Hugo, Flaubert and TexAnne would be aghast

[sergebroom]

My wife recently bought me a Bodum coffee press. Since it's from Switzerland, the text on the box is in English and in French. I understand that translation must be colloquial, not a word-for-word conversion, but I felt my eyebrow rise when I saw that...

Brew coffee or tea on the go!

...had become...

Mug à piston portable pour le café ou le thé

Sacrebleu!
Molière must be spinning in his grave.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Un mug! Well, considering that mostly they still use demitasses, I'm going to take it as a win.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

But using English's 'portable' instead of French's 'portatif'?
Quelle horreur!

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Un téléphone portable! Cette bataille est perdue depuis longtemps.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Exactement. I realized that when I visited Quebec in 2004, nine years after my previous trip. So it goes. What really saddened me though was the nearly complete disappearance of bookstores from my home town. Luckily, Quebec City still has La Librairie Pantoute.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Hm. In 1987, in Normandy, demitasses were for espresso, purchased outside the home, and IN the home, breakfast coffee (for the life of me I cannot remember the brewing apparatus, and I think one of my homestay host families favored tea in any case) was served in HUGE FREAKING BOWLS. Like, big enough for soup or cereal. Like the size of one of those giant squat cups that a "latte" or caramel-mocha-confection comes in at a coffeeshop, but without the handle.

Also, while it was the practice of the high school students to repair to a local cafe during morning break, and order espresso, to which they did not add any sort of milk (possibly because plain espresso was cheaper than cappucinos or cafe au lait?) they coped with the bitterness by adding a triple cube of sugar (the stuff came packaged as three squares to one wrapper, definitely more sugar than a single American packet) to EACH DEMITASSE. It got pretty syrupy.

I tried this, but discovered that the hot chocolate suited me much better. I think it was made of melted chocolate (or ganache) and steamed milk. SO RICH. Yum.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Les bols are used only for breakfast, never for anything else. I, er, might have brought one back from the HS I taught at. Sadly, it turns out to be about a cup.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

The idea of tainting coffee with any sugar, especially that much, makes me feel queasy.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Teenagers. What are you going to do?

Dunkin' Donuts coffee, which is something of a local default, and which is remarkably palatable black, is practically always served with copious amounts of cream and sugar, but the proportions are not as startling, because a "small" DD cup would hold about four of those demitasses, and the default amount of sugar is maybe 1.5 times what would go into that Normandy espresso.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

When I was a teenager, I had sugar with my coffee, must like my parents did, although not in any of those proportions. I think not, anyway. When I moved to my own place, I started having it black, for some reason. After that, when someone would foist it on me with sugar, I couldn't take it in anymore.

As for DD... There isn't one nearby, which is just as well because I'd be having six honey-glazed donuts every time and that'd wreck my boyish figure.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

My weakness is Boston cream doughnuts. When we did our doughnut lesson in pastry school I asked if we could mix up a batch of pastry cream and some chocolate glaze while the doughnuts were proofing, so we could have Boston cream and not just plain.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Ah, the sacrifices that one must make for one's education...