(Lengthy post. I know, I know.)
Sometime in my junior year in high school I decided to follow a pescetarian diet. I continued with it for about four years until one evening, at dinner, in my second year at Smith. It was October 31, 2011 and I had mistaken a tray of beef teriyaki for something vegetarian. Well, I was disgusted, but it kind of fit in perfectly with my plan. I had already calculated that I should start introducing meat into my diet the year before I went to Paris for JYA, so that an all-inclusive French diet, including pork, beef, some lamb and veal, wouldn't be a total shock to my system.
For a year leading up to my year abroad I had not only began eating meat (chicken mostly) somewhat reluctantly, but I had also started educating myself on French fare. Not your typical traditional french cuisine though, but rather the local flavors about which my favorite American-expat bloggers were writing. I wanted a taste for the culture, instructions on how to behave, know proper etiquette. But I also wanted les bonnes addresses... Restaurants and shops that sold the best of whatever they had to offer. Every euro counted and I didn't want to spend my money on tourist traps that I would sullenly walk away from, feeling ripped off and discontent.
A whole bunch of blog reading prepared me well. I arrived to Paris with a tiny notebook filled with the best patisseries, boulangeries, Japanese restaurants, some museums and jardins, but mostly cafés (and very few actual French restaurants.. too expensive!) Arranged by neighborhood, I filled the pages in weekly all during the length of my stay. Every time I would ask a friend out to lunch I would first consult my notebook and pick out one or two places that we could try. (You always need a back up. Always! Places close unexpectedly or sometimes they aren't what you pictured.)
Essentially, food is how I found my way around Paris. In the beginning the neighborhoods were indiscernible. I was missing that "feeling" of direction that I have when I wander around Manhattan... That sort of sixth sense that lets me know which way north is, which way is the quickest way to a decent latte and which way will bring me to the cleanest public bathroom. Food adventures kept me walking around, kept me exploring so that I ultimately gained this sense and designated "feelings" or "moods" to each of the arrondissements based on the food experiences I had in each one of them.
In the 4th is where you can get some decent falafel. But never on Mondays.. and sometimes not on Saturdays either. The sixth has one of the best cafés for hot chocolate. Hands down. The sixteenth has nothing. Really. The first is where I ate many dinners because the Japanese restaurants provide a cheap but hardy meal.
The way I orientated myself in this foreign city was through food. The way I practiced my French. Rehearsing each line in my head before I entered the store until one day I was able to chat freely, without a script, to the servers. At some point I even helped some tourists translate the menu and kept the waiter from bringing them pork. Other times, too frequently, I repeatedly had to execute the same phrase, twisting my pronunciation every which way, so that the server could finally understand me. Food challenged me. Food is how I escaped from feeling like a foreigner to feeling like someone who didn't care if they belonged, just so long as got access to as much food as I could before leaving Paris.
Forgetting my vegetarianism was the best thing I could have done for myself. I was able to unabashedly try all of my host mother's dishes, eat blood sausage over a crepe and experience real French cuisine no matter the ingredients. Food made me conquer Paris geographically and it also helped me understand the culture and the subtle differences in French regional cuisine.
I took this course on food writing because I had spent the past year dreaming about food, and sometimes writing about it too. I had read so many blogs on French food and lists of "the best" in Paris, that I wanted to make food, as a subject, be more than just a selfish endeavor. Food is about more than pleasure, and food writing is where this is actualized. From all the writing we read this semester, from restaurant reviews, to New Yorker articles to actual cookbooks, I became intimate with another use of food. Though I've never been one to view food as simply practical, I've come to learn how academic food can be (but you can leave the academic voice at home!)
The subject of food isn't silly. It can be a means to communicate a personal story as well as divulge the truth of a time period, a company, a society or a way of life. Food deserves further consideration than the quick inspection we give to the nutritional content on food packaging. Food enters our daily life and reflects our choices, behaviors and beliefs.
My relation with food has been more telling than I would have ever imagined. However, I also realize that food has broader implications that extend beyond what it says about me. It is the possibility to learn more about an entire culture or population through food that I've now drawn my attention to.
-Stacey Ladusch
This is one of my dreams, to wander around Paris dipping in and out of cafes and boulangeries. Too bad my French is limited to one semester of intro... let me know if you need a travel buddy to explore it again!
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