In France, fat makes an entrée.....

[lonetree1353]

On my yahoo home page this article appeared from the LA Times. I have just taken a short excerpt from it. It is titled "In France, fat makes an entrée". It is very sad to see another county's children succumb to the fast food industry and become overweight.

Excerpt:
"The average French person still spends 30 minutes a day cooking, according to a report by the research firm Euromonitor International, but that figure is rapidly falling.

And, if what emerged at a recent Weight Watchers meeting in a Paris suburb is true, more French women not only don't have time to cook, they don't know how.

Most of these Weight Watchers had come straight from work to the gathering in a restaurant in Le Raincy, a middle-class suburb about an hour's drive through miserable traffic from the center of Paris. After the typical round of confessions of one too many squares of chocolate and nibbles at the charcuterie, Patricia, the group leader, held up a set of white plastic measuring spoons and asked, "Does everyone know what this is?"

There were 30 women in the room and no one said a word."

[honeygirl1971]

It has been in the news a lot here about the rising rates of obesity and general excess weight in France. And the government has sponsored all kinds of PSA campaigns to educate people about nutrition, promote physical activity, and so on. So, I'm not disputing that fact that excess weight is becoming a health problem in France, as elsewhere, BUT the fact that supposedly no one at a Weight Watchers meeting piped up to say they recognized measuring spoons is in no way proof that "more French women not only don't have time to cook, they don't know how."

[mbrogier]

Maybe all the women "guesstimate" their measurements like their grandmamas and mothers did before them. I do it a lot unless it's a cake or pastry recipe that has to be very exact.

Honey, I just made an apricot Tian this week. It was eggs, almond meal, apricot/peach jam and cream poured on top of fresh apricots and baked like a cobbler. It is sooo good. I'm about to go eat some for dinner. Have you had this?

There's this new show on Food Lite called Have Fork Will Travel, and the Tian was on there. There wasn't a recipe, but there was a thread on Chowhounds of people trying to recreate the tian. I love French food like this.

I'd love to see what you eat in a week, Honey. I think it would give me a lot of inspiration.

[SugarNSpice]

and how many times have you sat in a room full of people where no one wants to be the first to speak...it can happen with the simplest of questions.

[honeygirl1971]

mbrogier, your apricot tian sounds DIVINE! I have never had anything exactly like you describe, but I have had both sweet and savory tians in restaurants. I have never made one myself, though! :o

I don't know that what I eat in a week would really be "inspiring," but I do try to take advantage of all the good things available here. And I've been learning to make some of the French classics as well. One thing that I've always heard about the French diet, and which I tend to believe, is that by using high quality, full-fat ingredients, you tend to be satisfied with smaller portions. So I usually don't skimp or substitute when recipes call for things like butter or cream, but I also don't eat gigantic portions. DH and I are both thin, so for now it seems to work for us. We eats lots of seasonal produce, too, which also helps. And a lot of the "fat" in my own cooking comes from olive oil, so even if it does contain fat calories, they are healthy fats. But that's nothing that people here don't know already!

I think you are right about the guesstimating, too. I brought measuring cups and spoons from the US when I moved here, because even in recipe books measurements tend to be very inexact (in a famous chef's book, I found measures like, "a mustard glass"!), and I rarely see measuring spoons or cups in stores. Also, people tend to weigh things here much more often than they measure them by volume in measuring cups.

[Terrie53]

When you're out with your friends, who wants to partake in a Q&A over measuring cups or spoons? It wouldn't be my choice when I am enjoying a glass of wine, appetizers and the company of good friends after a hard day at work.

When I think of France, I don't think of obesity. I think of great food, wine, culture, but not of people who don't know how to cook. That is just too strange.

[lonetree1353]

I never meant to give the implication that the French don't know how to cook. I just took the end of the article.

My neighbour is from France and is a fabulous cook and thin. I think if I was at the WW meeting and someone asked that question I wouldn't answer either.

[honeygirl1971]

lonetree, FTR, I wasn't criticizing you at all, just the article and the way it presented its "evidence." And it IS sadly true here that obesity is becoming a problem, even if it's not as serious as it is in the US yet. :(

[CompassRose]

Maybe all the women "guesstimate" their measurements like their grandmamas and mothers did before them. I do it a lot unless it's a cake or pastry recipe that has to be very exact.
That's what I was thinking, too.

Honey, I just made an apricot Tian this week. It was eggs, almond meal, apricot/peach jam and cream poured on top of fresh apricots and baked like a cobbler. It is sooo good. I'm about to go eat some for dinner. Have you had this?

There's this new show on Food Lite called Have Fork Will Travel, and the Tian was on there. There wasn't a recipe, but there was a thread on Chowhounds of people trying to recreate the tian. I love French food like this.
What? What thread? Link? Recipe to share? Please? Yum. :o

[mbrogier]

Here's the thread that has the recipe on it. I used the recipe that had 2 cups of almond meal, 4 eggs, 1 cup of jam and 1 cup of cream. I poured that over a pan full of fresh apricot halves, peel on. http://www.chowhound.com/topics/438925

[CompassRose]

Thank you. :p Actually, I took initiative and googled the thread up myself yesterday. I found the idea of the thing so seductive that I stopped after work and bought ingredients. I made the one with 1.5 cups almond meal, 1/2 cup cream and 3/4 cups jam -- used apricot jam with nectarines, since I was at the not-so-good grocery store and nectarines were the only decent-looking stone fruit they had.

That is one simple, yet decadent, dessert I must say. Really, really good. Mine was very "rustic" -- the almonds I used were unblanched, and I just ground them in a coffee grinder, so there was still a lot of texture. We quite liked that.