Le Pain in my Stomach

What a wonder it has been to spend two weeks in Paris so far! The first week I was here was mostly spent just getting used to the city and doing some orientation activities with the rest of my cohort. Then the week after was when I started at my internship—I’m already seeing a lot of the similarities of how the field of communications is applied even in a different cultural context. All of what I’ve learned in school these past three years is going into my work advancing the brand guidelines and positioning for the podcast. I would say I’m more than fairly decent at French, but lately I’ve had a hard time judging some of the feedback on graphic design because of the way compliments tend to be given. In France, it's far more normal to say something along the lines of “not bad” over “good job.” When I learned this all I could think about was that it really put some of my french family’s past ‘compliments’ into perspective, HA!

It’s not been all work, though—definitely, by far, the most important thing out of ALL that I’ve learned since coming here is that for one single euro, I can get a Whole Freaking Baget! All for myself to devour! Judging by the stares I get on the street as I ravenously tear down my log of bread, I don’t think you’re really supposed to do that, but I’ll stop when the bread police finally chase me down for my crimes against bread.

I think at this point most everyone knows about the infamous Parisian sandwiches—they make them in the innumerable bakeries lining every street. With bread, dried meat, and cheese it’s hard to go wrong! But the secret? Why they ascend past all expectations? Du buerre. Lots and lots of butter. Let me share with you my personal two favorite sandwiches that you could even make in the States!

A cheese and jam sandwich—now I know I know, to American sensibilities this must seem atrocious, but this is a surprisingly delicious combination of savory and sweet!

1. Locate Bread: This can honestly be any type you want, wonder bread or artisanal or otherwise; just be aware what you put into it is what you’ll taste out of it. Also go ahead and right now just slather both sides in butter. Thank me later.
2. Choose Your Cheese: Get either a goat, camembert, or brie cheese because you’ll really want that creamy goodness to spread.
3. Jam On It: To balance the strong cheese flavor you’re going to want an equivalent sweet flavor. I’d recommend something along the lines of a Fig, Cranberry, Blackberry, or Plum jam to balance it all out.
4. Finally, shove it into your face and get ready to make the next sandwich!

Ok, so maybe you like to save your jam for your peanut butter, or you like to stay on the saltier side of a traditional lunch meat sandwich. No problem! What you need is a pâté, tapenade, and cornichon sandwich. Again step one is pick your bread and slather it in butter. Then you get the rest of the ingredients: pâté is a meat spread you put on one side, tapenade is the olive spread you put on the other, and then take the cornichons (tiny pickles basically) and line them up on both sides. Smack the two halves together and voila! You’ll be scarfing it down faster than you can make yourself another.

This has been the basis for most of my lunches thus far. I’m a shameless proponent of eating good food—we've got to do it every day, so why not make it wonderful! I think that (if you can, health providing) then always, always, always add the extra dollop of butter.