Review: An eye-opener
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 4, 2014
While we still lived in Denmark (before 2000) my French grand-mother-in-law asked us why we bought frozen vegetables when fresh were so much cheaper. She thought I was just being lazy, but no, in Denmark the fresh vegetables were very expensive.And yes, when we came to France, we started to cook like the French. We'd already been believers of using the real thing over powder and cans in Denmark (garlic and not garlic powder, cooking our beans ourselves and not buying the cans), but we took it to the next degree in France and I even started to make my own hand-stirred mayonnaise.The French value food, and Adrienne Hew really makes that fact clear in this book. Wherever we went in France, people asked us 1: what food we ate in Denmark? (no, not fish) and 2: what food that was dominant in our region.I love the way Adrienne Hew gives us proof of why different theories don't work. And it was a complete eye-opener to learn for example why mustard could be more fattening than mayonnaise. Interesting.I loved the writing style, and it almost felt like reading entertaining fiction.I would have loved some alternatives to pork (which I don't eat) and I would also love to hear if lentils are better or worse then beans.While we lived in France, I often used duck fat to fry food in (like potatoes and duck) and it made the food taste really delicious. Would that be an alternative to pork fat? Or could lamb/sheep fat?