Shhhhhhhh....

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Contrary to what many Americans, and possibly other nationalities, think, not all French people spend their days cooking elaborate, gourmet meals. They don't always make everything from scratch, they don't always eat five course meals and they don't always have time to sit down at the table. No, their lives are just like ours; filled with busy schedules, late nights at the office and activities for the kids. Sometimes, there just isn't any room for a thought-out meal. Sometimes, even the French need a quick fix for dinner.

Evidence of this startling fact is all around. Frazzled businessmen and women running around the streets of Paris eating boulangerie-bought sandwiches, fast food restaurants that seem never at a loss for customers, and grocery store shelves filled with pre-packaged meals. What's more, there's even a chain of stores in France dedicated wholly to frozen foods. That's right, frozen foods; frozen croissants, frozen Quiche Lorraine, frozen soup, frozen anything you could possibly imagine. It's actually quite amazing. As my landlady once said to me: "We couldn't live without it." Now, I don't want to give the impression that the art of cooking is dead in France. On the contrary, I've never met so many people who know how to make a chocolate cake without having to whip out a box of Betty Crocker in my life. But when the going gets rough, when there just don't seem to be enough hours in the day, the French do the same thing that we mere mortals do. They defrost.