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Posts from the ‘France’ Category

Nov 3

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No. 35: French Idioms: Fruits et Legumes

Steve Martin, Good Cop, Bad Cop, The Pink Panther, 2006

Steve Martin, Good Cop, Bad Cop, The Pink Panther, 2006

“Bizu: And now he’s pushing up the daisies.

Inspector Jacques Clouseau: He is not ‘pushing up the daisies,’ he is DEAD!

Bizu: (glares) It’s an idiom!

Inspector Jacques Clouseau: You, sir, are the idiom.”

Steve Martin and William Abadie, The Pink Panther, 2006

I’ve just started an intensive French course, so don’t be surprised if November’s post are a bit heavy on new vocabulary and sayings. Today our class spent the afternoon learning about French idioms, particularly those with references to food. Et bien sûr, le French adore eating and cooking so it only makes sense that their language is flavored with the stuff meals are made of…

…here are some of my favorites:

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J’ai la pêche! I feel great! (I have the peach; I’m peachy)

Couper la poire en deux: to meet someone halfway; (to cut the pear in two)

Sucrer les fraises: to be a bit nutty; (to sugar the strawberries)

Se prendre une prune: to take a punch/hit, or get a speeding ticket; (to take a plum—perhaps the purple skin resembles a bruise?)

Tomber dans les pommes: to faint/pass out; (to fall in the apples)

Avoir la banana: to have a big smile; (to have the banana)

Etre la bonne poire: to be easily tricked/duped, to be too trusting (to be a good pear- ripe for the picking)

Avoir un coeur d’artichaud: to be tender-hearted, to fall easily in love; (to have the heart of an artichoke)

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Appuyer sur le champignon: to drive very fast, speed, accelerate; (to press on the mushroom)

Raconter des salades: to tell lies or exaggerated stories; (to tell salads)

Ne plus avoir un radis: to have no money, to be broke; (to no longer have any radishes)

Les carottes sont cuites: it’s all over, nothing more can be done; (the carrots are cooked)

Mon petit chou: a term of endearment; (my little cabbage)

 

Nov 1

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No. 34: Salon du Chocolat

As we are running off for homemade Thai food tonight, I am leaving you with a few scrumptious pictures of how I spent the day….completely overwhelmed by chocolate! Stay tuned for the story tomorrow. Bonne dégustation!

Vocabulaire:

Bonne dégustation! Happy (good) tasting!

Nov 1

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No. 33: Last Minute Finds

IMG_4058It’s not always easy to find the missing ingredients from your homeland in France. Sometimes it can take weeks or months to track something down when you’re desperate for a piece of home.  But tonight was an exception to the rule. Cet automne, j’ai du pain sur la planche with so many different and exciting things, that I didn’t even remember until last night that today America is celebrating Halloween.

Halloween on the metro….
…zombies et un diable…BOO!

Most Frenchies don’t observe Halloween. It’s not part of their history. Toussaint, tomorrow, is their holiday, and a pretty serious one at that. So when ma fille cadette came home from rehearsal for her Sondheim showcase tonight, and announced, “No one even acknowledged that today was Halloween,” I felt a little pang of regret. Even though Button is halfway to 18, I know she misses the fun and high spirits of dressing up, trick-or-treating, and being a teen in America.

So because I’m a good maman, while she was showering and changing, I ran out with Taz, and thought I’d take a chance on finding some Halloween candy for her to share with the cast ce soir. Et, voilà au marché d’à côté, on the highest shelf, sat one lone box of miniature-sized American candy! Quelle chance! That never happens in Paris.IMG_8452

A burly Russian tourist stood on his tiptoes and knocked it from the shelf and into my grateful hands.

Alors, happy Halloween à tous!

Vocabulaire

 à tous: to all

au marché d’à côté: at the market next door

ce soir: this evening

Cet automne j’ai du pain sur la planche: This autumn, my plate is full, literally “the bread is on the board”

ma fille cadette: my younger daughter

marché d’à côté: market next door

Quelle chance! What luck!

Toussaint: All Saints’ Day

Oct 30

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No. 32: Blue-and-White Stripes

One of the many happy surprises of our p’tit week-end down south was our encounter with stripes. I was thrilled to see that particular French cliché alive and well and wandering the streets of Marseille. En fait, les rues were bursting with stripes. Once we saw our first friend dressed in stripes, we started to see them everywhere. It was good fun stalking and photographing the best stripes, turning into un jeu du chat et de la souris. The cat holding the camera while the mice scurried through town.

The more blue-and-white stripes I saw, the more I wanted to learn the history behind the stripes. I always associated the stripes with the French sea and it turns out that the striped shirt was indeed part of the official uniform of the French Navy. The theory was that if there were a “man over board” he would be more easily spotted among the waves and brought to safety if he was wearing stripes. Originally the uniform had 21 stripes, each one symbolizing one of Napoleon’s victories. At the time the uniform was conceived, the majority of the French Navy was located in Brittany, so the shirt became known as the “Breton”.

