Fromgirls promote French raw-milk cheese

Posted on February 27, 2010 by Douglas Powell

Traditional French cheese is apparently as much about scantily-clad young women as it is about camembert, roquefort and brie.

New figures show raw-milk cheeses from rural France, which until the Second World War accounted for nearly all consumption, now make up just seven per cent of those eaten.

The Association Fromages de Terroirs (AFT), which aims to protect France’s traditional cheese culture, is now trying to fight back with a series of posters of “Fromgirls”, displaying women working in the industry.

Veronique Richez-Lerouge, of the AFT, said,

“The French have forgotten what real cheese is like. Buying cheese has become like buying a box of washing powder.”

Globalisation and safety regulations introduced by the European Union have played a part. Pasteurisation – the germ killing process – has helped wipe out many raw-milk cheeses. Workers are also eating more quick snacks at lunchtime, rather than sitting down to meals in traditional restaurants, whose cheese trolleys helped to forge the French national identity.

Belfast restaurant sorry after rodent runs past diners

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Douglas Powell

A top French restaurant in Belfast has apologized after a rodent was spotted running amok on the premises.

A complaint was lodged with Belfast City Council’s public health department yesterday after a group of diners claimed they spotted a rat in the restaurant on Monday night.
Timothy Kirkpatrick said,

“At one stage the rat sat on top of a woman’s handbag for a good 10 to 20 seconds. I couldn’t believe it, I don’t think anyone could.”

Mr Kirkpatrick said he was very disappointed in the way the restaurant handled the situation.

“The staff tried to catch it and continued to serve food,” he added. “It was quite unbelievable, to be honest.

“They didn’t apologize or offer to waive the cheque or anything. At the time I didn’t mind, but the more I think about it now it is just ridiculous.”

French travelers once again contract trichinosis from eating bear in Canada; were they in a canoe?

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Douglas Powell

Canada was settled by French and other European explorers by canoe – hence the Canadianism, as stated by Pierre Berton, a Canadian journalist and novelist,

"A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe without tipping it."

The National Post reports this morning that for the second time in four years, health authorities in France have identified an outbreak of the parasitical illness trichinosis from bear meat devoured by French travelers in northern Canada.

The grizzly that ended up as steaks, stew and even "grizzly-bear Bolognese" had been threatening an Inuit camp on the Nunavut shore when it was shot by rangers, with the carcass later divided up among locals and visitors.

In 2005, 19 French travelers got sick after eating black bear in Labrador, while two others caught trichinosis from a polar bear in Greenland a few years earlier.

A Paris-based expert who investigated the outbreaks attributes the spate of bear-meat illness among his compatriots to the French culinary penchant for trying unconventional meats, and either eating them raw or cooking them very little.

One of the French adventurers — on a sailing trip across the Arctic — ended up hospitalized for 11 days after digesting the tainted food in September, though she avoided the most serious heart and brain complications of the infection.

Dr. Jean Dupouy-Camet, head of a trichinosis-tracking program, said in an interview from Paris,

"It’s quite fascinating to see that French people seem quite fond of bear meat. French people travelling abroad like to consume exotic meats … [And] they are usually fond of raw meat: steak tartare."

But the latest episode was not confined to the French sailors. Members of another North-West Passage sailing expedition, headed by a Canadian, ate some of the same meat and two of them also became ill.

Other people have had witty things to say about Canada. British novelist Douglas Adams said each country was like a particular type of person, and "Canada is like an intelligent 35 year old woman." America, on the other hand, is a "belligerent adolescent boy" and Australia is "Jack Nicholson." I may prefer Australia.

Food safety infosheets now available in French, Spanish and Portuguese

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Douglas Powell

I’m OK at coaching hockey. Soccer, not so much.

Years ago, one of my girl’s needed a coach for a team, so I volunteered. One of the parents was from Portugal. By my third game he was screaming at me from the sidelines.

Translation sounds easy.

It’s not.

Everyone interprets stuff differently

But I’ve got some people, and hopefully the translation pics won’t continue to crash the main website, and we’ll see where it all goes.

French, Spanish and Portuguese. Check them out.

