What do French women eat during the day. What do the French eat?

France is known for its beautiful language, cozy cities, gorgeous beaches and delicious food. Food in France is a cult thing. It is believed that there are 2 great cuisines in the world: classic French and Chinese. Whether you agree with this statement or not is up to you. And in this article we will look at the features of French cuisine, what any tourist should definitely try, 10 interesting and tasty dishes and 12 useful tips so as not to hit the plate with your face.

Average cost of a meal in a French restaurant– 16 euros.
Full meal for one person with a glass of wine– 35 – 45 euros.

French breakfast - le petit déjeuner

The traditional breakfast in France is not intricate. The French eat a baguette with butter and jam/cheese/pâté, a croissant or bagel, or cereal for breakfast. Dessert is fruit. As you can see, the dishes on the morning menu are not too varied. From drinks - orange juice, tea, coffee or hot chocolate.

French lunch - le déjeuner

In many places in France, lunch is served from 11:30 to 13:00. As a rule, travelers dine later and sometimes face the fact that they are refused to be served. Like, the guys came late, they ate everything. If you are late with lunch, then head to a self-service restaurant, where you have a better chance of eating.

A traditional French lunch consists of:

starter: salad, soup or puree soup, pate and cold appetizers;
main course: meat or fish with potatoes, rice, pasta or vegetables for garnish;
cheese plate and/or dessert.

Often the dessert is not listed on the menu and you have to listen to the suggestions of the waiter. For dessert, French restaurants serve fruit, jams, ice cream, rarely pastries, you can press everything on top of coffee.

Dinner in French - le diner

The French have dinner between 19:30 and 20:45. TV channels adjust the start of their main evening TV shows to start at 20:45 - 21, when everyone has dinner.

For dinner in France, they eat lighter dishes - vegetables, soups, etc.

The simplest and most important advice that I give to everyone, regardless of which country a person goes to - eat where the locals eat. Usually, in France, they have lunch from 12 to 13 hours, and dinner from 20 to 21. I understand that you are on vacation and do not want to be tied to a strict schedule, but you will find the largest selection of dishes in restaurants at this time. Tourist establishments make concessions, but I do not recommend tourist restaurants to anyone - they are always more expensive and often less tasty.
Grab a business lunch. In case you don't know, this is a fixed lunch menu. You are given a choice of several sets of dishes. Each set usually includes 2 courses and a dessert. In France they are called "le Menu du jour". Business lunches are a great way to get acquainted with French cuisine without overpaying.
If you want to dine like a real Frenchman, then you are supposed to drink an aperitif first, usually wine or a Kir cocktail (dry white wine and blackcurrant liqueur).
Bread- an integral part of the French table. The French won't start eating without a good fresh baguette.
But you will not find on the table paper napkins. The French use exclusively fabric. They pick them up under the tablecloth. Napkins are important too!
The more it stinks cheese- the better it is.
The French use knives while eating, not only to cut off a piece of steak, but also to push the food from the plate onto the fork. So a knife is a must, as is the bread, as is the cheese sandwich at the end of the meal.
Butter slightly salted in France.
In France, a slightly different understanding of the word "dessert" than in the rest of the world. Don't expect to be served éclair au chocolat, choux à la crème, or Paris-Brest after dinner. Most often, fruits, yogurt or jam are meant.
In France, you are practically you won't find vegans, probably, they all emigrated a long time ago away from the temptations of French cuisine.
In France, it is customary to add salt and pepper to dishes to taste. It is easy to distinguish a salt shaker from a pepper shaker, the salt shaker has several holes, the pepper shaker has one.

Do you need to tip in French restaurants?

In French restaurants, tipping is considered the norm. There is no fixed price here, so it's hard to tell how much to tip. All by feeling. The normal amount of a tip to a waiter for good service in a restaurant is 10% of the check amount. In cafes or self-service restaurants, they usually leave 1-2 euros as an expression of gratitude.

French food every traveler should try

Les cuisses de grenouille s - frog legs

You can't come to France and not try frog meat. It tastes like chicken with a slight touch of seafood. The French cook frog legs with herbs, it turns out very tasty. Don't give up until you try.

Foie gras - foie gras

What you should definitely try in France is foie gras - the liver of a specially fattened duck. It is best eaten fried, but if that thought scares you, you can order a foie gras pâté and spread it on a baguette.

