Culture Night: France

We had another fun culture night a couple of weeks ago.  For book club awhile back we read a book called French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon.  I had to buy it because I couldn't get it from the library in time.  The good thing about that was that there were recipes in the back of the book.  I also really enjoyed the book and it got me thinking about some of our bad eating habits here in America.  Anyway, so all of the food we made was from recipes in that book and it was all really good.  

Here's the table:

We kind of tried to have courses like they would in France.

We started with an endive and kiwi salad:

I couldn't find just endive in our grocery store so it ended up being some kind of mediterranean mix that had endive in it.  The best thing about this salad was the French vinaigrette dressing recipe that we found in the book.  Here it is, in case anyone is interested:

1/2 c. extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 c. red wine vinegar

1 1/2 tsp. Dijon-style mustard

1 Tbsp. maple syrup (optional--I put this in)

1 Tbsp. finely minced shallot, scallion, or onion (optional--I think I skipped this)

That's it.  It was super delicious.

For the next course we had some bread and cheese.  We got some imported French brie at Costco with their baguettes.

The kids all hated the brie but loved the bread of course.  I don't think brie is my favorite either.

Then we had Bouillabaisse for dinner.  We used this recipe for younger kids from the book:

Hopefully you can see enough of it to get the idea.  I took those pictures before going to the grocery store for ingredients.  I didn't get a picture of the soup but I thought it turned out pretty yummy.  I just used some tilapia from costco for the fish.  The kids all ate it pretty well.  I don't think Joe liked it much, but he's not too big on fish most of the time.  The leftovers were really good, too.  

For dessert we had chocolate mousse with fresh raspberries from our garden:

I don't think we let them chill quite long enough but they were still pretty delicious (and rich!).

Elizabeth talked about the French Revolution a little bit.  Natalie talked about French rules for eating (from the book).  Nate and Joe did sports.  Marsha talked about the relationship between American and France over the years.  I talked about the language.  

We finished it off by listening to some of our favorite French music for kids: French Bop! :)