My French meal plan

Living in a host family, I have a meal plan arrangement. Host families provide breakfast for the student every day as well as a full dinner twice a week. Breakfast is typically yogurt, fruits, bread and jam, and juice.

I am not sure, but I believe the toaster is specifically extra long in order to be able to toast baguettes.

Dinners provided by the host family consist of multiple courses in order to present a typical French meal.
We typically begin with a salad and bread. The salad is eaten off a saucer, but the bread is torn off the baguette and it rests on the placemat rather than on the plate with your food. That is called the entrée.
Then the main course is dished onto plates. Upon eating all your food, it is perfectly normal to use your bread to wipe up some of the extra sauce that is left on the plate. That is the plat principal.
After the main dish, conversation continues as you choose from a couple different cheeses along with (guess what!) more bread. There are sometimes a pâté or two (a meat spread) to try as well.
Then my host sister will typically grab yogurts and cremes from the refrigerator, along with a couple fruits to choose from, and that is dessert.

I have had everything from a Russian Borscht soup (my host sister's boyfriend is originally from Russia) to homemade potatoes au gratin. I might add that the potatoes were even better than those that typically decorate the table on Thanksgiving, due to the real French cheeses they use here. This week we also had tomates farcies, a very typical French family meal and one of my host sister's favorites. Tomates farcies are large tomatoes stuffed with porc, veal, or beef and bread crumbs or rice. None of the recipes or photos I found on the internet did my host mom's cooking justice, but here is a recipe to give you an idea. The giant tomatoes lined up in a casserole and topped with their little chapeaux look just perfect coming out of the oven.


Other times, I am on my own for meals. I usually stop by the Carrefour grocery store for supplies to make myself lunch or dinner.

When the weather is nice, I can have a snack and work on homework at the table in the garden.