Escargots - snails

Another popular French dish that makes many people shudder at the mere thought is snails. Delicious snails fried with garlic, butter and parsley. Snails are taken out of the shell with a special fork. With experience, it even turns out not to splash into a neighbor opposite.

Boeuf tartare - beef tartare

Tartar is a dish of raw chilled beef, egg yolk, spices, onions, capers, gherkins and a bunch of other variations of additives. If you take it for the first time, then first take one dish for the company, for some the taste may be too unusual - these are the features of French cuisine. But for many, tartare is a real delicacy.

Cheval or taureau - horse or bull

Or a horse and a bull. Do not rush to turn up your nose at this dish. Generously flavored with wine and orange sauce, you will remember it for a long time.

Any cheese that you don't like at first sight

Too smelly? Too soft? Too thick mold? Spread it on a fresh baguette with butter, and you will sing in a completely different way.

5 proven French dishes that everyone loves

Croissant

Buy a croissant. Necessarily. Fresh, still warm, delicious... Buy it and bring it to me!

Macarons

Small fragrant delicacies with a huge assortment of flavors. Especially wonderful with salted cream caramel, but the rest of the flavors are fine. Many manufacturers have their own signature flavors.

french mussels

Steamed mussels with potatoes for garnish. You can eat them classic with onions and white wine, or more interesting versions with Roquefort and saffron.

Duck

Duck fried and stewed, chopped and whole, duck liver or cassoullet with sausages and beans - everything is delicious.

your favorite cheese

Not only to experiment with smelly varieties. Taste your favorite cheeses in France. Believe me, coming to the market to buy cheese from a person who probably milked the animal that gave milk for this cheese is an amazing experience.

10 Unusual French Cuisine Dishes

In this list all 10 dishes, but they are all unusual. I'm willing to bet that most of them you never knew existed. It's not duck liver or frog legs. You can try these dishes in almost any restaurant in France. Under each dish you will find a list of addresses of restaurants where, according to local residents, this dish is probably cooked deliciously.

1. Bouillabaisse

French bouillabaisse is a fish soup, i.e. fish soup. It was once considered the food of the poor. Marseille fishermen simply boiled seafood that they could not sell. This means that the main criterion for selecting fish for bouillabaisse is its unattractiveness. Google for interest what a scorpion fish looks like, and you will understand everything. But in our time, bouillabaisse has entered the restaurant menu and is considered an exquisite expensive dish. There are many variations of this soup. I do not advise ordering bouillabaisse cheaper than 30 euros per plate. Often the soup is served in 2 stages - first a broth with croutons and a spicy sauce, and then a plate with 5 varieties of fish.

Where to try: obviously in Marseille. Delicious bouillabaisse is served at Le Miramar (official website: lemiramar.fr; £54) and at Chez Fonfon (chez-fonfon.com; £46).

2. Tartiflette

Tartiflette is another bright representative of French cuisine. This is a very satisfying dish. It includes potatoes, bacon and onions sprinkled with Reblechon cheese. Legend has it that poor peasants were taxed for their milk. The more milk a cow gives, the more you pay. The cunning people quickly adapted and began to milk the cows only halfway, and after checking, milk them to the end. Reblechon cheese was made from leftover milk. The amount of cheese was as great as the unwillingness to pay taxes. It was necessary to put it somewhere, and in 1980 they came up with the dish of the same name.

Where to try: in the Alps. Tartiflette is delicious at Calèche in Chamonix (restaurant-caleche.com; £16) and Chalet La Pricaz (sav.org/pricaz.html; £15). Detailed addresses can be found on the websites.

3. Cassoulet

The cassoulet dish includes stewed white beans, sausage and pork. The result is a casserole cooked in a special pot. A crispy crust forms on top, but inside the dish is very juicy. All this splendor is sprinkled with herbs and served on the table.

Where to try: in Toulouse at Restaurant Emile (restaurant-emile.com ; £20).

4. Beef bourguignon or beef in Burgundy (Beef bourguignonne)

A real national dish of France with a rich history and rich taste. While the Europeans were fighting for a place in the sun, the Burgundians left the world political arena and, it seems, not in vain. But they came up with a lot of delicious dishes. I strongly advise you not to lean on Burgundy food, otherwise you will have to take apart the restaurant wall to get you out. I'm kidding, of course. But a hot meat dish rich in wine will not joke. Many Burgundians are chubby guys, mind you. Because it's very, very tasty.

