Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Adventures in American Cuisine

The Kitchen

The above picture is a snapshot of Belle-mère's kitchen. As you can see, everything is color coordinated. Her appliances are green. The paint is green. The special tiles with French coqs on them have some green feathers. And I'm not saying I don't like it, because I think it's great. It really makes you want to cook--and what's even more important, it makes you want to keep things clean during and after the cooking process!

Today Jube and I wanted to give a little gift to Belle-mère, who was slightly stressed out because she was expecting guests. What better gift is there than a hearty, American lunch? We went to Netto, the discount supermarket "à la française," and bought all of the ingredients to make the most American meal of all: hamburgers and baked beans. Before we left, I described the beans to the family. Here is the conversation (I spoke in French, of course!):

Gem: "They're brown beans in a sweet sauce."
Jube: "Brown? You mean, red."
Gem: "No, I mean brown."
Jube: "You mean péteux?"
Gem: "I guess you could say that... yeah, they're farter beans."

To add some flair to the simple meal, I fried up some onions and mushrooms to put on our hamburgers. The entire family agreed that it was very tasty, although "now we understand why it's easy to be fat in America."

They even liked the farter beans!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Were you able to find baked beans in the right sauce in the market or did you need to make your own sauce?

Gem said...

at Netto they actually have a pretty good international section, so I found Heinz baked beans in tomato sauce. It wasn't the best, but it was definitely authentic!

Margaret said...

Sounds like a fun day! Here from BE, I'll be back!