Air kissing or ‘la bise’ discouraged in France because of H1N1 flu

Posted on September 7, 2009 by Douglas Powell

It was so confusing when I was in France: do you kiss anyone on the cheek or just friends; two pecks or three (the further south, the greater the frequency of the tri-peck). I usually defaulted to a handshake, but after a fabulous lunch with tons of great wine at a chateau near Bordeaux where I had unlimited Internet access for the first time in two weeks, I gave the dude a bi-peck at the train station – we had just met, and he was a little taken aback (that’s me and the dude at a wedding in Montreal a couple of months later 2007, right, below; look at that suit).

Now, according to Associated Press, the French tradition of "la bise," the cheek-to-cheek peck that the French use to say hello or goodbye, has come under pressure from a globalized threat: swine flu.

Some French schools, companies and a Health Ministry hotline are telling students and employees to avoid the social ritual out of fear the pandemic could make it the kiss of death, or at least illness, as winter approaches.

For kids in two schools in the town of Guilvinec, in France’s western Brittany region, the first lesson of the year came from local officials: no more cheek kisses to teachers or other students.

The national government isn’t calling for a ban. But the Health Ministry, on its swine flu phone hotline, recommends that people avoid "close contact — including shaking hands and giving the bise."

French and Spanish food safety infosheets now available at bites.ksu.edu

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Douglas Powell

Amy is a French professor. Her influence on me has been profound – and has even involved some language awareness stuff.

That’s why we have don’t eat poop shirts in French, Chinese and Spanish.

You’d figure that getting stuff translated into other languages would be a breeze, since I have an in with the department. But to do it in real-time is a bit messy. The first time I tried to upload a French infosheet, last week, I crashed the entire bites.ksu.edu site.

Damn you, France.

We’ve been messing around but are reasonably confident we’ve got the people and technology in place to at least translate food safety infosheets on a weekly basis. The Spanish food safety infosheets are available at http://bites.ksu.edu/infosheets-sp, and the French food safety infosheets are available at http://bites.ksu.edu/infosheets-fr.

Queering Ratatouille

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Amy Hubbell

eatmedaily.com reports that UCLA French professor Laure Murat will present, “Queering Ratatouille: A Rat Reclaiming French Cuisine” this afternoon. Having just returned from the NeMLA (which Doug lovingly calls NAMBLA) annual meeting in Boston, my first thought was ratatouille is the perfect dish to represent queering. Then I realized this is a talk about a gay rat in a cartoon.

Ratatouille is a relatively safe dish from a food safety perspective. It’s a combination of vegetables like eggplant, zucchini, green bell peppers, tomatoes, garlic, onions and the like, simmered or roasted together until the flavors meld into a gorgeous Mediterranean flavor. Any unsavory microorganisms should be amply cooked out by the time it is ready to serve.

Watching the trainwreck that is diarrhea

Posted on January 25, 2009 by Douglas Powell

There’s a certain appeal to trainspotting – or watching an impending trainwreck. It’s appalling and compelling at the same time. Ben and I went to a Sloan concert in Guelph several years ago and we wanted to leave they were so bad – and Sloan is usually great – but had to stay and watch where they would descend to next.

It was worth the wait.

Amy the French professor has a similar obsession. There’s some woman who writes a blog about her meaningless life in France and Amy is hooked. Amy finds this woman’s blog posts meaningless, facile and unbelievably stupid. And she reads it every day.

Recently, French blogger’s daughter had, as Ben likes to say, the squirts: diarrhea at daycare. Mom says, “Our daycare is pretty cool about letting her (diarrhea daughter) come.”

Diarrhea in a daycare is not a good thing, but hey, poop happens. Not so sure about the quality control when the kid’s runny poop ends up on the bandage of her finger that mom had accidentally attempted to sever using a bedroom door. Read the blog and it may make sense; or want to kill yourself.

Surprisingly, the newspaper in Pembroke, Ontario, near the Barry’s Bay cottage owned by the parents of my high school girlfriend, has some tips for kids with the squirts.

Prevent the spread of viruses. Clean your hands and your child’s hands often, especially after using the toilet or changing a diaper. Use soap and warm water, or hand sanitizer. If hands are dirty, hand sanitizers won’t work, you’ll need to wash with soap and water first.

Amy and I have been changing a lot of diapers. We wash our hands. And despite some fantastically explosive messes, haven’t gotten baby shit on the kid’s fingers.

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