Saturday, 29 September 2007

Avec fromage?? Non!

Alain stared absently at the table. It had been a long day even though we had not covered much distance - heat and hills were the culprits for our exhaustion. I tore off a peice of baguette and picked up a slice of saussicon. This caught Alain's vacant eyes, and he watched expressionless as I folded the bread around the saussage. However, his expression changed from blank interest to incomprehension as I, at the last minute, decided to cut a sliver of camembert off and combine it with my two other ingredients. With the squidging together of bread, saussage, and cheese his vissage spoke of incredulity, and he watched, slack mouthed, as I began to chew. A strange mixture of anger and pity played around his features, and he erupted with "Avec fromage?? Non!..." Shaking his head sorrowfully he lamented something incomprehensible in French and then said, "Thees eez verry Eeenglish. Verry bad."
Such was my first gastronomic faux pas for this trip. I knew the French (and especially Lyonais (sp?) like Alain) were fiercely proud of their saussicon, but I had no idea that it meant there was an embargo on it being combined with cheese. Bread was fine, just not cheese.
My second also involved cheese and was again accompanied by the look of pity and the shaking of heads. It was lunch, and six of us were eating by the Lot river, just after Estaing. I had a baguette, saussicon, camembert, apple, chocolate, and dried figs and, as is the custom, offered all I had to the others before taking any for myself. My first bite was a slice of saussage, but with my second - the cheese - the familiar shaking of heads began. I was politely told that the cheese was to be saved for last.
Of course, there are more than just gastronomic faux pas to be commited. I think I've probably offended a number of people with my gesticulations and poor choice of words (always a problem in a foreign language). But my favourite is funny rather than offensive. We were on the Causse, a very sparesly populated area between Cajarc and Cahors, and it was very cold - something like 5 degrees. I had run inside after attemting to find the village phone booth and after shaking myself commented to those gathered waiting for dinner, "C'est foie ce soir, non?". A brief second of blank faces (one chap even craned his head to see if this actually was the case!) greeted me for a second before the laughter erupted.
The translation of that sentence I'll leave up to you. The word I should have used was 'froid' - they sound very similar.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds great even if the natives didnt like the combo