One more
France story. We are driving along,
somewhere between Paris and Lake Annecy, when we decide to stop for lunch. Or rather, Flunch, in a convenience mart like
no other I’ve ever seen.
This is what one of their
shelves looks like:
They also
have lavish dessert bars, cheese bars, enough to make the day of it, though we
did not.
Anyway, riding
along, I’d been noticing fields of yellow flowers which I think are mustard. At
least they look like the mustard fields of California. And, after all, Dijon is
not far away.
But just to be sure, I
decide to ask the friendly lady at the gas station.
“Oh,” she
says, in not bad English, “that’s diesel.”
I am
wondering what French word that can be, since surely she can’t mean fuel.
“Makes your
car go,” the woman continues, zooming her hand through the air to demonstrate.
I am
speechless, a frequent occurrence in France, but I manage to say, “You mean
diesel fuel?”
“Yes,” she
says. She is most emphatic.
I know no one
in my family will believe this, so I drag Richie over to verify this truly
amazing story, and she tells him, as well, that they are growing diesel in
those fields.
None of us
have a proper comeback, so we buy our snacks and leave, later verifying with a
cheese vendor that evening, that it is actually canola they’re growing. Okay, so maybe the
first lady thinks diesel is the English word for oil, and she thinks oil and
gas do the same thing? Maybe. I’m stretching, here. “She works at a gas station!” Richie mumbles.
But we get
home and learn that canola and mustard plants look identical. In fact, I see matching photos when I Google
both of them.
They are very closely related,
but one yields a mild oil and the other a tangy mustard. I would imagine
farmers must be careful to distinguish these, no? This would not be a good time to confuse Brassica napus with Brassica juncea.
Either way, I’ve
already decided what I will say if a tourist asks me what’s growing in our
mustard fields. I’m going with latex
paint. Hey, they need something to write
home about.
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