For those of you who have ever visited or lived in France, you know that the French are pretty serious about their food: the snails, the duck, the foie-gras, the wine, the cheese, the champagne, the meals that last four hours, etc. Yet you couldn’t possibly have spent a night in the “City of Lights” without coming to this frightening realization: Breakfast as we know it doesn’t exist!
OK, that is a bit dramatic, but it isn’t that far from the truth. For a country that is so in love with food, why deprive yourself from a third of it? One easy method to learn about a country and culture’s eating habits is to look at their restaurants. And that, my friends, is where it all becomes clear, as there are no breakfast restaurants in France! Sure you will find tasty croissants and baguettes, but not much more. (Maybe this is why the French spend so much time with lunch and dinner; they are taking advantage of the time saved from their “petit dejeuner,” or breakfast.) For breakfast, most French adults eat a piece of bread with butter and jam (or perhaps some Nutella) and have a coffee or hot chocolate. More and more kids are eating bowls of sugar cereal like in the States. But the norm would definitely be bread.
But what you won’t see here is protein on the breakfast table. No eggs, no bacon, no sausage, and saddest of them all, no biscuits and gravy. How do I survive, you ask? Actually, I am not that big of a breakfast guy myself. However, every now and then I get a big hankering for a breakfast burrito, biscuits and gravy, and some cheesy hash browns. If anyone from Der Dutchman or the County Seat (some favorite breakfast restaurants from home) is reading, the market is wide open here!
This week, schools are on vacation for what they call winter break. Here in France, they get two weeks for Christmas, two for winter break, and then two for spring break. Not bad! Anyhow, we decided to invite the youth who live in our town for an “American breakfast.”
We were 13 people and ate our faces off. We had pancakes (plain, chocolate and banana), scrambled eggs (with onions, peppers and cheese), fried eggs, and bacon. To some cowboys, this is just a normal breakfast, perhaps even a bit light. But to these kids, it was pretty exciting. And I am positive none of them ate lunch afterward.
Two of the girls in the group have an older sister who still to this day talks about “that time when her American friend made her pancakes.” This was at least five years ago. Can you believe it? Something so normal and almost boring to some can be so exciting and new for others.
Brenna and I are reminded of this often when working with these youth groups. Sometimes we get into our routines and focus so much on planning big events or weekend retreats, thinking those are the big important highlights for the kids. But something as simple as a homemade breakfast helped remind us that quality time is what really matters. I still remember one time going over to my youth pastor’s house just to make chocolate chip cookies and talk. How simple is that? And yet more than 10 years later, I still remember it.
May God help us see our ordinary moments as opportunities to share his extraordinary love.
Brad Graber and Brenna Steury Graber serve as youth workers at three Mennonite congregations in Paris, France. Together they teach and nurture the existing youth and young adult groups and reach out to other youth and young adults. To read the original blog post, and more posts from Brad and Brenna, click here to visit their blog.
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