From page 23 of "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why we love France but not the French" by Nadeau and Barlow.
"We started to understand what 'terroir' (soil, tradition, agriculture) means to the French at the Salon de l'Agriculture held every March in Paris. We arrived at the Salon expecting to visit a traditional American farm fair, indoors. We thought there would be cows, pigs, and maybe horses in one section, and tractors and machinery in another, with hotdog stands somewhere in the middle. To our great surprise, there was no machinery. There were no hotdogs either.
The Paris show was about animals and cuisine--and the French were not shy about mixing these themes. Cattle pens were decorated with huge posters of raw steaks and sausages. There was a stand with live ducks right beside another one selling their livers in jars. The tight juxtaposition of live animals and meat ruined our appetite at first, but once we got used to it, we nearly made ourselves sick tasting cider, wine, cheese, saucisson, tartiflette (a savory Savoy potato stew boiled in cream and gratineed with Reblochon cheese)...."
The tartiflette description is especially for Monique who is a "Savoyarde" (from the Alpes region in France)...actually an "Haute (high) Savoyarde" since she is from Annecy. And speaking of Reblochon cheese we shared an apartment for a month with Monique in a wonderful place right on the shores of Lac d'Annecy in 1976. Monique chose a very special Reblochon cheese that still needed to "ripen" and this ripening process needed to take place outside the fridge. The cheese seemed quite ripe to my nose already and for several days we played a little game of me putting the cheese in the fridge and Monique taking it out until it almost walked away itself! I must admit it was superb when we finally were allowed to eat it...
Very similar to the view from our apartment.
Old Annecy
C'est la plus belle ville de la France, n'est-ce pas?
