Bonjour mes amis (hello my friends),
Just a little tip coming from your girl here in France, yes pasta is cheap and the bread here is the best bread you will ever taste but you cannot limit your diet to only eat these wonderful things. When I moved to France, one of the first benefits I thought of was the bread. If you think you have tried good baguettes and chocolate croissants (pain au chocolats, pas chocolatines) in America, think again! One of the first things you must do when you get to France is go to a bakery and stuff your face.
Though, I only recommend doing this if you are here on vacation. If you begin doing this when you are trying to start a life for yourself in France (like me), you WILL gain weight. Along with the wonderful baked goods came the pasta. It doesn’t help that all of the easy things I learned to cook in the U.S. were much more difficult to find here. I’m talking no peanut butter, no cheap stuff to make quesadillas, no spinach to make any of my favorite healthy snacks and no Trader Joes! These literally made up my diet back home. Also the fact that I am a college student with little extra money to spend on healthy foods made me turn to pasta. Pasta’s great, it’s just so easy and there is so much you can make with pasta. I literally ate pasta with a side of bread one night. Delicious but definitely the reason I saw a slight (yet scary) change in my physique. Luckily, I realized my problem before I started making macaroni sandwiches. But yea here’s a little tip; I found TONS of cheap/healthy recipes on Pinterest. I’d say Pinterest saved my life.