French Kids Eat Everything

of something called terroir, a word related to the French word for land (la terre). Terroir refers to a close relationship between people, their land and climate, and their food. So terroir might mean drinking apple cider and eating oysters in Brittany, eating Roquefort or drinking rosé in southern France, or eating moose meat and maple syrup in Canada. French people have strong affinities for local foods—there are many cheeses, for example, that are hard to find outside their home terroir. And the French have distinct eating habits in different regions: the galettes made from “black flour” (buckwheat) that we ate almost every week weren’t found in markets outside of Brittany. Even at the big supermarket where I shopped in France, everything from wine to dairy products was labeled with an appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC)—a “label of origin” letting consumers know where their products came from. My favorite supermarket butter, for example, had hand-dried salt from the French town of Guérande. Jo’s favorite steak came from Camargue—a swampy region in southern France renowned for its beef. Janine’s favorite lamb was from the prés salés (literally, salty meadows) in the bay surrounding Mont Saint Michel, where sheep grazed on grass delicately flavored by tidal waters. Even vegetables could receive the label “AOC,” like the coco de Paimpol (a savory white bean) that came from a small town west of where we lived, but that was renowned (and sold) all over France. These “labeled” products filled the shelves of the big-box supermarket and weren’t much more expensive than “unlabeled” ones.

Food, in fact, is big business in France: as Véronique explained to me, agro-industry is the largest industrial sector (even bigger than the car industry) and the second-largest employer in the country. France has the largest agro-industrial sector in Europe (nearly one-fifth of Europe’s total production) and is the world’s fourth-largest exporter of agricultural and processed food products (despite being ranked twenty-first in terms of population size). What amazed me was the fact that this highly developed agro-industry coexists with an extensive network of local farmers who live and work on the land in a way that enables local connections between growers and consumers. The French have never forgotten what North Americans are now trying to relearn through school and community gardens or “locavore” initiatives like the 100-Mile Diet. And so their tastes are more demanding, as any visit to a local French market will quickly reveal; the French simply won’t buy produce that doesn’t taste farm-fresh. The French food system has adapted accordingly. This is another apparent paradox of the French food system: they have a highly modern, efficient food system and they get the food they want—tasty, fresh, local.

Learning to know local terroir, I decided, was one of the better countermarketing strategies that I could develop with my children. Just before we left, the book The 100-Mile Diet had sparked a huge debate about the benefits (and downsides) of eating locally. Reading it, I discovered things I never knew about the region around Vancouver (who knew that we could grow wheat in a rain forest climate?).

Inspired, I sought out local farmer’s markets—which (I was embarrassed to admit) we had never visited. We soon became regulars. And I found a little chocolaterie (the deliciously named Cocoa Nymph) in our neighborhood, making handmade chocolates—sometimes flavored with local foods in season (like rhubarb, blackberry, or even sorrel). They were expensive, but (just as in France) so rich and delicious that one little chocolate was enough. These became some of our favorite treats for the girls (and for Philippe and me too). For things we couldn’t find at the markets, we joined a food coop that was dedicated to distributing local produce to city dwellers. Wednesdays, when the big boxes full of “vegetable surprises” (as Sophie termed them) would be dropped off at our house, quickly became my favorite day of the week.

We also decided to try to introduce the girls to local food through family outings: “close encounters with terroir” rather than a trip to the mall on the weekends. We took the girls on “berry walks,” amazed at the feast of food along Vancouver’s back alleys and woods. August produced a bumper crop of blackberries, which we ate in salads, on top of cereal, even crushed on top of bread as a kind of instant jam. We had missed salmonberry season, but discovered huckleberries (which Claire insisted on calling “blue-bellies,” in a strange hybrid of the English “blueberry” and its French translation bleuet).

Inspired by our success with berries, we went to watch salmon spawn. Their fierce flopping impressed the girls as much as the watchful eagles and the gorging bears, so assured of a plentiful harvest that they would take only a few bites from each fish before casually flinging the remains into the forest. Inspired, we made our way down to the docks early one Saturday morning, and came home with enough sockeye salmon to fill half of our newly acquired chest freezer. The other half I filled with local fruits—blueberries, plums, and peaches—to last the winter. The money we saved covered the cost of the freezer in the first month.

I even planted a little garden the following spring: raspberries, strawberries, spinach and lettuce, tomatoes, and (daringly) grapes. Given our rather dark, dank, north-facing backyard, my husband scoffed (none of this will ever ripen!). But the sight of the girls nurturing “their” plants with their watering cans and their excitement over our (admittedly rather meager) harvest gradually changed his mind. Our “summer salad” snacks—fresh spinach, lettuce, strawberries, and raspberries plucked and eaten right in the garden—have become a family favorite. And, although it took a while, we even eat our own grapes (small, sour, hard grapes the size of big blueberries, but still all ours).

We aren’t eating exactly like the French do in France. But then, we don’t want to. The essence of the French approach is this: find a balance between the foods available where you are living, your terroir and