I didn’t even know my oven had a “356” degrees. Turn out it does. That’s the conversion temp for the 180 degrees C that our exchange student needs to create his masterpiece, as tonight he plays the French chef. We’ve been to the grocery store, he and I, we’ve discussed the menu, we’ve been bien arrangés for this culinary endeavor: he with screen shots of the recipe his mother sent him, me ransacking cupboards for kitchen implements I didn’t even know I had. Let’s be frank, shall we? I no love to cook. The summer, when we’re coming and going like trains out of Gare St Lazare, even less so. Dice me up a wizened tomato been in the bowl three weeks and I’m good. Once the solstice rolls around it has always been subsistence living at the Motel Burk, (Ah, I’ll have the Forager Special, please…?) with a nice fat freeloader trip to Chipotle or Pad Thai every so often to sustain us. It’s not unusual by this point in the summer to be snacking on stale cereal and jelly packets (See “A Fatted Calf,” July 2019).

So the French meal idea is a good one, practicality and activity rolled into one. Sure, 14-year-old boy from France, I would love for you to cook us dinner! What do we make? I do not know, as he won’t show me, but he is obviously pleased with the prospect. So much so that last week he was on WhatsApp with his mother to get some perfect French recipes. Thus armed and excited, we make our foray to the grocery store. It’s both a culinary necessity and a cultural/educational expedition, a chance to practice his English as well as take in all the delicacies of the American market. At your neighborhood Food Lion. [You got it, weeping smiley face and baguette emojiis here]. Right off the bat, he dismisses the chocolate dessert he planned to make, that we were all looking forward to. Standing in the baking aisle shaking his head and telling me is not good chocolate. I want to smack him. Does fine for me in a pinch. “No, non,” he insists, “ease not gud chockolit.” Coming out his mouth even the words taste good, so I am sorry the American versions will not do for this confectionary snob.

He was the same way with meat, at dinner one night airing his assessment of American beef and such, which was—er, how do you say?—a costly opinion. Bill, who does not speak French, who does not, shall we say, read between lines so much as draw them, is not bien amuse by the kid who’s sat at his table these past three and a half weeks now announcing in his little pipsqueak voice, “mais non, american meet—eease no gud!” He is referring, of course, to the “Choice USDA grade beef” one might discover in a McDonald’s hamburger, should one eat such a thing, and to well established American stereotypes, but in all of the “my family/your family” conversations we’ve had during this exchange, he paints a pretty similar picture of his family’s intake of fast food: “my parints—nayver, et moi—my and my frands, we eet zis sometime.” Same. Exact same for us, see? So what’s the big deal. I show him around the grocery, making sure to point out the grass-fed angus beef, the eggs from lovingly coddled, free-range chickens. I am trying to take the brunt of the argument here—it’s not that this stuff doesn’t exist in America, kid, it just doesn’t exist at the Burk house. We don’t even own a grill.

Still, I empathize. How the heck to explain the plant-based, heart healthy, lactose-intolerant gluten-free, bean-avoidant diet we’re on? It’s laughable. Here is what one of us will not eat: any wheat product, any dairy, milk, meat, beans, tomatoes and broccoli. Here is what another will not eat: sugar. But this one loves meat and dairy and is tucking into the veggies, fruit and healthy grains like the more mature adult he is morphing into before my very eyes. Here is what I will not eat: red meat and dairy milk, plus anything with chemicals or GMO. In a pinch I’ll do real butter, Oreo cookies, and Pringles, so I’m no purist. It’s the exasperation diet. I eat, just to make a statement in my family. If you cross section the three of us left at the Burk Motel on a given week we are eating…what? organic rice cakes, I guess. It’s even more of a challenge when we leave the comforts and convenience of our non-cuisine on, say, a three-day camping trip. Literally, load up on those jelly packets.

So I had sympathy for our little gourmand, camping with us in the heat of July in the woods of Virginia, where the only thing “searing” is your sleeping weather and not your steak. He’s from France, for Pierre’s sake. Meat capital of the world, where the word is practically synonymous with “food.” Ok, it is. Synonymous. Reference, le Google: “The word meat comes from the Old English word mete, which referred to food in general. The term is related to mad in Danish, mat in Swedish and Norwegian, and matur in Icelandic and Faroese, which also mean ‘food.’” How ’bout that. I’d be mad too, if I showed up to my table on “leftovers night,” where they’re featuring pine floats and wish sandwiches. To his credit, boy didn’t make a peep over the vegan (beanless) chili or the veggie burgers we grilled to cardboard consistency on the campfire. But when I looked through his young eyes: no thick juicy burger dripping in carnivore sauce but instead, a little puck of plant powered protein, I get it. There are so many issues rolled into this ongoing—er, “discussion” of American cuisine that I don’t know how to unravel it. I give up. Just go roast me another little pod of modified cornstarch and tetrasodium pyrophosphate and be quiet.

