The shells on the far left are bulots.
Toulouse the week before Easter. Unfortunately, Easter Sunday was rainy and the "Bells" couldn't hide the chocolates outside. 
Last weekend was Easter and I was lucky enough to get an invite to an Easter lunch at a co-worker’s house complete with grandparents and small children. As expected, the event was a culinary adventure.
Within five hours we had woven our way through a first course of oysters slurped up with lemon, shrimp still in their casings, bulot dipped in homemade mayonnaise (bulot is a rubbery and salty shell food that reminds me of escargot), home-made foie gras (goose liver that is cooked and resembles pâté), a tomato salad, lamb and green beans, green salad, a plate of about seven different cheeses, homemade ice-cream cake swimming in cherry sauce, a dry Algerian cake and Easter chocolates. The alcohol procession included Porto, oyster wine, sugary white wine called Muscat de Rivasaltes, red wine and champagne. Luckily, the lunch was long and filling to counter-act all the bubbly.
The largest difference between my usual American Easter lunch and the French one I experienced is the reutilization of the meal in France. In more formal meals here, everything is eaten in a certain order and one at a time. Not even the children at the table dared interrupt the order of dishes. The eleven-year-old girl ate absolutely no sea food or juice and waited to save as much room as possible for the very filling, very caloric foie gras. She also interjected quickly to stop my naive spreading of foie gras over my slice of bread, that wasn’t done. I had to cut a thick slice of foie gras and eat it that way – go big or go home. She was right, it was better. She was also probably right to tame it down on the previous courses.
This meal also shows how diverse the meat options are in France. For someone like me who started eating red meat for the first time around the age of 18, dishes like foie gras took some getting used to. Shockingly, the 20-month old at this Easter table didn’t seem to have any qualms about the stronger tasting French food. He happily lapped up oyster juice and sucked on Roquefort cheese asking for more. I was a few years behind him and only started swallowing down the foie gras reluctantly at age 21 to be polite. But after the Christmas rush of foie gras in Toulouse this year, I realized that it was actually not too bad. Now I’m over the mind block of a stuffed goose liver and it is decidedly delicious. Which is probably the right opinion to have in southwest France where foie gras is especially adored.
To top the meal off, we had chocolates that the “Easter Bells” had brought for the children. There were no plastic eggs filled with jellybeans or hard-boiled eggs dyed multiple colors. The bunny rabbit didn’t seem to be as prominent either and was nowhere to be found in the decorations at this particular house. Instead, there was a huge chocolate egg that opened up and was filled with smaller chocolates molded into different shapes like shells, bells and fish. This was truly delectable chocolate. Maybe bells are better than rabbits at making chocolate? Who knew?
My American friend and I left on the train reeling from five hours of eating. It was such a pleasure to see another version of Easter. Many thanks to our French hosts who were kind enough to open up their home to us and show us how to sip oysters and slab on the foie gras.
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