A French Easter Egg Hunt
For coloring and on walking on delicately...
The big news in France this week was that I found eggs with white shells.
Living abroad means constantly trying to find the right balance between embracing a new culture and holding tight to the traditions of the homeland. The latter includes coloring eggs on Easter. Alas, outside the U.S., it’s a brown, brown, brown eggshell world.
Coloring brown eggs is deeply unsatisfying. The colors simply don’t blend and pop in the right way against the darker shells. It’s like looking at the colors with sunglasses on. They are dim and disappointing. Look, I get that this does not rank high on the scale of human rights disasters. But there is something to be said for the comforts of tradition and the familiar, and their ability to lift the spirits just a touch when needed.
And so, each year, we undertake the quest to find eggs with white shells. Last year, we came close. A thread in a Facebook group for Americans living in our area in the North of France noted a couple of places that were selling them. But I got there too late.
However, I made a note of these locations. And so taking a break from work last week, I drove to a nearby Auchan (generic French grocery store chain) that had them last year. I scanned the egg section and saw none. It’s always worth asking someone who works there because the logic of shelving in French stores is not always, well, logical. So I asked the man working in the egg section: Avez-vous des oeufs avec des coquilles blanches?
The concept of eggs with white shells was simply so foreign that he had no idea what I was talking about. It’s not that he didn’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. Rather, he had no reference to grasp such an absurdity. White eggs shells? But despite whatever stereotype you may have, the French are eager to be helpful. And so this man, seeing that I was in search of something egg-related, proceeded to give me a 10-minute lecture explaining every variety of eggs available. This one is free range, and this one is organic and that one has…. He even took various eggs out of the cartons to show me the numbers stamped on the eggs which correspond to their nutritional value (this was indeed a new one to me!).
He was on such a roll, and so genuine in his desire to be helpful, that I didn’t have the heart to tell him everything he was telling me was completely useless in the context of my egg quest. I just nodded and smiled, and made appropriate facial expressions that seemed to reflect the level of interest I should be showing at any given moment. And then I thanked him and left eggless.
In the car, I scanned the Facebook thread again and saw a mention of a place called Ferme Saint Hubert. Ah, a farm, I thought. Well, that could be quite nice. It’s a sunny day. I’m already out, and it’s just 15 minutes away. I called and a woman, clearly versed in the ways of Americans and their eggs, responded that they had just received a shipment of white eggs. “Beaucoup, beaucoup!” she proclaimed.
Off I went. I plugged the address into Google Maps and went rolling past fields and meadows and a couple of small villages, imagining that I would soon be pulling up to some rustic spot where there would be little farm animals milling about. Just a minute away, the route took me under an overpass and then up a hill, and then…straight into a monstrous shopping mall.
Not just a mall, but a Westfield mall, a hellscape of commerce and bad design. The parking garage is so byzantine that once you enter, a 20-minute loop is required to exit via all the narrow, one-way twists and turns. This is how murderers are made. Even on a Tuesday afternoon, there was not a single spot available, so I had to exit and find a parking spot about 10 minutes away and then walk back.
I would not be denied. I had come too far.
Navigating the mall was also daunting, but after exiting and re-entering several times, I finally found the small corner that was home to Ferme Saint Hubert. And there, I spotted the motherlode. Stacks of cartons filled with white gold. How many to get? 100? In my euphoria, I thought maybe I should get one for every single American I know in France. Probably overindulgent. I grabbed five cartons of 6 eggs as the French-American Egg Expert nodded with approval.
“How many did you get?” she asked. “Five,” I said. “Well, you might as well just get six,” said. “Of course,” I thought. “The wisdom of six, rather than five, is self-evident. 6, not 5. The logic is inescapable. Who am I to question this higher egg authority?” I got six. She nodded again. I sent triumphant WhatsApp photos to family members.
On Saturday, we colored about 18 eggs and it was immensely satisfying as we listened to a selection of Easter music. As a genre, Easter music is rather slim pickings, a hokey set of songs that sound like poor Christmas leftovers. After noting this on Twitter, one person replied: “Now you know what the Jews feel like on Hannukah.”
Still, the egg-coloring results were glorious. The true colors of Easter and victory.
Employee Of The 17th Century
For Easter festivities, we visited on Sunday the Château de Breteuil, located near Choisel in the Yvelines department, about 40 minutes south of Paris. Built in the 17th century, it belongs to the family of Louis de Breteuil, who was a financial advisor to Louis XIV, aka the Sun King.
Breteuil had an employee named Charles Perraut, who was a lawyer and later also in finance. He also advised the king, including on matters related to constructing Versailles and had a lifelong interest in myths.
Perraut lost favor with his patrons over time and eventually began to focus on his writing. This included developing a number of longtime myths and tales into what came to be known as “fairytales.” You’ve probably heard of several of his works: The Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Puss in Boots, and Bluebeard. The Brothers Grimm would later further develop some of these stories.
In 1697, he published a number of these tales in a book called Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals (Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé), subtitled Tales of Mother Goose (Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye). This is the first recorded use of “Mother Goose.”
Château de Breteuil has embraced this somewhat tenuous link between their ancestor and this writer and turned the grounds of the Château into an homage to Perraut and his legendary tales. Including a rather terrifying rotating statue of Mother Goose in the gardens.
Still, we had a wonderful afternoon wandering the grounds and forcing our daughter to participate in the Easter egg hunt for kids, which she did in good humor. I particularly enjoyed the pair of statues in front that depict wild animals mauling each other. Nothing like carnage to make guests feel welcome. We bought some food for a picnic in the sun and strolled around a bit more before making the sleepy drive back home.
Walking On Eggshells
As the holiday weekend enters its final stretch, so, too, does the relationship between President Emmanuel Macron and his prime minister Elisabeth Borne. The whole prime minister thing is still, frankly, a bit baffling to me, even after 8 years in France.
So one person runs for president and gets elected. That person appoints a prime minister, who becomes like a Chief Operating Officer of the government. And that PM then picks the heads of all the ministries. Technically, the prime minister, someone for whom no one voted, is running the government.
The president and the PM then become political rivals and spend five years pretending they barely know each other. In theory, the president thinks of big picture stuff (retirement reform!) and then the PM gets their hands filthy making it happen. Then, when everyone gets pissed, they can point fingers at each other.
This has all happened before. And it is happening again as Macron and Borne are now walking on eggshells around each other.
Journalists have started a Deadpool for Borne. She recently met with union leaders to see if there was some way to find a truce and end weeks of strikes and protests. The talks fell flat. But union leaders seemed at least somewhat pleased that a meeting had occurred.
Meanwhile, Macron, on a trip to China, criticized the unions, said the scale of protests was being overblown, and everyone should just get over it and move on because the debate about retirement reform was over. He subsequently did not win any Mr. Congeniality awards.
Of course, his words were seen as a dig at his PM’s attempts to make peace. As names of her replacements circulate, Borne is left to meekly insist that she can “still be useful,” in an interview with Le Parisien. The only steps now are the final public vote of confidence before the official beheading.
Chris O’Brien
Le Pecq