Mussels, Brown eggs, Christmas.
As you can all see from the above title, I have finished a lovely meal, appropriately accompanied with the necessary liquids.
Actually, it is very simple. As I was calmly eating, a couple of adverts on the TV screen attracted my attention, and set my mind to wandering even more than normally.
Did you know, for example, that here in France, you will NEVER see white hen's eggs on sale in shops? Might be racist, but they don't exist! All hen eggs are more or less brown. When a French person sees white eggs in a shop or a market stall, abroad, he takes it for granted that these are either Duck or Goose eggs! Strange isn't it? White eggs do, I think, exist, but are onlysold/traded with inside of certain sales associations, like dry soup/sauce producers, who only want the egg yolk anyway, or within the patisserie trade, where a lower quality/lower priced egg is required for sponge mixes/quiche mixtures/meringue preparations etc.
Now you know - don't look for white eggs on holiday in France, and don't beleive that brown eggs are of better quality, either, because they are not!
Another thing which came to mind whilst watching TV at lunch-time, was the fact that in Belgium (where the "National" dish is mussels with pommes frites/bread, consumed in hundreds/thousands of tonnes annually) there are actually no mussel beds!
Apparantly all the mussels consumed in Belgium are imported! My god, sounds like the British "fish & chips" redeems itself a little (after all - the fish is caught in British waters, I think!!)even if nowadays it is generally served with curry sauce!
Which brings me to Christmas, which has started everywhere. After all, mussels/oysters etc will be eaten as usual this year, but now I know that they won't come from Belgium!
And I will now carry on to provide you with the hair raising account of a Christmas Eve passed by millions of French, every year, for centuries!
DON'T FORGET THERE WILL BE SOME PHOTOS OF NOEL ON THIS BLOG LATER INTO THE SEASON!!
Actually, it is very simple. As I was calmly eating, a couple of adverts on the TV screen attracted my attention, and set my mind to wandering even more than normally.
Did you know, for example, that here in France, you will NEVER see white hen's eggs on sale in shops? Might be racist, but they don't exist! All hen eggs are more or less brown. When a French person sees white eggs in a shop or a market stall, abroad, he takes it for granted that these are either Duck or Goose eggs! Strange isn't it? White eggs do, I think, exist, but are onlysold/traded with inside of certain sales associations, like dry soup/sauce producers, who only want the egg yolk anyway, or within the patisserie trade, where a lower quality/lower priced egg is required for sponge mixes/quiche mixtures/meringue preparations etc.
Now you know - don't look for white eggs on holiday in France, and don't beleive that brown eggs are of better quality, either, because they are not!
Another thing which came to mind whilst watching TV at lunch-time, was the fact that in Belgium (where the "National" dish is mussels with pommes frites/bread, consumed in hundreds/thousands of tonnes annually) there are actually no mussel beds!
Apparantly all the mussels consumed in Belgium are imported! My god, sounds like the British "fish & chips" redeems itself a little (after all - the fish is caught in British waters, I think!!)even if nowadays it is generally served with curry sauce!
Which brings me to Christmas, which has started everywhere. After all, mussels/oysters etc will be eaten as usual this year, but now I know that they won't come from Belgium!
And I will now carry on to provide you with the hair raising account of a Christmas Eve passed by millions of French, every year, for centuries!
DON'T FORGET THERE WILL BE SOME PHOTOS OF NOEL ON THIS BLOG LATER INTO THE SEASON!!
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