing port, where old and young danced together to traditional music and ate galettes (Brittany’s regional specialty, a savory crêpe made of buckwheat flour).
We also wandered the seashore, just like the locals. Brittany has the highest and lowest tides in Europe, and some days the water would draw back well over a mile from shore. We’d pull on boots and wade through the barnacles, rocks, and algae, surrounded by villagers—from toddlers to grandmothers—furiously scraping and whacking rocks or digging and poking the muddy bottom for local delicacies like bulots (whelks, a kind of mollusk) and coquilles St. Jacques (scallops). We even went to the annual bénédiction de la mer, clambering along with the villagers up a rocky headland to watch the village priest (in full vestments) gravely step into a local fishing boat, head out into the bay to bless the waters, and pray for all those who had lost their lives at sea.
Thanks to my in-laws, we attended these events. But I was still very much an outsider, a spectator of village life. In my eager North American way I’d introduced myself to all of the neighbors and parents at the local school, but they were stiffly polite, seemingly uninterested in any social contact. The French, I found out, do not make friends easily and definitely do not like to socialize with “new” people, much less outsiders. The fact that I spoke French and was married to a “local” didn’t seem to change my status: a foreigner.
I had been looking forward to the start of school, I admitted to myself, because I wanted to make friends with the other moms. But school had started months ago, and I wasn’t making much headway aside from some polite chitchat once in a while. So I felt more and more lonely as the weeks went on. Now that the weather had gotten bad, our stream of visitors had tailed off. My father-in-law was one of the only people who would drop by the house regularly. He came most mornings, usually when Claire (who had taken to getting up well before the crack of dawn) was almost ready to be put down for her early morning nap. I would rush out the door to take Sophie to school and often return to find Claire fast asleep in Jo’s arms. He’d sit quietly with her until she woke up, sometimes waiting for over an hour, biding the time by watching the fishing boats trawl back and forth across the bay. Often, he was the only adult (besides Philippe) with whom I had a proper conversation all day.
To be fair, the French don’t easily make friends with other French people either. For the French, friendship is a deep, intimate, lifelong commitment—one that is made cautiously and rarely after one’s mid-twenties. Eric and Sandrine were, I learned, exceptions that proved the rule. Even Philippe’s friends had been slow to warm, giving me the cold shoulder for years until we really got to know them. “Why are they so mean to me?” I once asked my husband. “They’re not being mean! They just aren’t comfortable talking to you because they haven’t gotten to know you yet,” he replied, bewildered. “But we’ve been together for three years!” was my exasperated response.
Philippe’s friends had eventually warmed up to me after our wedding. In fact, Hugo and Virginie turned out to be the most loyal, warm, wonderful friends. They’d remember our birthdays or surprise us with lovely cards or little gifts for the children, sometimes out of the blue. Their kids really connected with ours, to the point that they felt like cousins. This was the upside of friendship in France—once you made friends, they truly were friends for life and shared an intimate complicity that was lacking, Philippe felt, with most of our friends back in Vancouver. So, as the date neared, I discovered that I was secretly looking forward to dinner, despite dreading difficulties about feeding my overtired kids and anxiety about meeting a bunch of new people. I expected to be both scrutinized and ignored (that “elegant chair”). But what I didn’t expect was that this one evening would turn me into a convert to French food culture.
The evening started with a misunderstanding, followed by a friendly argument.
We had arrived the expected fifteen minutes after the time for which we’d been invited (the French make a point of never arriving earlier than this on the theory that you don’t want to embarrass your hosts by arriving before they are completely ready). Other families were arriving at the same time, and just getting through the doorway took several minutes, with all of the bises that were being exchanged.
A beautiful table greeted us as we followed Virginie into the living room. Lovely place settings were aligned on top of a creamy linen tablecloth: pale moss-colored plates nested in bigger white plates, cutlery intertwined with sprigs of dried lavender, napkins nestled in wine glasses next to ceramic bowls on which were perched bird-shaped puff pastry crackers. It looked typically French—at once rustic and sophisticated, formal yet festive. The kind of look I knew I could never pull off at home.
The other children were already gathered around the table, at a slightly respectful distance. Their eyes were on the crackers, but no one dared touch them. They all knew that it was considered very rude for children to help themselves without being asked, even if food was within reach. I always marveled at the self-control evident in even the youngest of French children, which mine certainly didn’t display.
An anecdote I later heard from one French friend hinted at how this self-control is achieved. Starting at the age of three, all of the children at her maternelle (preschool) had to sit still with their hands on their knees while the lunchtime dessert was