Bread And Milk

At the end of the march in India, most of us prepared to go home, including the French couple who coordinated the foreigners and served as the international communications team. They had been in India for two years, with visits home every six months. The last six months had been extremely stressful as they negotiated with service providers and struggled with a non-Western sense of time and urgency to get things done.

Sam said to me on his last evening, "I can't decide which I want to do first when I get home - take a big bite into a chocolate croissant, or get a plain croissant and dip it into a cup of hot chocolate." Since then, I've been hankering to do something similar - dip a chocolate croissant into my coffee. Oh I had croissants and coffee in Kabul, but they weren't so much croissants as crescent shaped warm dough and the coffee was powdered instant.

This week, after my morning pilates class, I went into Pain Perdu, our local French cafe. I may not be French, but being in there was like coming home. When The Man took The Exchange there in the summer, The Exchange came back elated and exclaimed, "It was like holding a piece of France in my hands."

So I ordered a chocolate croissant and a bowl of cafe au lait, and I dipped the croissant in my coffee and took a bite. It was sublime. The croissant melted in my mouth, tapping awake forgotten taste buds before flowing down my stomach in a milky wash of warm, frothy coffee.

Thing is, I don't usually dip my croissant into my coffee. The idea of soggy bread doesn't appeal to me, and I am lactose intolerant so milky drinks literally don't sit well with me. But it was something about the way Sam said it, with that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes, and his girlfriend, Anais, beside him, saying, "Ahh..." as he said it, that made me want to dip my croissant into a warm milky bath.

Sam and I had had earlier conversations about how to treat Anais right. At that moment, I reminded him, "When you kiss Anais, make sure you cradle her head. That just sweeps a woman away." It's only now that I realize I had given kissing tips to a French man when he was talking about croissants and hot chocolate.

In North America, bread and milk are staples in many kitchens. But truly, it's the French who have elevated these staples to a gastronomical adventure of the most satisfying kind, tying food in with all the delightful sensual, friendly, and comfortable necessities of life.