As a student of Le Cordon Bleu, we were offered the opportunity to attend a guided tour of the Salon de l'Agriculture given by a member of the French chapter of the worldwide Slow Food Movement. Curiosity prodded me to sign up and spend a Friday afternoon checking this thing out.
I had no idea where I was going or what exactly was the Salon de l'Agriculture. Turns out the whole shebang was only 2 metro stops from my apartment. The event was housed in a convention site I could walk to but didn't even know existed. Zoning in Paris is definitely NOT of the planned community cul-de-sac variety.
Stepping through the glass doors landed me in a kind of Kansas. Stretching out all around were more cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, goats and lambs than Old McDonald ever had on his farm. And between each stall and pen and cheek to jowl in every aisle were throngs of people. Very excited people. This menagerie was obviously a big deal to the French. France likes to think of its self as an agricultural country and they have all sorts of socialist style protectionist regulations to help maintain that image. The French like to know where their food comes from, they are very serious about maintaining regional tastes and processes and when they think of a leg of lamb for example, they do not dream of a shrink wrapped piece of flesh.
Hence the extremely well informed and verbose guide who treated us to 2 hours of cows. Down on this farm in the center of Paris there were more varieties of cows than I could have imagined. Apparently each produces its unique tasting dairy products with subtle taste differences between each pat of butter. The most impressive thing to me about these cows was that many of them were enormous. They looked like ships tied up to a dock. Our guide spoke reverently about each individual cow and the magic that was her milk. Will the French never cease to amaze?
Beautiful Bessie's belong right next to supermodels here in Paris and I have a feeling that the average French person would prefer Bessie to Kate Moss any day.
I am definitely not in Kansas anymore.
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