Give me liberty, or..COUGH! COUGH! COUGH!

Those of you who follow what's going on in France may be aware that smoking is going to be banned in all public places next year, although restaurants, bars and cafés will have until January 1st 2008 to comply.

There has been a lot of discussion on one of the expat forums about the subject. I started to post something there, and then it occurred to me that this was the perfect place to talk about it.

Several people link banning smoking to the idea of banning drinking. I say they are two separate issues. Yes, drinking can cause lots of problems. People get drunk and become horrible and dangerous. However, if you are drinking in a public place, you can't force ME to become drunk. If you are smoking in a public place, you CAN force me to breathe in your smoke. That is the major difference.

When I was a kid, my sister was asthmatic and we used to keep an oxygen tank in the house because she nearly died several times from attacks. One of the triggers for her asthma was smoking, so from the time I was born I lived in a smoke-free house. Now, this was the 50s, and it seemed like everyone except my parents smoked. No one ever seemed to mind that they couldn't smoke in our house however.

When I grew up, I decided that even though I didn't have asthma, I would keep the no-smoking tradition going. When JM and I got married, he thought it was a great idea and we only had a problem once or twice with visitors. Only one person ever stormed out of our house because he wasn't allowed to smoke, but he was a known jerk anyway.

My in-laws were shocked the first time they came to visit us. My MIL never smoked, but my FIL did. Still, he had no problem sitting on the terrace to smoke. My stepfather also smokes, but he even goes outside to smoke at his own house out of courtesy to my mother who still doesn't smoke.

When we used to come to visit the in-laws in Paris JM and I had to lock ourselves in our bedroom with the door closed just so we could breathe in the house. We would open the window, because the polluted air of Paris still smelled better than the smoke-filled air of that apartment. When we would get back to L.A., we would immediately dump all of our clothes in the laundry room for washing, because they stank so badly of stale tobacco smoke.

My FIL developed bladder cancer several years ago. He had to have his bladder removed and his life will never be the same because of that. The cancer was 100% linked to smoking, as bladder cancer is always linked to either smoking or exposure to certain chemicals. He no longer smokes.

It is everyone's decision as to whether they want to smoke or not. But I wonder why the question of "liberty" is only applied to the smoker's right to puff away and not to the non-smoker's right to breathe un-smoke-filled air? There are more non-smokers than smokers, so why should WE have fewer rights? Does that make any sense at all?

Ciao for now.

Randy

More on food

Possumworld reader, Andy, wrote this comment in response to yesterday's blog:

Sadly as an englishman you've hit the nail on the head there. I read your blog as my kiddies live in Chalabre and your blog gives me a flavour of what's going on around them, anyway back to the point, whan you look around my town you see so many fat, sallow faced kids and I compare them with mine(fresh faced and sparkling eyes,with maybe just a hint of bias!) I think I can sum up the difference with this small fact, from the centre of Chalabre you have to drive to Limoux for the nearest McDonalds(some 30 km's??), from the centre of my town there are 4 McDonalds within walking distance and a further 3 within a fifteen minute drive........draw your own conclusions!!

It is true that here, one needs to drive to either Limoux (25 km) or Pamiers (45 km) to get a "fix" of McDo's. Now, I have to admit this shameful fact: before moving here, JM and I had probably not eaten at a McDonald's in over 20 years, with the exception of buying a breakfast sandwich at an airport outlet because it was 6 am and NOTHING else was open except Starbucks. So, our choice was a supersweet pastry or McDonald's. Hard call.

Earlier this year, we went to meet someone in St. Gaudens and we had set the meeting up in a McDonald's parking lot because it was really easy for us to find each other. JM ate a burger and fries out of curiosity. He was not impressed, although he thought the burger part tasted better than what he remembered from long ago in California and he thought the French bakers hadn't quite grasped the concept of a hamburger bun. He said the one they used was more like a sweet brioche. I couldn't bring myself to eat anything, because it all looked as unpleasant as I remembered.

Still, the fact that the local McDo's are so few and far between does not make them empty. Far from it. The one in Pamiers often has a line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot on a Saturday afternoon! I have several friends who would rather eat there than at ANY other restaurant, and consider that or pizza as the perfect meal. This is usually the husband/child of the family, and the wife/mother is usually a bit despairing over the whole thing. However, they give in because they feel they don't have a choice.

I do know that when we were first married I almost never saw fat French people. That has definitely changed over the intervening years as McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut and all the other American fast food brands have become as familiar to the average Frenchman as they are in the States. And, we won't even talk about the fact that a coke was something that was a rare treat here and something NEVER to be drunk with a meal. I still remember the horror on my MIL's face when a visiting American friend drank one during dinner at a fine restaurant in Paris. She talked about it for years! (It wasn't me, I promise!!!)

So, I suppose the ready meal phenomon may not be far behind. I hope that France can hold out, but I wonder if it's possible? After all, most trends seem to work their way around the world eventually, some more rapidly than others... All we can do is try to fight a rear guard action.

Ciao for now.

Randy

Anti-food

While JM was in Paris, I wound up watching some TV programs that I wasn't sure would be of interest to him.

One of the things I watched was called FOOD FRENZY, and which was part of the MONEY serries on the BBC. There are two episodes (next one is next Friday) about the rise of ready meals and "smart foods." Last night's was the one on ready meals.

