Bacchus and Me

I don’t drink wine, so I was delighted to discover that water with meals is perfectly acceptable now in France. Back in 1961, tap water was suspect, but now it’s perfectly safe. If you want to pay a premium for it, you can get bottled water, even bubbly bottled water, but the best way to order ordinary water is by the carafe.

A carafe is a lovely frosty bottle that once held wine. It is brought to your table along with two small wine glasses and replaced as often as you like. It seemed to me that this was a classy way to serve water. A step above putting a plastic glass of water and a straw in front of you.

I got in trouble the first time I tried to order a carafe in Paris. Not knowing the right word, I ordered the wrong kind of water. The waiter pointed to a nearby table where a bottle of water stood and I nodded because it looked like what I’d seen elsewhere. He brought a bottle of Evian water, expensive.

“No,” I said. “But this is what you ordered,” he rejoined testily. We may or may not have been speaking in French. “But it’s not what I want,” I pleaded. “It’s what you asked for,” he scowled. “Non, s’il vous plait. Not in that bottle.” Furious, he grabbed the Evian off the table and stalked off to the kitchen or wherever and after awhile brought back a “carafe,” plunking it down on the table with such force I thought it might break.

After that, I didn’t exist. Mary was the only customer at our table. Later as we were leaving, I complained to her about how rude he’d been and she said it was my imagination. Not! I’ve been ignored before and recognize the signs. It’s hard not to.

I think this was probably the only actively impolite French person we met. However, look out during tourist season! He was only warming up with me. Remember: “Un carafe de l’eau, s’il vous plait.” Un carafe. Don’t forget. Unless you’d rather have wine, which is fine, of course. Mary frequently had some wine. I’m the teetotaler, not her.

After I got home, I had a regular appointment to check my blood levels – cholesterol and all that stuff. I was curious if all the cheese I consumed daily might have affected things. It was not a lowfat diet by any stretch of the imagination.

Curious, I looked up the prevalence of heart disease in French women, both because of their cheese-rich diet and the huge number of female smokers. It turned out that recent studies have shown an increase in heart disease that’s attributed to smoking rather than diet.

The reason the fat-filled diet didn’t raise cholesterol levels was suggested to be the drinking of red wine with meals.

Help! I come from a long line of alcoholics and do NOT want to drink wine (also, I am a Latter-day Saint and we don’t drink alcohol). I do drink grape juice, however, so I looked up (yay google) to see how it compares to wine in fighting heart problems. What joy to find that it’s just the same!

All the good things in wine are also present in the juice before fermentation.

Whew! However, the day my blood was drawn for the test, I was still on my French diet – pastry, cheeses and no grape juice. I had lost two pounds but my bad cholesterol was up about thirty points. Ouch.

I’m sure that if you’re concerned about diets the way most of us are, you know that a few non-doctors say that animal fats are good for you, even better than vegetable fats. Don’t believe it! It may be marginally true for a few people, but my daughter-in-law and I have seen the results of eating a lot of animal fat (butter, for her; cheese for me) and for each of us, our bad cholesterol rose. When she went back to a vegetable spread instead of butter, her levels went back down.

I will still eat cheese, but more moderately than before. Paul Newman’s Own Concord Grape Juice sold at Costco is the best I’ve ever tasted. Who needs wine when they can have that!

Actually, I don’t know if you can order grape juice in France. In the late afternoons, when we would stop at an outdoor café for a rest/snack, I would order hot milk (it comes whipped with sugar on the side), which is as good as their cheese. I believe the cows and goats grazing on the lush green fields of France are superbly happy because the products made from their milk are unmatchable.

If you are in France in August, the French who are left in the cities might well be grumpy. All their friends are off at the beaches or the mountains, and they are left behind. Try to overlook their scowls. Order your “carafe de l’eau” and thank the waiter for your delicious meal. Even a hard French heart will melt if treated kindly.

[The photos are Mary and the waiter in a gem of a tiny restaurant down a narrow street in Lyon; a patisserie in Albi showing that we weren’t the only people in love with French pastries; a café in Collioure on the Mediterranean; and Place Stanislas in Nancy, filled with places to sit, drink, and watch the world go by.]