The “Breton” became popular with the non-military crowd once Coco Chanel, enamored with the sailing shirt, made it part of her fashion line for the modern woman. By the early 1930s the blue-and-white stripes were considered haute couture, and in the decades that followed, the “Breton” featured prominently in French cinema and Hollywood’s motion pictures, until it reached a sort of iconic status.

Today in Marseille you see mostly blue-and-white stripes, with a healthy handful of red-and-white ones thrown in…such a playful break from the black-on-black of Par-ee!

If you haven’t already seen Audrey Tautou in Coco Before Chanel, take a look at this teaser. Moi, j’adore ce film! Maybe you will like it too.

Vocabulaire:

En fait, les rues…  in fact, the streets…

Moi, j’adore ce film! Me, I adore/love this film.

un jeu du chat et de la souris: a game of cat and mouse

 un p’tit week-end: long weekend get-away (literally a small weekend)

Oct 30

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No. 31: Savon de Marseille

IMG_8425I love the world famous soap from Marseille. The authentic product is made from vegetable oils, mostly olive oil, and must contain 72 percent oil to be stamped as savon de Marseille.

Marseille and Provence have been associated with soap making since the 16th century. According to The Insiders Guide to the Most Beautiful Part of France, “in 1900, 60 percent of the population was involved in soap-making in some capacity and records from 1908 state that the city then had 81 factories producing 140,000 tons (308 million pounds) of soap a year.” That’s a tremendous amount of soap!

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Being crazy for color, I love to look at the colorful displays of soap found at every market in Marseille and Provence, but as far as washing up, I go for the natural miel et citron. With no artificial colors or dye. It smooths and nourishes and smells heavenly to boot…

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Vocabulaire

savon de Marseille: soap from Marseille

miel et citron: honey and lemon

 

Oct 28

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No. 30: Marseille

IMG_8137When Superman first decided we were going to Marseille for un p’tit week-end, I was a bit skeptical. But since he was planning and paying, I decided to just go with it…come what may. After all, my only experience with Marseille was a 4-day homestay in high school when my shockingly mature and impossibly gorgeous chain smoking host sister talked me in to cutting off most of my hair and buying a very expensive pair of pink and black striped pirate pants.

But during the month leading up to our visit, whenever I told my friends (both French and foreign) we were headed to Marseille, most of them asked, “Why?” and several told me, “Ce n’est pas une belle ville. C’est dangereux!” They wondered if I knew about all the crime in the city and was a prepared to fend off the pickpockets.

Feeling a bit discouraged I decided to checked my two “go-to” France guidebooks: Rick Steves’ FRANCE 2009 and Fedor’s FRANCE 2014. Turns out Rick doesn’t even mention Marseille, France’s second largest city, at all (at least in the 2009 version), and Fedor’s 800+ page book only gives the city seven pages, three of which list hotels and restaurants. What the heck??

So I went with very low expectations this past weekend and sadly, upon arrival the city seemed to match those expectations. On first appearance Marseille was gritty, dirty, poor, crowded, and loud, very, very loud. It reminded me of some cities we have visited in Egypt or Israel. Vibrant, but a little sketchy, dingy and rundown.

But within a day, the city began to grow on me because, frankly, Marseille is the real deal, not the cleaned up and polished deal, you find in Paris.

As a port city Marseille was heavily bombed during WWII and then rebuilt in the 1950, serving as an entrance for millions of immigrants during the ‘50s and ’60. There are French citizens from many different cultures, particularly North Africans, mostly Algerians. Refreshingly the people of Marseille come in all different shapes, sizes and colors. There was a lot of smiling going on, while at the same time wizened looks of lives intensely lived. The population looked genuine. No living in a bubble going on there. It seemed to me like hardship combined with ease, the residents taking life in stride.

I absolutely loved the colors of Marseille, from the clothing and cars, to the hair and jewelry and the shoes and the skin. The beautiful Mediterranean backdrop compliments it all.

It’s an active city with lots of runners, cyclists, volleyball clubs and, of course, sailors. The beaches aren’t filled with tourist, but rather local families playing silly games with their children in the surf. People say, “Excuse me,” when they collide. Even the waiters were friendly and kind (always a bonus in France).

I’m so very glad we went.

Bravo Superman and listen up all you travel writers: Marseille is guidebook worthy. Give it another go!

Vocabulaire

Ce n’est pas une belle ville. C’est dangereux! It’s not a nice city. It’s dangerous.

un p’tit week-end: a long weekend get-away 

Oct 27

2 Comments

No. 29: Autumn Colors in Provence

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