There was a fascinating, and slightly frightening, statistic offered up. The UK accounts for the purchase of half the ready meals consumed in Europe. That is a staggering amount of ready meals! They showed two families, one of which uses them three or four nights a week, the other one uses them for EVERY meal except holidays and special occasions. This second family recently got rid of their dining room table and they all only eat in the lounge in front of the television. They never actually eat meals together, nor the same food at the same meal.

I've always been impressed at the variety of ready meals I've seen here in France, but even at LeClerc or Carrefour, there isn't anywhere near the vast selection that they showed at Marks & Spencers. The quantity there was actually staggering. And, while on occasion I have purchased one or two of them here, they are more in the way of a treat, something to have rather than going out to eat as opposed to something we would have all the time.

They tried to convince the mother of the family to buy a sack of potatoes so that she could make her own mashed potatoes. The entire bag (maybe 2 kg worth) cost about the same as a single serving pre-made mashed potato thingy that just needed heating in the microwave. She wouldn't go for it, as it needed to be peeled, cooked, mashed, etc. Forget the money, she wanted speed and convenience.

There were interviews with various nutritionists, etc., and the conclusion is that many people in the UK are totally without the ability to cook anything other than these pre-packaged foods. There is even a "food bus" that is starting to go around the country to schools, etc., to teach children and their parents how to prepare meals.

The presenter from the program convinced "non-cooking-mom" to make a lasagna for her family from scratch. It took her and her husband over half-an-hour in the supermarket to even find the pasta section! They did manage to make the lasagna however, which took two hours from start to finish, as opposed to the normal 6 minutes in the microwave that they were all used to. Even the teenaged boys of the family admitted that it was far better than anything that they got out of a packet.

Still, cooking will remain an occasional exercise for that family because they don't want to be bothered on a regular basis.

It made me think of our own lifestyle here in France. I DO use my microwave, but it is mostly to cook things that I'm putting together myself from scratch, and is just a more energy efficient cooking method. I suppose it does take a bit more time to cook food from basic ingredients, but the satifaction is so high that it seems worth it. In fact, I sent a jar of my homemade plum-fig preserves to my MIL with JM. She called me 3 times to tell me how good they were, and the jar was gone by the time JM left yesterday morning.

Now, other than cleaning an preparing the fruit, it took me practically no time to make those preserves. Yes, I can buy really wonderful jams here and I do, but the satisfaction making those and having other enjoy them as well has no price.

It's really a shame that people don't take the time to figure out that you can make your own homecooked ready meals out of healthy, natural ingredients, which you can then freeze and zap in the microwave when you want them. Not too much hassle and oh so much better.

Ciao for now.

Randy

Sock it to me

With JM away in Paris, I thought it was a good time to go all "domestic." So, I did a bunch of cooking, cleaning and laundry. Yes, it sounds boring, I admit it.

The cooking was fun. I used the 5 kg of apples that we bought in Sonnac last weekend and made some divine apple compote. It was a lot of compote, but it is now all reposing happily in the freezer in the garage.

Then, I felt like making a meatloaf. We really are at the time of year when you want to start making comfort foods like meatloaf, soup, pot roasts and the like. Besides, I knew that JM would be happy to have cold meatloaf when he gets back.

Now, the laundry. That is far less interesting and fun. But, it has to be done, well it does if you don't want to offend all those around you. I do find it rather astonishing that a household of just two people can have so many dirty clothes, however.

At any rate, since the urge had come over me, I took full advantage of it and decided to wash all the washable blankets as well as everything else. I always find it nice to see them without dog hair for the relatively brief time that occurs after washing.

The last load was in the washer when I went down to the garage to pull everything out and put them in the dryer. Bad sign though, there were lots and lots of flashing lights on the machine. A general rule-of-thumb is that "flashing lights do not mean something good." This proved to be the case.

Besides the flashing lights were mysterious letters on the read-out screen (do washers actually NEED read-out screens?) that I had not seen before. So, up to the closet that houses the 10 billion manuals for every piece of equipment we have ever purchased, even if we no longer own the device. The problem was clear, I needed to clean out the filter.

Well, in a house with this much hair, that is not really a surprise. I went to pull the filter, following all the litltle instructions (I even turned off the machine as opposed to living dangerously), but other than spilling tons of water across the floor of the garage, there was no joy in sudsville. That sucker of a filter was NOT coming out and there was no way I was going to make it.

After about 20 minutes of struggle: me against the machine. I did what any rational woman would do, I gave up, figuring to get someone stronger to do it in the morning.

Luckily for me, I ran into super-plumber and wonderful friend, Christian Drouin while I was out walking Maggie this morning. After laying out the problem, he promised to stop over and help me out. We all laughed at "the culprit" who was putting on her best, "What'd I do?" look of innoncence.

Christian and helper Jean-Paul stopped by about an hour ago, and I felt much better to see that even they had trouble getting that filter out. When the finally did, what was the cause of all this tsuris? Was it dog hair? No, it was not!!! It was a pink sock that had gone missing over a week ago! How it had made its way through the little holes in the machine, I do not know, but there it was, all wrapped around the filter. Not all that pink anymore either, I have to admit, and I suppose that I can now throw away its lonely brother which has been hanging around waiting for it to be found.

I did get a look of disgust from the canine, who thinks that I was way too quick to rush to judgement. So, to her, I apologize. And, to the sock I say, good-bye.

Ciao for now.

Randy