One of my biggest pet peeves in restaurants is seeing the words 'haricots verts' on a menu that is otherwise in English. For those of you who do not parlez francais, this translates in to... green beans. If they are going to pick random words to write in French, why not do the whole menu? Why didn't they call their potatoes 'pommes de terre', which is at least more lyrical since it literally means 'earth apples'.
It's no secret that American restaurants, and American culture in general, use bits and pieces of French to seem more fancy, more cultured. To make green beans seem luxurious. And while reflecting over meals that week, I realized that has been a benefit to us.
We don't have a lot of money to spend over here. We try to get by for cheap, especially compared to European classmates who don't pay much for tuition and receive subsidies or sponsorships. Yet I still feel like we eat royally. This week, with Margaret gone, I have been getting by largely on bread and cheese and sausage, with some fruits and vegetables. But that means baguettes, and French cheese, and produce bought from a real French market! Maybe a pain au chocolate for dessert!
Since we are actually in France, these are staples of the diet, and can be found rather cheaply. Baguettes are 95 cents, pain au chocolate is 1.10. We only buy wine under 5 euros, which encompasses half the selection at the store. But since our American minds have been trained to think of anything French as fancy, the cheap stuff excites every night.
So that's nice. Almost nice enough to make me stay calm when I see haricots verts on the menu when I get back to the States.
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