In all honestly, I have been wishing my sister was here to make spare ribs like spare ribs beg to be made. Pretty much carnivore heaven, and I’m not a carnivore. But I do want to show off American cuisine, I really do. In part because to delight his palate is to open his mind, to do what an exchange experience is supposed to do. I was so happy when one of our first outings was a backyard barbecue for a graduation, Virginia-style, complete with fried chicken from the premier chicken fryer in Richmond and homemade macaroni and cheese. Buffet right out of a Southern Living spread out in all its sweet-tea glory. Tin tubs of bottled water and soft drinks primly sweating under a Mimosa tree, right next to the corn hole. Look here, kid, America does have a food ethos, and a cuisine to be celebrated. At Shrine Mont, watermelon rind pickles and apple butter. At my mom’s New England lake house, fresh corn on the cob. Long done with the “garbage” they put in store-bought salad dressing, she and he speak “vinaigrette” together, comparing their ingredients and making Will and me feel like a pair of American ignoramuses for pouring radiator fluid on our salads.

I’ve been like picking-peaches-from-a-tree happy to pony up our American, and particularly southern, specialties. Oh, did I say I was cooking??? Carry-out, baby! Barbecue, hot dogs, that first-place fried chicken. The chicken salad day was a bit of a bust, I have to admit, but only because the restaurant had the poor taste to offer it on a “croissant.” Ooh la la, was he nonplused (and outspoken) with that one. “Eaze OK, but eats not chicken.” Right-eo, rotisserie boy. I assure you, before it hit that Styrofoam container it flew (maybe), clucked (probably), and laid genetically modified eggs for mass consumption (surely) at some gargantuan superstore. It’s A-mur-ican chicken. So….though we may hold our own in the boucherie, even I can agree on our woeful shortcomings at the boulangerie. There is no equal to French pastry and bread. As if to rub salt, I toss a Pillsbury crescent rolls tube and a Nature’s Promise (organic) “baguette” into the cart, just for kicks. Or for something to smack him with. According to garçon here, “When eye get hum, first sing, I no say hi to mye mum or famille, I go to eat the croissant.” Well, ok then! Thanks for sharing. Good to know your priorities, kid, and to be reminded of your disdain for our culinary inadequacies. This would explain why, after 30 minutes in the grocery store, you’ve finally placed in my cart one item that manages to meet your exacting standards: a valu-pack of “Go-Go Squeeze” applesauce.

The next challenge after food procurement is, of course, conversion. Her recipe is French, and therefore in metric quantities and my kitchen, like the ones in Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Belize, Palau and no where else in the world, is on the old Imperial system (uhhh. Hell-o?). So I have no way to measure a gram, a half liter. Sends us running for the postal scale and to the garage for old plastic measuring cups that might have both units printed on them. We are, quite literally, figuratively and every other way to experience this, deep in conversions. On so many levels, really. I still have the yellowed envelope of “Recettes Françaises pour Débutante,” handwritten and given to me by Irène 35 years ago. They, too, in metric. So to prepare them, to share them, and to share a bit of my life in one place while finding myself in quite another place, always began in conversion. And it always will. To cook, mon petit, is to connect. And to connect at this level… is to be changed.

There’s always some measuring up that goes on during an exchange. Especially by this point, when the novelty has worn off and the fun of “Hey cool, he’s just like me!” begins to jar. The ties, the bonds—if any have been grown—begin to slacken and flag in the oncoming breeze. I am used to this by now. With Camille it was heartbreaking. I was quite sure that exchange had a disproportionate effect on him and on us, on me, but I did not want to let him go. With this little guy—a little sweeter, smarter, maybe a little more present and certainly more invested in “intellectual debate” (or so said his initial application), I can tell he is not to be swayed. On the second to last day, when the forms and program paperwork weighs heavy, I sit him down at the kitchen table to complete it. Kind of funny they expect a 14-year-old boy (!) to be reflecting on this intense immersion experience before it’s even over, but they do. (See “I’m fine and I like my family,” July 2019). So I take him through the evaluation line by line. He reads the questions aloud in English—quite well actually, and then I make sure he understands each one before he selects his answer. “How would your rate your experience with your host family?” Part of me is stung when he circles the equivalent of a 4 on the scale of 1-5. Wait, what? Quoi? What do you mean “good”??! I think of all the driving I’ve done and activities and $$ and effort to show this boy a great American summer. I think of how my family carved itself around the shape of him months before we even met, making choices, planning some stuff, sacrificing other stuff, to make this work. I think of how many &^%$!! hours I sat by five different lakes to finally land him a fish and I have to admit, I am taken aback to have registered only a 4.

