107. Missing the blues
August 13, 2011
The other day I had to walk into my local fromagerie and announce that cheeses made with lait cru are off the menu for the next few months. As the French believe that cheese made with anything but lait cru (unpasteurised milk) isn’t actually cheese, this can seriously damage the close relationship one has spent some years building up with one’s fromager. I am collating French responses to this bizarre Anglo-Saxon concept (of which nobody this side of the Channel has ever heard) of abjuring soft cheese during pregnancy. They tend to follow a set pattern:
- Quoi?!
- Mais quelle absurdité!
- Et quelle insulte à la cuisine française!
The response tends to become one of genuine affront at the idea that a French cheese could ever contain something so nasty and so plebeian as a listeria bug.
The next step is to offer possible excuses or ways of getting around this unfortunate piece of medical high-handedness. Amongst the ingenious responses offered:
- the most important thing in pregnancy is to eat well! (ie, plenty of brie and camembert, suggested the fromagère)
- just cut off the rind, that’s where all the bacteria will be
- if you’ve grown up eating cheese made from lait cru, there’s no way you could ever catch a bug from it
- no French person has ever developed listeria from cheese anyway
- as well, of course, from the classic response from all Frenchwomen surveyed so far: I ate it all through my (two, four, seventeen) pregnancies and never had a moment’s trouble…
When one is seriously craving a good chunk of forme d’Ambert, fougerus, St-Marcellin or well-matured chèvre, these intriguing manifestations of French logic can seem strangely persuasive.
Thus far, I remain an uptight and rule-bound Anglo-Saxon.* But it’s going to be a long month.
One French tradition I believe we will respect, however, is that of the unofficial baptism, carried out at the celebration that follows the official one: the lips of the infant are brushed, first with a finger dipped in champagne, and then with a cut clove of garlic. Thus will she grow up to be a true (honorary) Frenchwoman, properly appreciative of good food and good wine.
*Ok, I did have one mouthful of the fougerus. It was the best thing I’ve tasted in 21 weeks.
August 13, 2011 at 8:59 pm
That does sound like a good tradition. You should also have a veteran knitter put a pair of knitting needles into her hands, I hear.
August 13, 2011 at 10:00 pm
I love that tradition! Appreciating good food is very, very important. However, as someone who has gone through life at ease with my lack of knitting, I’m not so sure about the ‘veteran knitter’ tradition.
August 15, 2011 at 12:26 pm
How wonderful! Perhaps by number seventeen you could risk it!