Quote:
Originally Posted by pierrelm
Excuse me if I meander but things I remember from school dinners:
Right, I think I may be on solid ground here though:
At last! A Did You Know fact:
2. this was served in the aforementioned drinking glass. Now, as a snotty 10 year old, if I had been asked to write 'what I know about France', I reckon that high on the list would have been that you could find out the main export of France by turning your school-issue drinking glass upside down. These magnificent vessels were made by 'Duralex', in France. It said so on the bottom.
Boys and girls, I think we were embracing design classics. First made in France around 1927, the Duralex design and specification has remained virtually unchanged since Saint-Gobain introduced their patented glass tempering process to the company in 1939 and the 'Picardie' has now become the quintessential French Bistro glass.
Crikey, this now feels like 'friends re-united' or some such reunion...we present:
L-R The Gigogne (seen here sans blancmange), the Provence and the bistro classic, the Picardie.
Salut!
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The 'Provence' I recall from my childhood as being a staple inhabitant of NZ milkbars, cafes, and railway tearooms -several stacked trays of them usually located immediately adjacent to the large refrigerated tank of recirculating chilled liquid sold as 'orange juice'....heavy, solid and they usually bounce rather than break if dropped.
On a similar-but unrelated theme-does anyone recall the grey-black smoked glass coffee mugs-also made in France- that were popular in the eighties?
One or two batches were dodgy and would explode spontaneously without warning (presumably because they hadn't been properly annealed to relieve stresses)---and rapidly became known in NZ as 'Mururoa Mugs' after the French south pacific nuclear testing site which we strenuously opposed during the 70s and 80s