How do you say “sticks in my craw” en français? I want our family to rate higher. I want to pass the test, make this as unforgettable an experience for him as it is for me. Standing at the dryer folding laundry, wondering…did my enviro-friendly detergent strips not get his socks clean enough? Do his child-sized T shirts, freshly laundered and folded by moi, not smell pretty enough? The olfactory is a powerful memory maker. Is there any scent at all lingering on this clothing, on his days here, on his heart? For some reason the knowledge that after our house he goes on to Mexico with his whole family later this summer, deep sea fishing with his brothers and living it up in Avocado-land, gives me a pang of inadequacy. Or maybe just insignificance. Remember, he’s reflecting back on at most three, four weeks to when he first arrived, with an all-you-can eat buffet of summer fun ahead of him. But I? I am reaching back over thirty years. Our units of measure are different. His spans a tidy 100 degrees. Water freezes at 0 and boils at 100. Celsius is mathematically simple, clean, and “modern,” while Fahrenheit has 180 degrees, almost double, meaning that every temperature, every mood or moment, if I might extend the metaphor, is subtle. Nuanced. Every degree a lifetime.

I have to let it go. Now that I think about it, I guess I’d give him the same rating. He did spend more time on his phone than pledged or expected, he really did sleep till noon and/or come down much later than promised, and heaven help the fam who takes longer than a half hour to eat. I thought Europeans sat around late into the night over a meal. This kid could win a country fair hot dog eating contest hands down. Came to the table hungry every night, put away a huge plate of mostly anything—earning him many points, which he promptly lost with an uncool display of impatience when he was done. While the rest of us ate more slowly, enjoying our meal, this boy became noticeably restless a table, sighing loudly and wiggling in his seat, making the kind of noises a mom might to wrap something up and move her people along, only. We’re all still eating. It was pretty comical. Or totally annoying.

But, as at the dinner table, his emotional investment—when it is done, it is done. He cannot eat any more. He “have not hungry” (his words) for one more thing. One more thing, that is, here. Like each of the students before him, he spends more and more time in his room as the exchange draws to a close. Whup, he is talking to hees mum… Hup! now it is hees dahd. Even connecting on Insta and Snapchat with friends in France (at all hours) and one on another exchange in Arizona. Boy is connected, for sure…But it makes me feel as though he is already gone. Still, on the very last day before we leave for DC I wash the clothes with an environment-killer Tide pod just to be sure. It is heavily scented of what—Summer? Boyhood? American adventure and the beautiful woods of Virginia? Friendship, maybe, if we could but make it last. I want him to open his belongings on the other side of the Atlantic and remember. To be changed. As have we all been. Changed.

This is why the French meal is such a bonne idée. One, it keeps him out of his bedroom and off le cell. Two, It keeps him still learning, the whole point of this enterprise and a nod to the ones who bankrolled it. Three, it turns my agreeable little taker into a provider, someone happily tasked, excited to contribute and obviously proud of his culinary savoir faire. So the kitchen is humming with François le Chef, air-pods in his ears, dishtowel over one shoulder, bopping and dancing sock footed about the cook space, a little like Ellie when she takes over in here. Because of the earbuds he speaks very loudly asking for stuff, and because of the gender age he has no clue that there might be something else happening at the same moment as whatever he’s doing, so he’s constantly interrupting. Loudly. I forgot. I thought I was going to have a blissful night off from cooking. But the “I can do it” of the child inevitably comes with the implied “and so will you!” for the adult. He makes a spectacular mess of the kitchen and doesn’t look back, but for this moment, he is truly here.

Et ca va. Planned for 7:00 pm and served at 8:30, the French dinner truly is a masterpiece—a beautiful golden-browned soufflé that doesn’t fall, a lovely field salad with a vinaigrette he whips up in a drinking glass, taste testing it and smacking his lips and finger kissing just like a pint-sized Paul Bocuse. He has sweet little garnishes of arugula and shredded carrot arranged on each plate awaiting his ceremonial serving of the soufflé. Lastly he circles the table, leaning over each of our plates and sprinkling the gruyere he has industriously grated all by himself when I told him that Food Lion (Epicurean mecca that it is) probably didn’t have it already grated. He is beaming. All the flair of French cuisine—and the taste, too. It’s pretty amazing. Maybe it’s was the mustard in his homemade vinaigrette, maybe it was the $9.75 block of Swiss gruyere I would never buy except for tonight, but I am in a mouthful transported back thirty years to the many French tables I’ve sat around. This really is something. Maybe a four-star Michelin rating for you?You’re Ok kid, after all. This exchange will hold. Heck with the olfactory, it’s the taste buds that remember the longest.

Bon appétit!

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