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10 responses to “Happy St. Jean Baptiste, Dear Quebec!”
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This and St John’s Day are my favorite days.
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[…] to a beach on St. John’s Eve and have the Danish celebration. I am glad Clarissa reminded me how important this day is, since I need some powerful magic — as well as a much larger measure of order, beauty, […]
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WOUUUUUHOUUUUU!!!!! Happy St. Jean Baptiste, my dear friend! Québec misses you!
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Does Quebecois cuisine feature something called “ironed bread?” Or is that peculiar to the family depicted in the movie C.R.A.Z.Y.?
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I’ve never heard about it. Maybe somebody else has?
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There’s the idiomatic expression du pain sur la planche which means a lot to do: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=95253
But I have a vague recollection of it as bread grilled on an iron grill. I am not sure I am right on this, though.
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Let’s wait to see if our readers from Quebec sleep off their festivities and come to enlighten us. I spoke to my family in Quebec and they have no idea. They are not born Quebequers, though.
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I think that “ironed bread” is peculiar to that movie, although I will ask my mom and my aunts to make sure I am right. It seems that the housewife in the movie uses this technique to replace the “grill cheese maker,” which, if I am not mistaken, was very popular in the 50s and 60s.
I have read on the Internet that people wrap paninis in aluminium foil and iron them.
I love the connection between the movie and the idiomatic expression “avoir du pain sur la planche.”
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Yes, “grilled cheese makers” (or “grillettes” in French) were very common in the 60s. The mother using an iron to prepare a grilled cheese sandwich was simply a nod to humble creativity.
The English expression for “avoir du pain sur la planche” is “to have a lot on one’s plate”. Translating expressions is very interesting. Here’s a few examples… to “nip it in the bud” is “le tuer dans l’oeuf”; “counting your chickens before they’ve hatched” is “vendre la peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tué”; “a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush” is “un ‘tien’ vaut mieux que deux fois ‘tu l’auras’”; “the straw that broke the camel’s back” is “la goutte qui a fait déborder le vase”…
Thanks Clarissa.
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It’s great to have you here, Pure Laine! “La peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tue” exists in the exact same form in Russian which is very curious. I wonder how idioms travel from one language to another.
Thank you for this enlightening comment.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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