Passion Fruit :: Fruit de la Passion

People are always asking me what French food is like, how is French food, are you eating gourmet food everyday?  It's such a small question, but the answer would take forever to type.  There are already books and cooking shows that take hours and days to get through, I don't think that my sentence-long answer suffices.

can't have physicists explain quantum mechanics in one sentence

Of course, I'm eating differently here.  I'm not going to eat the same, boring meals I had in the USA when in the country of haute cuisine.  I feel like my meals in the USA can be summarized by several things: white rice, fruit snacks, 2% milk, ham sandwiches, and microwaved eggs.

the only thing that changed for my dinners was the time

Not that my dad and I didn't try to cook, and I'm not saying that that was all that we ate (except I totally am).  Neither of us though, are as dedicated as my host family is to cooking.  Maybe my mom is, but she cooks Chinese food, and that's like comparing apples to oranges.

I can't generalize my meals here.  I eat something new every week, if not day, if not hour.  Yesterday, I tried the comb on the head of a rooster, and maybe that's something you'd expect more in Asian cuisine than European, but in any case of your presumptions, it was good.  Tasted like bacon.

wrong animal, cat

I hadn't known how I would commence (I couldn't remember if that's a word in English until I googled it, and apparently it's pompous) describing my meals in France, for I feel like each one has a story.

I suppose now I can start with my host family's fruit basket.  It actually changes with the seasons, since my host mother detests the fruit of the supermarket with a passion.  There's no problem buying bananas from another country if they're in season all year long in Costa Rica anyways, but buying peaches from France in winter is a big no-no since they "taste like pesticides and water."

She only buys fruit from one lady, who has this grand greenhouse and has been a friend of the family for ages.  In France, they're friends with store owners, and in turn, the store owners give them their best products, and deals.  

Simple fruit is going to be something I'm going to miss a lot, actually.  I didn't appreciate fruit before, when my mom hacked up apples and pears for me "because they're healthy," but in France, where I eat an apple or a clementine for dessert, fruit are so much less forced.

NO.SHUT.UP

Being new to the whole idea of eating fruit just because they can taste good, I have no idea when they're ripe or not.  Yeah, there's the whole "duh, fruit are ripe when they're done being green, and -" WRONG.  Everyone is familiar, I hope with green apples and green grapes, but there're green grapefruits, peppers, and figs that sufficiently prove my point that I understand nothing about fruit, other than the time I had to learn in Biology that they're plant ovaries.

I've been eating plant baby-makers???

My host sister is more of a pro than I am.  She'll just squeeze a fruit and be like, "ope, not ripe," and I'm just staring at her like "HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?"  So far I've just taken it to be that fruit are ripe when they're wrinkly.

I've learned how to eat fruit properly here.  I wasn't a savage before, but apparently there's a posh way to eat an apple with a knife and a fork.  It's good to know for the future, if I ever have a dinner with my boss or something, but I think that if that were ever to pass, I'd just decline eating a fruit at all.

wait...that's not right

Anyways, I now know how to eat grapefruits with spoons.  I don't, since using a knife is easier, but at least I know.  I learned what a passion fruit was, before it was just the weird perfume of my mom's shampoo, and the weird flavor of yogurt.  Pineapples are tolerable in other situations than as a pizza topping.  Bananas that are overly ripe can be set on fire with rum and coated with sugar.

perfect