Where to try: in Dijon, at the D "Zenvies restaurant (dzenvies.com; £14) and in Beursaudière (beursaudiere.com; £17).

5. Pissaladiere

Pissaladière is the famous fish and onion pie. Contains onions, garlic, anchovies, olives and herbs de Provence. To some, it resembles an ordinary onion pie, to someone pizza. Call it what you want. It won't make it any less delicious.

Where to try: in Antibes (lepain-jpv.com).

6. Potjevleesch

One of the most distinctive meat dishes in France. It is based on 4 white meats - veal, pork, rabbit and chicken, all mixed with pieces of vegetables in jelly. Potivlash is served with gherkins, salad and chips.

Where to try: A-l "Potée d" Léandre in Souchez (alpotee.fr; £14.50), Barbue-d" Anvers in Lille (lebarbuedanvers.fr; £16) and T "kasteelhof in Kassel (http://lvermeersch.free.fr/kasteelhof )

7. Auvergne stew with vegetables (Potée auvergnate)

Pork, sausage, bacon and vegetables stewed together. Not haute French cuisine, of course, but this is a simple and very tasty dish. Do you understand now why France is so tight with vegetarians?

Where to try: Auvergne meat is well prepared in Auvergne, which is not surprising. It is advised to go to l "Alambic in Clermont-Ferrand (http://www.alambic-restaurant.com/; £14.50).

8. Choucroute

Alsatian choukrut is no joke to you. While the Latin and Germanic worlds shook the area with conflicts, in which Alsace periodically got to, the locals spat on all this politics and took up the arrangement of the economy. As a result, the Alsatians have spacious houses, flourishing villages and chic national cuisine. Shukrut is a dish of sauerkraut, sausages and pork, someone cooks it with rice, someone with potatoes. There is an option with fresh cabbage, but in my opinion it is less tasty. Carefully! After properly cooked choukrut, it is very difficult to get out from behind the table without assistance.

try The canonical French Choucroute is available at Chez Yvonne in Strasbourg (restaurant-chez-yvonne.net ; £16) and Maison Kammerzell (maison-kammerzell.com ; £17).

9. Aioli (Grand aioli)

Aioli is the famous garlic sauce. Grand aioli is a dish of salted cod, carrots, potatoes, shellfish, beans, onions, artichokes and, in some variations, beets and other vegetables. All this is seasoned with aioli sauce and washed down with rose wine.

Where to try: restaurants Maurin des Maures (maurin-des-maures.com ; £15), Restaurant Balthazar (bistrotbalthazar.com) and Le Petit Chaudron (restaurantlepetitchaudron.fr) in Avignon.

10. Grilled oysters with champagne and saffron

What is French cuisine without shellfish? The locals love them. Oysters are especially fond of. However, the Britons boldly replace the classic raw clam with a grilled one with herbs and champagne.

Where to try: restaurant Les Ormes in Barnville Carter (hotel-restaurant-les-ormes.fr; £12).

So the French...

Skip breakfast easily

In the morning, a French woman would rather spend time matching her jeans with a jacket than preparing a full breakfast. “All the charm of a new day will come to naught if you hang around the stove before work,” says the Parisian Juliette Mercier. There has always been a morning ritual in my family. Dad put on his bathrobe, opened the windows in the dining room and brewed great black coffee. For us, schoolgirls, he poured a little cream and gave us cookies. There was never a cult of breakfast in the family, it was much more important to get together and sip a hot drink. Since then, coffee and bread in the morning has been my habit, which I have been following for 20 years.”

At work, the coffee ritual is repeated several times. Before lunch, French women consistently have 2-3 coffee breaks, and they never buy sandwiches or buns for it.

For lunch choose salads and vegetables

Most often, working French people dine in cafes. At the same time, women usually order a salad or grilled vegetables. A bit of chicken or fish, a square of goat's cheese and bits of bread fried in olive oil are lost in a pile of salad leaves with basil and arugula. “Sometimes I think I look like a big sheep,” says the stylist Véronique Abue. - I eat a lettuce every day. But it has its own charm: I like being a slender sheep more than a ponderous cougar.

