US Brunch has Nothing on Paris

Obvious statement: The French are really serious about their food times.

Sunday meals are a really big deal for my host family. I, along with a 17 year old German host girl, got to be a part of those meals today. There were pancakes in the morning, because pancakes are my host mother's favorite thing from America. Go America.
As the three of us ate our pancakes, we discussed the stereotypes of our countries, including the notion that Americans never cook and only eat food from frozen packages. That has never been true of my family, so I was kind of bummed to receive my host mother's disapproval for that one.

Maybe half an hour after breakfast, my host mother began preparing lunch and I began making brownies before the neighbors came over to eat with us.

So Sunday lunch time goes as follows:

The sitting and talking in the living room phase.
The finally moving to the dining room and being assigned seats phase.
The wine phase.
The salad and bread phase.
The blanquette de veau and phase.
The second blanquette de veau phase.
The cheese (and bread) phase.
The dessert phase.
The moving back to the living room for café phase.
The sitting and talking for 2 hours phase.

This was a four hour event, and by the end I was exhausted. Which is pitiful when I remember that just outside the wall, the Paris Marathon was happening.

Alteration to Hemingway's sage words: Paris is a marathon of food.