Bon Appetit!

Literally, it means, "Good Appetite!" but in context it means, essentially, "enjoy your meal!" I like to translate it as, "Good Eatin'!" Point is, you've all heard it before. But unless you've been to France, you've never heard it this much.

Here, it's not just the waiters who wish you good eatin'. Nope. It's everyone. It's friends. It's total strangers on the street. Hardly a day passes without hearing it multiple times. When I first arrived, I'd be walking down the street gnawing on a pastry and three to four passersby would shout out, "Bon Appetit!" I thought surely they were being sarcastic. Perhaps eating on the street was a faux-pas?

But it turns out, no. It's just that here, people wish each other good eatin' the way we wish each other Merry Christmas during the holidays. If not MORE prolifically.

In fact, the French are so eager for you to enjoy your eatin' that they have another phrase, Bon Continuacion, which they use when you're already well into your meal and may have forgotten the original Bon Appetit. For example, if you finished your entree and the waiter took thirty minutes to bring the main course.

Let me clear up confusion. In France, "entree" refers to the appetizer, and "plat" refers to the main course. Actually, this is extremely logical, as the "entree" is the entry to the meal, in the same way that an "entree" can be the entrance to the building. ("Yes,darling, just step into the appetizer and hang your coat on one of the pegs to your left...")

After the entree is the plat. After the plat is the cheese course. After the cheese course is dessert. After dessert is coffee. It's pretty awesome, if you can afford it.

The nice thing is that you don't have to tip, because the waiters are paid much better here, and the tip is generally included in the [admittedly exhorbitant] cost of most meals out. At first I thought this was awesome - I don't have to add anything to the meal!

But then I realized that essentially, the French have worked it out so that their tips are included, no matter what, and the waiters aren't working for tips. They don't care about your good graces. Which is why, though they're incredibly friendly, it can take so long between the entree and the plat that people feel compelled to wish you "Bon Continuacion," knowing that in the three hours that have passed since you first received a "Bon Appetit," surely the blessing has run its course.

If you come to Paris on a budget, don't despair. I've found plenty of ways to eat quite cheaply - cooking at home, making baguette sandwiches, and enjoying veggie couscous at the North African restaurants 'round my house. Veggie couscous, more than one person could possibly consume, 5 euro. If you ever visit Paris on a budget, eat couscous.

French food is, as you'd expect, delicious. Their ideas about "nutrition" are a little different than mine, though, so it took a few weeks to figure out what I was going to eat that wasn't some new version of bread, butter and cheese.

For example, there is a picture on the butter package of a complete breakfast (un petit dejeuner complet), and it is: a bread element, a butter element, and an expresso. And a cigarette, probably, though it isn't pictured, officially.

I have tried very hard to maintain my own, fading, concepts of healthy eating. And yet I find a change has taken place. Since being here, my whole outlook on dessert has changed, in the sense that I now feel I must have it for every meal. It's just so easy to walk down to a little bakery, pop in for a fresh little tart, and consume it.

Ithink to myself, "I've had my bread element. I've had my butter element. I've had my cheese element. What a nice, balanced meal! I shall now have dessert."

Luckily, there's hardly a preservative to be found in Paris restaurants and bakeries. Food here is fresh - there's even a little farmer's market about three steps from my house on wednesdays and saturdays where I can buy veggies, cheese, fish and - if I wanted - watches, alarm clocks, ripoff wallets and underwear.

Michael has discovered that if you hang around the farmer's market as it closes down, you can get free zucchini, pineapple, tomatoes, squash and other such things. It's usually the pieces the vendors consider not quite good enough for saving, and Michael likes to linger with the homeless folks to see what he can grab. We've enjoyed many a freegan meal that way.

And so from this long, rambling treatise on food, I'd like to sum up: It's totally possible to eat cheaply here. I do it all the time. And if you want to spend a little extra, it's totally worth it. Here in France are some of the most delicious combinations of bread, butter and cheese that you've ever tasted in your life. They go great with the pastries.

And no matter what you eat, every last person in France, from your waiter to your friend to that random guy on the street, hopes you enjoy the hell out of your meal.