You might think that French women eat a lot of flour, because in every restaurant, before ordering, the waiter brings a basket of fresh white bread, butter and a carafe of water for free before ordering. But this is only an appearance: before dinner, a French woman will really cut off a piece of bread, spread it with butter, but bite off only 1-2 times. During dinner, she will take, turn in her hands, crumble bread, but just not eat. But with pleasure will drink 2-3 glasses of water.

Spend a certain amount on food

“Madame, we have a fresh leg of lamb. Would you like?" - "Oh, I would love to, but I only have money for ratatouille and some fish." Such dialogue can often be heard in a restaurant surrounded by offices. It does not matter that the income allows her to take a full lunch card in the best restaurant in the area. Leaving for a break, the Frenchwoman will not take her purse, but will take some certain amount, usually not very large. If salads and hot dishes are more expensive, she will order an appetizer. The main thing is not to go beyond the allotted budget.

"Work off" the calories eaten

“It seems that the roast with mashed potatoes was superfluous yesterday. I hope it cost me no more than 600 kcal. Well, today and tomorrow - without dinner ”- such thoughts can often be heard aloud in the workplace. Some get special notebooks where they write down the calorie content of their daily menu. If in the corporate canteen a French woman languidly touches her vegetables with a fork and refuses a night party, everyone nods knowingly: what to do, Madeleine works off yesterday's pork.

Snack on seasonal fruit

“Colleagues, my aunt Amel sent nectarines from Spain. Who wants to try? Usually such a proposal is met with shouts of approval and a break in work for 15 minutes. Everyone quits their business and in a matter of minutes they eat everything that was. The next day, everyone will still eat apples from Provence and pears from the Loire. At the end of the impromptu break, someone will definitely ask: “Friends, does anyone have an aunt with vineyards in Bordeaux? It seems that the season of young wine will begin soon.”

Little food at parties

A party in French looks like this: subdued lights, open balconies and several boxes of wine. No food. “We come to communicate, have fun, and not fill our bellies” - this is a generally accepted attitude. Each glass of wine is usually washed down with several sips of water. Drinking alcohol is not accepted.

Don't eat desserts

“Napoleon cake was invented for tourists and foreigners. Real French women are cool about sweets after the main course. If I still order a dessert, then I’ll just try a few spoonfuls, ”says Veronique Abue, already familiar to us. That is why in Parisian restaurants the dessert menu is brought only at the request of the client.

Lots of talking at the table

One of the unspoken rules of a Frenchwoman: eat slowly, stretching the pleasure. Each mouthful will be followed by questions about the weather, the health of a mutual friend Luke, or a discussion of the upcoming election. Sometimes food is just an excuse to discuss things that really matter, like a wealthy relative's will or a promotion.

Lots of walking

French women believe that all the streets of their native city need to be known impeccably. Using land transport is the lot of tourists or those who cannot walk from home to work due to illness. Many are ready to go out one and a half to two hours before the start of the working day to go around their area and say hello to their neighbors. Many Parisians only go down the subway when it rains. It is known that in order to keep fit, you need to take about 10 thousand steps per day. Well, the French women certainly gain such a number!

The food system in France is directly opposite to the sensational rule: eat breakfast yourself, share lunch with a friend, and give dinner to the enemy.

The French breakfast is very modest and is called a small breakfast for a reason. (le petit dejeuner). Most often, it is limited to a cup of coffee and a small bun, bagel or sandwich. It is interesting to note that at breakfast the French prefer sweet sandwiches - often bread with butter and jam / jam.

Lunch (in French terminology "breakfast", le dejeuner) starts at 12 noon. It usually consists of appetizers, green salad, meat or fish dishes, cheese and coffee.

Evening meal, at 6-7 p.m., is called lunch (le dîner) and also provides several dishes: an aperitif, a green salad, a hot dish (meat with a side dish), a cheese plate (several types of cheese cut into small pieces and laid out on a plate specially provided for this) and coffee with sweets (often with chocolates, cookies).

The culinary traditions of the French have been preserved not only in good restaurants, but also in ordinary families. At festive family dinners, and especially at dinners with guests, you can perfectly see the main features of French cuisine.

