French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Billon (classic english novels txt) 📕

States. To top it all off, he smilingly noted that labor productivity per hour in France was just as high as in the United States.

His point was clear: it’s not because the French work shorter hours that they have more time to spend preparing meals and eating. They’re busy, harried, working hard, and often running late—just like North American parents. But the big difference is that French parents choose to spend more time shopping, preparing meals, and eating—in spite of having the highest number of children per family of almost any wealthy country.

For Philippe, as for most French people, food can only be properly enjoyed if it is eaten slowly: the French love to savor their food and find it genuinely relaxing—even meditative—to take their time eating. But this was a message I didn’t really want to hear. After nearly nine months in France, I was deeply restless. I had moved our family to France in order to slow down, but I found that I wasn’t well suited to the “tranquil life.” Instead, I found myself enjoying the surprisingly fast aspects of French life. French trains run at several hundred miles per hour and are an amazingly efficient way of getting around. People speak quickly; I soon learned to add the word “lentement” (slowly) when asking people “Could you please repeat that?” The owner of the tiny café in our village took great pride in the speed with which the little espresso-style coffees would be served (putting to shame the pace at most Starbucks I’ve visited). The French even walk quickly; the first time I visited Paris, I was amazed at how the tiny Parisian women would outpace me, seemingly serene as they trotted past. Their chic, efficient walking style made me feel lumbering, large, and ungraceful—that is, until I ditched my bulky sneakers (which no self-respecting Frenchwoman would wear on city streets) for a wonderful pair of ballerina flats, which were as comfortable as slippers and could make even my feet seem small and elegant.

But the glacial pace of life in the village remained, for me, maddeningly slow. I spent too much time waiting in long lines at the market, the bakery, the post office, and the bank. There seemed to be endless paperwork every time we interacted with France’s famed bureaucracy. (To sign Sophie up for swimming lessons required three forms filled out in triplicate, a visit to the doctor for a medical certificate, two signed photos of the child, one signed photo of each of the parents, and a birth certificate.)

The slowest part of French daily life (and the hardest for me to handle) was mealtime. It wasn’t the amount of time spent cooking (the French spend, on average, forty-eight minutes per day cooking, while Americans spend just thirty, the least amount of time of any developed country). Rather, it was the amount of time spent eating (or, more accurately, sitting at the table) that I found hard to cope with.

Back home, I was used to eating lunch at my desk in five or ten minutes. I’d wolf down my breakfast if I had time, while rushing to get the kids ready for school. Dinner was similar—I’d try to gobble something down while the children were eating. We might spend fifteen minutes at the table—during most of which I’d be jumping up and down getting things the kids needed, wiping up spills, or managing sibling rivalry. Over the course of a day (including my treasured bedtime snack), I would spend, on average, fifty minutes eating. I’m a typical North American, it turns out. We spend just over one hour per day eating.

In contrast, the French spend more than two hours per day eating: fifteen minutes eating breakfast, just under an hour for lunch, and just over an hour for dinner. And this doesn’t include shopping, food preparation, or cleaning up. This length of time is very consistent; French people almost never wolf down their food or eat on the run. And they expect their children to behave the same way. After all, eating is social; more precisely, it is a social exchange, in which the most important conversations of the day take place (both at work and at home). So it’s no surprise that the French like to take their time.

If this was difficult for my kids, it was just as difficult for me. When we moved to France, I found it hard enough to sit at the table for an hour. Meals with our extended family were even longer: they might start at 12:30, but not finish until 2:30 or 3:00 P.M., or even later if guests were visiting (the family record was an Easter lunch that started at noon but didn’t finish until the last guest wobbled out the door at close to 7:00 P.M.). Christmas dinner started at 8:00 or 8:30 and finished well past midnight. Each of these meals felt like a marathon, as I fidgeted in my chair and surreptitiously checked the time. Volunteering for errands in the kitchen whenever I could didn’t win approval either; I was expected to sit still, just like everyone else.

Bit by bit, however, these long family meals began to grow on me. In part, I learned the art of “slow food” through watching my husband enjoy himself. It’s difficult for a foreigner to appreciate how much the French delight in these moments at the table. Even though he had left France as a young man, my husband still missed—even craved—these moments of true relaxation (détente) that arise during a long, delicious meal with good friends.

Their nonstop jokes certainly helped make longer mealtimes bearable, and some of the funniest ones were regularly recounted—like the first time Philippe’s friends visited our home for a meal—one of the first I had ever made for French invités. Everything went smoothly until the cheese course, when Olivier cut the first wedge of a local organic Camembert I had served, proudly proclaiming its virtues. In the midst of recounting yet another joke,