Things I miss from home

1. Whole Foods.  Being gluten and dairy free in France is utterly miserable.  There’s just no way around it.  Not only is there barely anything left for me to eat, I have to watch all of the world’s most delicious pastries, bread, and “café crèmes” being enjoyed all around me every day.
2. Sitting on the toilet.  Seat covers, ha!  If you even find a toilet with a seat on it at all you are lucky.  Many toilets just have the bowl.  And, unless it were a dire emergency and I spent several minutes cleaning it and covering it with paper, I would not even think of sitting.  But my quads look great!
3.  Ziploc bags.  Sorry, it is not earth friendly to even think about using plastic bags, but sometimes there is nothing like a Ziploc bag with the little plastic zipper on it.  Plastic bags (and wrap) in France are simply useless.  They are so thin that they rip as you are trying to open them up, let alone put something in them.  This is true for trash bags too.  Speaking of trash bags, I miss drawstrings.  Trash bags in France have not improved since I lived here 17 years ago.  They come in rolls and each thin little bag has a thin little plastic string hanging off the bottom of it to tie the bag when you want to close it.  You can only really fill a trash bag about half full or you’ll rip it as you gather the top together and tie it.  And, there is an art to gathering the bag up, twisting it, holding it tight with one hand, ripping the string off the bottom with the other hand and tying it while keeping all the trash inside.
4. Getting things right.  My French is pretty good.  In fact, a sales woman told me yesterday that she’d be in heaven if her English were as good as my French because she is going to the States for Christmas.  However, my French has a lot of room for improvement.  Perhaps it’s not just the language, but the culture too, but I don’t get what I want a significant portion of the time.  Maybe it’s only 10-20% of the time, which sounds good, but if you want to get even 10 things done in a day, you’ll get something wrong every day.  Just yesterday alone, for example, I bought some toilet paper, got home and found out I had paper towels.  Unfortunately, paper towels are not much scratchier than toilet paper in France, but even so, I had to make a second trip to the store to get it right.  Last night I got an extra salad with my dinner that already came with a salad.  Yesterday afternoon, I told a guy that my dog likes to “coward” (lâche) instead of “lick” (leche).  He smiled and corrected me.  At the time, I hoped that I hadn’t said something profane in front of his toddler.  It’s all funny and sweet, but it gets old quickly, when you can’t communicate and when you have to spend a day or even days doing things that take minutes at home.
5.  Food that I like.  After cutting out gluten and dairy, the choices that are left comprise mostly of French fries, eggs, meat and vegetables.  Actually, the fries in France are fantastic—freshly cut potatoes prepared on site—but that is about the only starch I can eat (rice is rare) and I am not only tired of them but am hoping I don’t turn into a balloon and have a heart attack.  As far as meat goes, it is red, red, and more red.  I don’t usually eat red meat for cholesterol reasons (and because I don’t like it so much), but it is hard to avoid.  First of all, I am definitely not the gourmet meat eater, especially meat that is all fat—no thank you for pâté, sausages, prosciutto, and absolutely positively no raw beef tartar.  Out of sheer boredom with (yes, ham) omelets, I have eaten more steaks here in two months than I have over the past five years at home.  They are actually pretty good and I am developing a taste for them, but again, I worry about my cholesterol eating steak and fries (and eggs) too often.  The French seem to offer chicken and fish, for variety, but it is certainly not a mainstay.  I have discovered that when you order fish, you have to not be hungry because it is invariably an extremely light meal.  They serve a tiny portion of fish and a tiny portion of light vegetables and that is it.  If you can’t eat the accompanying bread and you opt out of fatty red meat as an appetizer, you leave hungry ($30 later).  The chickens in France seem to be just as skinny as the French people.  There is not much meat on a chicken breast and it is generally not tender enough to cut with a fork.  The brasserie favorite is rotisserie chicken with fries.  The chicken, being dry, is usually served with sauce.  Being gluten free, I have to ask for no sauce and dry tough chicken with fries can be hard to swallow.  That wouldn’t be insurmountable if you could get the waiter to bring you a glass of water. 