Before the start of dinner, guests are offered an "aperitif" - spirits with nuts, almonds or dry biscuits - to stimulate the appetite. The lunch proper, as in the 16th century, begins with an “introduction”: vegetable, meat or fish snacks. Soup is rarely eaten now, more often in the village. The basis of the festive city dinner is fish, meat or poultry with the corresponding white or red wines.

Abroad, the French are considered lovers of frogs, and it is not at all accidental, because the French really willingly eat the tender white meat of the hind legs of a frog, reminiscent of chicken meat in taste. However, for a family dinner, this is a rather expensive pleasure, so frog legs are not eaten every day.

In an ordinary French family, they most often eat steak with fried potatoes, stew with vegetables, rabbit stew or. Along with beef steak, horse meat steaks are prepared, which is sold in special butcher shops.

Of the dishes that are exotic for a Russian person, the French love shells and snails. Some shells are eaten raw - they resemble oysters. Others are specially prepared - their meat is similar to the meat of crabs or crayfish. A very tasty dish is obtained from large escargot snails: they are baked in oil with parsley and garlic and served directly in the sink.

For the main family holiday - Christmas - in the old days they cooked a roasted boar. Then it was replaced by a pig, now more and more often a turkey. The Christmas table is usually decorated with a dish of oysters and a special, oblong-shaped cake - "Christmas log" . The final part of the festive dinner consists of green lettuce, cheese, fruits, sweets and coffee. After coffee, guests are offered cognacs or liqueurs; they are collectively called "digestif" - facilitating digestion. If the aperitif opens the procedure of a festive dinner, then the digestif completes it.

These are the simple traditions of the usual French table! Don't forget to check out our French recipes page. This is a selection of fairly simple and easy to implement recipes for which you do not have to spend a lot of money on unique seasonings and ingredients. You can easily cook everything yourself!

In preparing the article, materials from the book by V.P. Smirnov "France: traditions, people, impressions"

Liked the article? to always be up to date.

The question is asked, I answer: because they eat differently. Not better or worse, just different. How? That's what we'll talk about.

No, how unfair! French cuisine is rich in both fats and carbohydrates. In addition, the French treat bread with reverence, and French cinema is densely “stuffed” with scenes of lunches and dinners, where no one denies themselves anything. And how, pray tell, do French women manage to maintain lightness and attractiveness? This question is of interest not only to us, but also to women all over the world.

First of all, who said that the French, eating three meals a day, eat 3 meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Don't believe!

Here is the usual diet of the modern average French woman leading an active lifestyle.

Breakfast:

Freshly squeezed orange juice
1 hot crispy toast with jam (preferably homemade or low sugar). Sundays - jam + butter.
Tea (a lot, most often without sugar) or coffee (not much).

1 croissant instead of toast
natural yoghurt, preferably without additives. Then the jam (or honey) will go not on toast, but in yogurt, and the toast will be spread with a thin layer of butter (low-fat, natural, French women choose it very carefully), and shrunk without jam

cereals with milk (for an amateur, which are most often children)
fruit (but juice is preferred)

The exception is holidays, when the mere sight of a buffet in a hotel makes your eyes widen. Then the Frenchwoman simply “closes” them and allows herself both scrambled eggs (even with bacon, but rarely, they don’t like this product), and toast (with butter And jam), and a croissant (usually mini), and fruit (in addition to juice). But then she will most likely simply refuse lunch or eat a light green salad and drink a cup of coffee.

No sandwiches with cheese, ham, hot sausages, cereals and other foods familiar to us, Germans or Americans.

The most important thing is that the French do not suffer from such gastronomic "restraint" at all, because they are used to breakfast only in this way. From time immemorial, their parents had breakfast like this (with the exception of residents of the “harsh” provinces - Alsace or Auvergne, for example, where winters are cold and long). So they are accustomed to breakfast from early childhood. A special delight is a baguette with a crispy crust and a minimum of crumb in the middle, a croissant is fresh and airy, preferably still warm, and homemade jam. And juice is sacred. There is an electric juicer in every home.

On Sunday - the formula: breakfast + lunch = brunch (from two English words breakfast and lunch) i.e. brunch that flows into lunch, with scrambled eggs and ham and other "dinner" delights and a full dinner, or a good family lunch with grandparents, and then a light dinner at home (cheese, baguette, wine).

