Not a big bread eater myself, I’m intrigued by the attachment that the French have to their daily baguette. Don’t get me wrong—it tastes very good, and it’s inexpensive and filling. For only about a euro ($1.29), this is one of the most common and tastiest foods in all of France; and people line up at their favorite neighborhood boulangeries to get them every day. You see people munching on them as they walk down the streets; babies in strollers are even picking up this daily habit. And no one, it seems, sits down to lunch or dinner without their baguette—even when they’ve chewed off the end while they walked home.
Although I can get a smaller size baguette from the corner boulangerie than the one you commonly see people carrying down the street, unfortunately, living alone—I can’t eat the whole thing in one sitting. Though it will not be totally stale by the next day, I still can’t finish it; and it definitely will be stale on the third day. (It’s probably against some French law to not eat the whole baguette at one meal.) When we ate a lot of sandwiches on our 2002 Village Europe tour (made with baguettes, of course), my mouth actually became sore from the hard crusts.
So until my pal, Suz, gets here on Saturday, I must make do with a small wrapped loaf from the local Monoprix. And believe me, I sneak it down the street and into the apartment before anyone sees me!