6. Water.  Yes, just plain old water.  You have to beg, almost apologize, for asking for free tap water here.  (The tap water is perfectly drinkable and tastes fine, by the way.)  And you’re lucky if you actually get it.  When you do, it literally arrives in a shot glass sized glass—one or two sips max.  I’ve even gotten over paying for water just so I can have some to drink.  The first thing I do when sitting down is to order a large bottle of sparkling water for the table.  With the three of us (and no sauce for me), we go through the bottle pretty quickly.  It is so hard to get a waiter’s attention after your food has been served, that we invariably get through the second half of the meal with nothing to drink.  We’ve considered asking for two large bottles up front.  Perhaps I could trade in a salad.  All that said, while most people go to France to enjoy the fine dining, I grin and bear the restaurant experience.  If only I liked cooking more!
7.  Cooking.  I actually do like cooking, but more for fun than for sustenance.  When I do cook for sustenance, I like it to be easy.  The French don’t cook for sustenance; they cook for dining pleasure.  Even when I cook for sustenance, I like to have good quality food—organic and healthy.  The food in the “super” markets (quotes on super because they are miniscule) is not very good.  To get decent food, you have to go to a separate specialized store for each item you want.  This can take all day, especially when you learn that many of the stores close in the middle of the day.  When you’re cooking for a fine dinner with guests, it can be fun to spend the entire day shopping, but when it’s just to feed three hungry people, it is not quite the same experience.  At home, I cook a lot of chicken, fish, vegetables, and rice.  As I said, chicken is not as easy to come by here.  In the markets, you can find “extra thin” pieces of chicken and turkey to fry up in a pan.  That is actually very easy and I do it often, but again, it is not a very large meal.  They sell individual slices so you’d have to buy three to make a real meal for the family (and it’s cheaper to eat out).  As for fish, there is a great fish market not too far away, but when I got salmon for two, I walked away over 40€ ($50) lighter.  I did cook for fun recently and made a gluten free chocolate cake.  And it did take an entire day.  I went to several stores to find vanilla extract and ended up with vanilla flavored sugar instead (having enlisted the help of both a French shopper and an employee).  I had to ask for help to find baking soda because it was not near the baking ingredients, but rather near the mustard and salt (second store).  I gave up looking for chocolate chips for the frosting and ended up melting down a precious chocolate bar I had brought from Whole Foods at home.
8. Deli meat.  If only I liked ham and sausages.  There are about a hundred varieties of those in almost any store, including super markets.  The butchers don’t sell sliced chicken or turkey.  The super markets do, but it comes in packages of (I’m not kidding) two slices and it is the quality of baloney. 
9.  Cold water.  I’m not a big ice person, so I don’t mind drinking water without it, but I do like it cold.  Sparkling water, in particular, really has to be cold for me to enjoy it.  I don’t know if French people keep their refrigerators set on “1” or what, but when you get “cold” sparkling water here, it may be just below room temperature.  Occasionally, a nice establishment will throw a couple of ice cubes into your glass for your enjoyment.  This holds true for all drinks.  We ordered margaritas from the best rated Mexican restaurant in Paris and they literally had two small ice cubes floating on top of warm margaritas.  Ah, yes, I miss margaritas and Mexican food.
10. Friends.  Elizabeth is so sick of talking to her parents all summer long that she has resorted to being plugged into headphones and an electronic device at all times.  I have to yell at her to even get her attention to turn it off and have a conversation.  She’ll complain vigorously, making me out to be the most awful mother on earth.  The labored conversation usually lasts for a minute at best before she starts looking back down at her device and trying to sneak it on.  John and I are also running low on scintillating conversation material.  And, we have so many topics to avoid, like the bank...