Dinner:

Mineral water
In the warm season - salad composée (or grande (large) salade) is a green salad with something: warm goat cheese, seafood, fish, chicken, etc.
In cold weather - one hot dish (meat, fish) with a side dish (most often vegetables) or a small (petite) salad instead.
Espresso coffee with a piece of dark chocolate (or a tiny cookie). Of course, you can also eat ice cream, but this is not French.
A glass of wine is allowed even during working hours (no one has gotten tipsy from such an amount of alcohol, and the allowable rate of alcohol in the blood to be able to drive, in France, 0.3 ppm is more than one glass).

Indeed, it turns out a 3-course dinner and wine to boot!

Dinner:

This is the main meal, so here the French give themselves free rein.

Aperitif. What do the French drink for an aperitif?
Entree(entre) or hors-d "?uvre (or d'evre) - appetizer (hot / cold) or soup. Dinner is often called souper (supe) - precisely from the word "soup".
Main hot dish. About traditional and favorite dishes of the French, as well as French specialties -
Cheese or/and dessert. "Or" is for women, "and" is for men. What do French women like to treat themselves to for dessert? .
Coffee, tisane - herbal tea and / or digestif (strong drinks).
Water and wine throughout the dinner, and the wine may vary depending on the dishes and the initial choice (the first bottle / glass turned out to be successful or unsuccessful)

Ref O sieve, how can you eat all this or where does all this fit into skinny French women? Yes, the portions are usually small. The more expensive the restaurant, the smaller the portion. In addition, before ordering “first, second and compote”, a French woman will definitely find out exactly what size of the dish in this restaurant and if suddenly it’s too hot, too copieux - i.e. the portion is large, she will do without appetizers and dessert, or she will eat entrée, cheese, dessert, but refuse the main course.

If we have dinner at home, then everything is quite simple: a piece of meat fried in 3 minutes, a light side dish (rice, vegetables), a green salad and cheese (it is together and after the main course, the French “eat up” cheese if they are not full), fruit or light dessert (yogurt with honey, for example). "Restaurant style" is prepared on Sunday or for guests.

The art of living happily

I must admit that the French are generally not inclined to be overweight. According to statistics, only 11% are overweight. Obesity statistics in France generally show extremely modest figures, in England they are twice as high, in the USA - three times.

However, it is not only a matter of genetic predisposition.

“If we followed all the restrictions and diets that are so popular in the world today,” the French women say, “then we would have recovered long ago. We do not find any contradiction in the fact that you can eat bread, chocolate and other delicious things, drink wine and at the same time maintain harmony and health. But if we want to eat chocolate and not gain weight, we have to work our heads».

What does it mean? And here's what:

Don't deny yourself your daily dose of small pleasures.. If you want chocolate - eat candy, taste, enjoy, rejoice. But it is not necessary to weave the whole box at once! You need to feel the difference between promiscuity and the desire to pamper yourself. If we make any restrictions, it is for the sole purpose of enjoying everything else in moderation. The main thing is not to lose your mind and get up from the table without feeling overeated or guilty.

« Five minutes in the mouth - five years on the hips”, - said Pierre's grandmother (the same one, one of the first professional models, remember?), Coquettishly slapping herself on her elastic buttocks. French women never forget about this, and therefore they try to follow fairly simple rules that are the norm of life.

I tried to analyze the situation and deduced these rules, first of all, for myself, but today I am sharing with you.

13 secrets of slim French women:

1. Eat Can all but a little. And this is the main point.

2. Everyone meal- whole event, unhurried ritual and enjoyment every piece. A Frenchwoman will not chew on the run - little pleasure! Table talk is an integral part of the meal.

3. Additive is evil. This, by the way, is the exclusive rule of ballerinas all over the world.

4. Don't snack. An apple in the afternoon. This is all.

5. Mineral water during the whole day.

6. Fresh food always preferable. Semi-finished products - only in the most extreme cases.

7. No concentrates, additives, chemical dyes and other nonsense. French women are just obsessed with natural products. Let them be slightly dented, with "barrels", even if they were slightly gnawed by a worm, but only those that were grown in natural conditions. The tomato should smell like a tomato, and the cheese and butter should be farm-produced (and it's better to know the farmer by sight). But fat-free, sugar-free foods are superfluous. They are tasteless!

