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Anyone know what goes into a French workman's lunch box?


Jonzjob

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If you live here then at some time you must have seen the French workmen stop for their lunch. Not for them a little butty box and a flask of tea. No they bring out the folding table and chairs and a large cool box with a 3/4 coursr meal in it, oh and the wine too. It doesn't matter where they are and I've actually seen this happen with builders in Carcassonne where they came out of the building to where their big van was blocking the pavement, set up the table and chairs on the path behind the van and when I saw them they had finished eating and were having a game of cards, with wine of course!!

Does anyone actually know what goes into that cool box?

John.

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If you live here then at some time you must have seen the French workmen stop for their lunch.

Ummmm, nope!  The artisan type usually head to cheap restos with their resto vouchers.  The melon-picking Arab types sit in the ditches at lunchtime, because it's the only place there's a bit of shade, poor souls.  I've never stopped to ask them what they're eating, tho.  Might be a good way to start learning Arabic yet again?   Or a good way to end up in a ditch!

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don`t get too exited about those large cool boxes.....Mr Os drivers mate has one, it contains pasta salad , yogurt and panache(shandy?) oh and a loaf!

now mr O on the otherhand has a kettle for his coffee..a burner of course, pan, and whatever he can heat up an fill up on with a loaf!

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Most workers go home for lunch, if they are local, well they do have long enough!

Question is though,  what time does one get up in the morning to pack a lunchbox that size ? Or is it prepared the night before?

Saligo wrote,

"I've never stopped to ask them what they're eating, tho.  Might be a good way to start learning Arabic yet again?   Or a good way to end up in a ditch!"

Couscous ?  Had Goat in Tunisia, Bit on the chewy side , not much flavour, draw the line at sheep's head.  

Terry

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"Had Goat in Tunisia, Bit on the chewy side"

Much nicer when it's cooked though. Bit like mutton with attitude !!!

There were a couple of workmen outside our gate yesterday with a Tonka toy digger, lovely little big boy toy. One of the guys had one of those enormouse cool boxes ticked under the trailer in the shade. They stopped on the dot of 12, about 1.30 they started again and about 10 mins later put the Tonka toy back on the trailer and left. If they had carried on for another 15 mins they would have finished. French?

John.

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From our workers the answer seems to be a bottle of Cote du Rhone and ................................................................................

another bottle of Cote du Rhone

 

I think the cool box was just to stop the wine overheating in the sun

 

 

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I know what goes into a French workman's lunch box. I have seen my Father's lunch box being prepared enough time in my childhood!!

My Mother was for ever asking :'Qu'est-ce que tu veux pour ta musette?'

His answer was : 'Ce que tu veux, pourvu que je ne crève pas de faim! Et pas du dégueulasse!'

So in went :

Un litron de vin rouge. A box with a whole saucisson à l'ail sliced up and some butter. Sometime it was a whopper of a cold pork chop (cooked) or a hefty chunk of jambonneau. A fair chunk of bread roughly 1/2 of a big crusty loaf. None of the baguette stuff that's for the 'maigrelets' he kept saying! A tin of sardines or mackerels or sometime paté.

Tomatoes or salad stuff from his garden when in season or in the winter he had a wide neck flask in which my Mother poured some hot soup she'd made using the vegs from the garden. A couple of fruits or about the size of a babyfood jar filled with home made jam and a big chunk of some 'Quatre Quart' cake. And a maximum size bottle of water. A couple of Gitanes cigarettes and a newspaper.

All in this somewhat small red haversack. Which I forever wondered how can it be big enough to hold all of that food!

and I can tell you that not even a single crumb came home!

Off on his pushbike to the factory!

So now you know!...

Beats the packet of crisps, the bottle of Coke-Cola, the cotton-wool-bread-with-indifferent-filling-sarnies of a British workman's lunch!

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