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a
Boulette
, especially when we’re expecting guests. It’s a test of character. Remember de Gaulle, who asked rhetorically, “How can anyone govern a country with four hundred and fifty different cheeses?” That maynot be the number, but the point is that there are so many kinds, the number changes every time the story is told.
    The best thing about both the dessert and the cheese is that you can go buy them—good-bye homemade hassle. (You can also buy the pâté; no one in his right mind would
make
one unless that person had several hours to kill.) When it comes to actually
concocting
food à la Harriet, well, over the years (thanks to my mother-in-law and my husband’s aunt), I managed to get a few main dishes down pat. In fact, I even got to be rather good or, as the French would say,
pas mal
(“not bad”) at
plats mijotés
, those slow-simmering dishes that cook for hours and taste good even a day or two later. When I go to the market and find a cut of meat I don’t recognize or a fish whose name means nothing to me, I just ask the
marchand
what it is and how to make it (the result is generally a new recipe), and believe me, these guys know what they’re talking about when it comes to food.
Et voilà!
    The killer for me was, and still is, the hors d’oeuvre. Anyway, why have one? “Why don’t we just move to the essential?” I asked my husband. “Because,” he replied, “if you start with something, even if it’s just a little something, you won’t be as tempted to eat so much of what is to come.” Not bad reasoning, I thought. So I have made a bit of an effort but have yet to live up to my in-laws’ standards. Their first course is so copiousthat in the beginning, I thought it
was
the meal. A few bellyaches later, I realized you’ve got to go easy on the first course if you want to make it to the end of the meal without losing face, or anything else.
    None of the above knowledge came easily, but that’s okay, because as an American living in France, I can take refuge in the fact that they (the French in general and my French family in particular) have some five centuries of food culture behind them and I have only a couple. So it stands to reason that just
thinking
about all this is an effort for me and as natural as breathing for them.
    When I first came to France over twenty years ago, I decided to introduce the concept of The Sandwich As A Meal to my in-laws. This was pre-McDonald’s, when people like my father-in-law still returned home for lunch, a four-course affair. My mother-in-law, used to the preparation of two ample daily repasts, embraced my idea eagerly. We hence proceeded to prepare sandwiches for lunch and serve one to my father-in-law, normally the soul of tolerance. He gazed at our creation as if it were a strange living creature and, upon being informed that you ate The Sandwich with your hands, commented ironically, “Well, why don’t we all just get down on the floor and throw bones over our shoulders while we’re at it?” That, needless to say, was the last time we ever even entertained the idea of fast food in that family. My father-in-law has since died, buttradition holds. In my
belle-famille
, a sandwich is not a meal.

    In spite of their marvelous culinary tradition, the French seem to be turning up their collective noses at fast food less and less (unfortunately). But not
all
the French. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law wouldn’t know what “a McDo,” the French nickname for the hamburger emanating from Ray Kroc’s ubiquitous chain, looked like if it was plopped down in front of them, and I have a hard time imagining either of them serving sandwiches for the midday meal or getting their impeccably manicured fingers around sliced bread. They’re having too much fun doing “real” food.
    There’s another reason for leaving the kitchen to my