(no subject)
Since arriving in France, I've learned that my food vocabulary is not at all extensive. Show me a menu from an upscale restaurant, and I will probably be able to readily recognize a third of what's listed. With the various sauces and different ways of preparing things (Bernaise? Lyonnais? du pays? Gognelienne?), a simple dish like beef and rice looks completely foreign. However, I've managed to avoid catching any traces of food poisoning by sticking to safe items that are pretty hard to screw up, namely chicken and pasta. (While they do eat raw red meat here, they do not, as far as I know, consume uncooked chicken.) I also haven't ended up with anything on my plate that looks or tastes inedible. My streak of luck was broken today, though.
I went into the little supermarket down the street, where I spend $20 a week and have enough food to last me two. (Food is insanely cheap here. Water is 17 cents for one liter; a 3-pack of pasta is less than a dollar.) Most of the "snacky" foods that they have here are sweet and usually include chocolate. Normally you wouldn't hear me complain about that, but sometimes (especially around that time of the month), I need something savory with salt. So I ventured into the chip aisle to try to find potato chips or something similar. On the bottom shelf I saw a bag full of puffy-looking chips; I immediately equated them with Munchos from home (they looked to have the same texture) and grabbed them. I came back to my room tonight to make dinner and decided to have a few of the chips while I was waiting for my chicken to cook. The bag, I noticed, was labelled "Chips de crevettes," but I assumed that "crevettes" was a way of describing their airiness. Oh, no.
As soon as I opened the bag, I got a huge whiff of seafood. (Anyone who's seen me eat knows that I avoid all seafood like the plague.) It was like someone had air-packed the smell of seawater into my chip bag; I half-expected to hear seagulls. So I grabbed my dictionary and looked up "crevette" out of curiosity. Something to do with potatoes? No. A crevette is a shrimp. I bought a bag of shrimp-flavored air-puffed chips. They were only 46 cents, so it's not at all a huge loss. But I had no idea that shrimp chips existed. Who wants to eat a crunchy, dehydrated shrimp masquerading as a potato chip? I tasted one for the sake of being adventurous, and yeah, it tasted like shrimp. Mixed with oysters. ("Oyster oil" was in the ingredients list, too. I looked.) It wasn't mild, either; it was seafood on steroids. I threw the whole bag away and am planning to take out my garbage ASAP so my whole room doesn't smell like a barge. But fair warning, if you have a seafood allergy and ever come to France, don't buy any chips de crevettes. They look tasty, but you may land in the hospital.
I went into the little supermarket down the street, where I spend $20 a week and have enough food to last me two. (Food is insanely cheap here. Water is 17 cents for one liter; a 3-pack of pasta is less than a dollar.) Most of the "snacky" foods that they have here are sweet and usually include chocolate. Normally you wouldn't hear me complain about that, but sometimes (especially around that time of the month), I need something savory with salt. So I ventured into the chip aisle to try to find potato chips or something similar. On the bottom shelf I saw a bag full of puffy-looking chips; I immediately equated them with Munchos from home (they looked to have the same texture) and grabbed them. I came back to my room tonight to make dinner and decided to have a few of the chips while I was waiting for my chicken to cook. The bag, I noticed, was labelled "Chips de crevettes," but I assumed that "crevettes" was a way of describing their airiness. Oh, no.
As soon as I opened the bag, I got a huge whiff of seafood. (Anyone who's seen me eat knows that I avoid all seafood like the plague.) It was like someone had air-packed the smell of seawater into my chip bag; I half-expected to hear seagulls. So I grabbed my dictionary and looked up "crevette" out of curiosity. Something to do with potatoes? No. A crevette is a shrimp. I bought a bag of shrimp-flavored air-puffed chips. They were only 46 cents, so it's not at all a huge loss. But I had no idea that shrimp chips existed. Who wants to eat a crunchy, dehydrated shrimp masquerading as a potato chip? I tasted one for the sake of being adventurous, and yeah, it tasted like shrimp. Mixed with oysters. ("Oyster oil" was in the ingredients list, too. I looked.) It wasn't mild, either; it was seafood on steroids. I threw the whole bag away and am planning to take out my garbage ASAP so my whole room doesn't smell like a barge. But fair warning, if you have a seafood allergy and ever come to France, don't buy any chips de crevettes. They look tasty, but you may land in the hospital.