8. Nutrition must be très varié - very diverse. And very a lot of vegetables(often those to which Russian women are not accustomed at all). Fennel, celery, green beans, asparagus, broccoli are the side dishes preferred by French women. And no salads with sour cream or mayonnaise. These products are generally alien to the French.

9. No sugary fizzy drinks. Cola, fanta, soda, lemonade, etc. excluded. It's pure chemistry! Even juices are only natural if possible.

10. During meals - only water(or wine). "Drinks" - fruit drinks, kvass, kissels, compotes, so beloved by Russian people, simply do not exist in nature, and no one will drink juice.

11. Meal frequency(literally by the hour). In this scenario, you can not follow the popular dietary rule - do not eat after 18.00. And how to observe it if the French have dinner late - after 20.00 - 20.30 hours? Many restaurants offer two evening services - at 20.00 and 22.00.

12. Wine - only with food and no more than a couple of glasses a day (but more often still on holidays, on weekends, on vacation. A Frenchwoman will not drink alone at dinner, she is a normal woman). Women almost never drink strong drinks, this is the prerogative of men.

13. Gum? For what? It also starts the mechanism of the stomach, gastric juice begins to be produced and a feeling of hunger appears. Where is the logic? In addition, chewing in public places is simply indecent. I know, I know, ask, but what about fresh breath? How about brushing your teeth after dinner? Believe it or not, most French women carry toothbrushes in cases and cute mini-sprays in their purses - a spray against bad breath. And it’s not even worth talking about toothpicks on the tables: digging in front of everyone is simply unthinkable.

And in conclusion, two words about diets.

French women rarely step on the scales. For what? They have eyes, clothes and a mirror.

They will go crazy with boredom if they have to calculate calories, read about fats, proteins, lipids and other chemicals, not to mention applying all this to the sacred part of their life - food. That's why:

If you want to be in a state of balance, you do not need to follow a diet, but gradually, over a certain period of time. change eating habits. So when you lose weight, your efforts will not only be painless, but will also lead to more sustainable results.

Three months of a strict diet can break the spirit of any woman. And three months of discoveries and a more in-depth acquaintance with the behavior and reaction of one's own body to small and quite sparing dietary restrictions - it's a good attitude the fruits of which you will reap for years to come.

If you manage to perceive at least a fraction of the French attitude to food and life, the problem of weight will cease to be for you a terrible obsession, constant but fruitless attempts to curb your appetite, and you will see that maintaining weight is part of a program called " the art of living fully and happily».

Next week in the "Let's talk about beauty" section: Secrets of French makeup or beauty with the mind

Text: Arina Kaledina

Illustrations: Natalia Bolotskikh

Photo on the banner:

Admit it, we always want to know a little more than we have the opportunity. See at least out of the corner of your eye how people live in the neighborhood or in other countries, what they eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Here, for example, the French? They don't eat frog legs, really! How do ordinary French people make up their daily menu? I managed to visit three completely different French families with different lifestyles and pace of life, different habits and income levels. So, France, today, three families and French cuisine as it is.

Summer in the French countryside

Guillemet and Olivier live outside the city 50 kilometers from Paris in a large two-story mansion. They have their own farm, and the office is located in a separate building near the house, so they don’t need what is called “torn” between home and work. Their three children, Charles, Laurence, and Mathieu (aged 7, 5 and 3), are cared for by a nanny when the parents are at work.

Giymet is a very caring mother and monitors the nutrition of her family very scrupulously. Every evening, in a special notebook, she paints the menu for the next day. Oddly enough, but it is not customary for them to have a full breakfast, as most nutritionists advise. Guillemat doesn't eat breakfast at all, Olivier has a cup of coffee, the children eat corn flakes with milk or yogurt.

It is customary to sit down to dinner in the family at exactly 13.00. Guillemet even gets angry if her husband is late at work. Lunch begins with a salad - just lettuce leaves dressed with balsamic or wine vinegar and olive oil. After sure meat or a fish dish such as beef medallions in a sun-dried tomato sauce, fish fillet baked with a slice of lemon and herbs. For garnish - steamed vegetables: potatoes or cauliflower.

The French do not eat soups for lunch, and for dinner, this is an infrequent dish, although the word "dinner" in French sounds like le souper. Only once in a few weeks of my stay in this family was for dinner. It's simple: zucchini, broccoli and mushrooms are fried separately in olive oil, then chopped in a blender. Fatty cream is added to this mixture, salted, peppered and slightly warmed up before serving.

