The ease of eating like a Frenchwoman if abroad

Apologies for the long lull in my posts: - no-one said running a fashion magazine would be easy!

I have had some rather unkind people contacting me about my blog posts, calling me smug, up myself etc etc.  I have also faced accusations that from my supposed ivory tower, I don't understand what life is like for real struggling people in terms of affording proper food.  A chav who lives in the British town of Gravesend in Kent got in touch with me and challenged me to put my money where my mouth is.  You know me, I can't resist a challenge!

Gravesend is a funny place.  It contains some reasonably pretty areas.  The picture above depicts Khartoum Place, which is so named on account of the association of General Charles George Gordon with Gravesend, who died in the Siege of Khartoum.  Another reasonably pretty building in the town (though nothing holds a candle to my native Marseille) is St. George's Anglican Church.

St. George's Anglican church contains the most famous thing associated with the town: - the remains of Princess Pocahontas.  Yes, she was a real person, not just a Disney character.  Pocahontas, after visiting the British Isles, decided to make the journey back to Virginia in the Land of the Free (fat, more like) with her husband John Rolfe.  She became ill while on the ship near Gravesend and was carried ashore dead or dying and was buried within the grounds of the church, though no-one today knows which remains are hers.

However, the chav nature of Gravesend was very scary.  Above is an old photo of one of the main streets (Wikipedia wrongly says that it is the High Street).  As you can see, Woolworths (thankfully now defunct) and Primark are in the photo.  There is also an Asda, Aldi and Tesco in the town, with a Morrisons on the outskirts.  There is also a pier (normally a symbol of chav British seaside towns, though the restaurant in this one was relatively posh.  Yeek!

Gravesend is very easy to reach from France.  One can simply take a Eurostar train to Ebbsfleet International station, the parkway station along the UK's high-speed line to the Channel Tunnel that I assume was built mainly to serve commuters into London and people wishing to reach a Eurostar station by car.

From there, one can take a British Rail Class 395 (known informally as the "Javelin") connecting train to Gravsend.  Though this particular rolling stock model is only designed for 225km/h or so in service, its acceleration is impressive and enough to knock me off my feet.  As far as I'm aware, there are a couple of likely reasons why it was designed around a 225km/h maximum speed.  Firstly, given the gearing ratio question, higher speeds would result in a trade-off regarding acceleration.  Secondly, approximately half of the trains leave HS1 (the high-speed line to the Channel Tunnel, aka the CTRL) at Ebbsfleet International and the speed between here and central London is limited to 230km/h or so, meaning that only half of the trains or so (the ones going towards Ashford) would be able to make use of higher speeds.

Anyway, enough about the side matters, as this article is intended to talk about how it is possible to eat properly, even if one is a chav.  I met up with the chav who I had been in touch with and, at great risk of traumatising myself for life, I commenced the journey round the local supermarkets.  Aldi was reasonably continental in its offerings, though the quality wasn't great (one has to be a sophisticated Frenchwoman like me to know the difference) and there wasn't a great selection of dark chocolate.  Very close to the station is Tesco (the one shown below is not the one in Gravesend), where I found a large selection of chocolate.  I found two varieties of 85% chocolate.

One was labelled "Swiss 85% Plain Chocolate" and the other was labelled "Tesco Finest Dominican Republic 85% Dark Chocolate".  On the inside label, it reads "Tasting fine chocolate should be done with all of your senses.  Look for a nice glossy brown finish, listen for a crisp snap when you break a piece off, smell delicious chocolate notes and hints of other aromas before you take the first bite.  Let a piece melt slowly on your tongue to truly experience the depth of flavour, which will change from start to finish.  Using the flavour wheel below, you can identify the unique, characteristic flavour profiles of each of the Tesco Finest single origin chocolates."  As one can see from my earlier post about dark chocolate, even a bumpkin Frenchwoman could have told people that for nothing, but anyway.  The price?  One for £1.50 and two for £2 at the time of my visit.  Ok, so I wouldn't eat it myself, as people who are the bee's knees like myself only go for the best quality from specialist chocolatiers, but how is it that people think it is impossible to eat like a dainty Frenchwoman with 85% chocolate being that cheap?

We also went onward to Asda (above is the headquarter building in Leeds).  I was not very happy about having a choice between taking the escalator or the lift to get there (luckily, I found out in advance of my ascent after finishing in Asda that there is an outdoor steps route to the main road passing Asda), as a dainty Frenchwoman such as myself much prefers the stairs/steps.  Anyway, one of the things we looked at in Asda was the cheese section.  Yes, there was lots of rubbish, e.g. discounted Cheddar, Cheddar mixed in with horrible rubbish to make processed cheese (e.g. pickle, chili etc), but I was pleasantly surprised to see some continental cheeses there.  Comté, Castello Blue (which takes on a lovely taste as it ages), Manchego, Gorgonzola, Parmigiano Reggiano, Camembert, Brie (though I wouldn't personally go near the Cornish versions of these two), Roquefort and I was even amazed to see Reblochon de Savoie!

  The quality was probably substandard, given the low prices (a Frenchwoman knows that clever people never cut corners when it comes to spending money on quality food).  We also found some cheap vegetables (regrettably, the ones near the cheese aisle happened to be frozen, though there were some fresh ones near the entrance).  Fresh bread was also baked in-store (though I didn't intend to try it, as I knew the quality would be poor).  I rejected my chav companion's suggestion that she was too poor to buy butter instead of margarine, as the own-brand stuff (I hope nobody was contemplating the idea that I would ever let this near my lips) cost just £1!  For something marginally better, there was some Somerset Farmhouse butter for £1.40.  Ooh arr, gert lush (not)!  Slightly cheaper at £1.25 was the French brand Président, which is the bare minimum of quality I will ever consider, which I advised my chav companion to buy.

I followed my chav single mother companion to her home in a slum on Huntley Avenue in nearby Northfleet (pikey mothers shouting "Oi!  Come 'ere now!" at their children, noisy Staffordshire Bull Terriers, grannies wearing football shirts etc), with her purchases of items including dark chocolate, Président butter, Reblochon de Savoie, French-style bread etc.  She was originally considering taking the bus back, but I insisted that we walk, as a Frenchwoman would do.  She was originally planning on making cheese and chips for her family (all of whom were overweight), but I insisted that she make tartiflette (which uses cheese and potatoes and so has some similarities with cheese and chips, though it is in a different league altogether) instead, a lovely rich French dish that I have discussed in a previous posting that is very rich and fills a dainty Frenchwoman up very quickly.  She made gigantic portions, but obviously found she and her chidlren were unable to finish them, so I went onto the street and called in some chav neighbours to show them what proper food is like (I don't like food going to waste and the quality isn't so good if it has been microwaved) and fed them with the remainder of the tartiflette.

Eventually, when I decided I had had enough of the chav surroundings, I walked to Ebbsfleet International station across the bridge near Huntley Avenue, caught my train into London and went about my business of promoting my fashion magazine.  I don't know if the chav single mother I met up with has changed her ways, or if she is too proud to realise that we Frenchwomen are impossibly perfect and should be slavishly replicated, but maybe I'll ask her sometime.  All in all, though economy stuff is never the highest quality, the suggestion that one is overweight because one cannot eat like a dainty Frenchwoman is absolute nonsense.  What I say to people in Anglo-Saxon nations is, stop making excuses, get up off your incredibly overweight backsides, walk to the supermarket (if you aren't successful enough to afford the specialist stores), buy some proper food and watch the weight tumble off!