Complete lunch or dinner with cheese. Plateau is served with different types of cheeses (5-7 varieties), which can be combined with slices of French crispy baguette. It's unrealistically delicious! And only after this cheese “ritual”, we can assume that lunch or dinner is over.

Despite the presence of three children, the family is cool about sweets. For dessert, they eat fruit or the simplest homemade pies.

By the way, peaches in this family are usually eaten ... with a knife and fork !!! At the same time, first you need to remove the skin from the peach (again with the help of a knife and fork), and only then, cutting it off in pieces, enjoy the fruit. Experiment somehow in the kitchen secretly so that your loved ones do not accuse you of being too aristocratic, taste the peach with a knife and fork. And, if you still have enough patience, believe me, the peach will seem to taste completely different. Fortunately for me, five-year-old Laurence, due to her age, was also not an expert in figured peach cutting.

Provincial charm with an Italian accent

Anna and Joel- pensioners. They live in Bourges - in the Middle Ages the historical residence of the French kings - in their small house, immersed in flowers, with a green lawn and red maples in the yard.

The unhurried pace of life also affects the format of lunches and dinners. They eat slowly, as if it is not just food, but something more - a ceremony or even an old tradition. Lunch starts with an appetizer. Most often this traditional lettuce leaves with a dressing of olive oil and balsamic or wine vinegar. By the way, Joel brings salad for dinner right from his small garden, where strawberries, tomatoes, onions, basil and ... potatoes also grow. Yes, the elderly French are also very fond of all sorts of dacha affairs, but, of course, not on the same scale as our pensioners.

One day we were surprised appetizer of parma ham with melon. A ripe melon, preferably chilled, is de-seeded and cut lengthwise into large slices. The ham is cut very thinly, almost transparent slices and laid out on a plate, put a slice of melon on top. It is believed that this dish was born in Italy, but, in my opinion, it fits very organically into a French-style dinner.

For the main course on a mixture of butter and olive oil, portions of rabbit are fried until golden brown. Add chopped onion and fry until translucent. After the rabbit meat, sprinkle with flour and pour chicken broth. Add garlic, a glass of white wine, a mixture of peppers, a handful of raisins and a sprig of rosemary. Simmer covered for about an hour. Separately, mix the yolks with cream, add a couple of tablespoons of the cooled juice from the container where the rabbit was stewed, and pour the dish with this sauce. The side dish for the rabbit was asparagus beans, lightly stewed in a saucepan with butter and garlic.

Traditionally, the lunch is completed by a cheese plate with 5-6 varieties of cheese to choose from. Bread in Bourges, by the way, is completely different and also unusually tasty.

Unlike the previous family with three children, the venerable Anna and Joel turned out to be those sweet tooth. Every day we enjoyed different delicacies. One of them is a simple French dessert with cherries. The dough is made from a mixture of milk, flour, eggs and sugar. Peeled cherries are poured with this mixture, and after 20 minutes the most delicate dessert is ready. Be sure to get a couple of cherries on a branch with a leaf. And after you take the clafoutis out of the oven, decorate the dessert with them. It's very elegant. Almost a work of art. An important detail: it is better to use red cherries or cherries so that when baking, the juice of the berries does not stain the dough so much.

Crazy crazy metropolitan life

Anna and Joel's daughter - Marie - has been living in Paris for a long time. She works as a teacher of French language and literature in one of the colleges in the capital. She rents a one-room apartment with her fiancé Francois in the Marais, one of the oldest districts of the city.

For breakfast, she treats me to cereal with milk and toast with jam., moreover, jars of confiture for every taste: apricot, strawberry, blueberry. Magical taste overlooking a quiet French street and neighboring balconies with bright geraniums. But Marie admits that such measured breakfasts happen only on weekends, when you don’t have to rush to work. Often, the breakfast of a resident of this French metropolis consists of a cup of coffee..

Important detail

All these French lunches and dinners were not complete without a glass of wine. On an intuitive level, the French know how to choose red or white to the dish in such a way that sometimes it seems: your lunch or dinner is not just a set of dishes, but a well-thought-out plan in advance. A plan to conquer your taste buds.