The sushi at the end of the tunnel

This week has been a fiesta of forbidden foods. Every single thing I couldn’t eat during my pregnancy has been paraded, with great ceremony, through our kitchen: raw milk cheeses, jambon cru, saucisses seche, foie gras – and of course, the sushi. After the scary fish loaf at the hospital I was longing for my post-natal sushi with the eagerness of 12 year old awaiting her first kiss. At the sight of the plastic take-out container, dainty was thrown aside, I was transformed into a ravenous polar bear – I could have ripped the raw fish from the bones myself and chomped down every morsel, blood and guts dripping from my jaws. As it was, I made due with chopsticks – very convenient for eating with one hand (while cradling a baby in the other), which I seem to be doing a lot of at the moment.

Nigella Lawson has this incredibly tacky but morbidly fascinating passage in her cookbook, Feast, where she describes finding a page on the website of the Texas Department of Corrections, listing convicts’ last meal requests (a lot of fried chicken and ice cream). All I could think of as I bit into the coral folds of raw salmon: if this is the last thing I put in my mouth on God’s green earth – well, that’s just fine with me.

Fish loaf aside, the hospital was a very good experience. The next time I feel like ranting and raving about France, I need to remember my 6 days in the maternity ward, in a single room (a whopping 367 Euros extra on our private insurance), with a team of smiley and incredibly competent midwives and nurses encouraging us all the way. I came home and immediately called my American mommy friends to find out how they survived when they were turned out of the hospital 48 or even 72 hours after childbirth. Now I know why American parents read so many baby books – to prepare themselves for the deep end.

Augustin was the star of the market this week – greeted with shouts and coos by the fishmonger, the melon man (he was certain from day one it was a boy), and of course the cheese lady. Our cheesemonger, a bleach blond granny with a fondness for pink parkas, was among the first to know I was pregnant. One Saturday in early December I came up to the stand and said. “I have a friend coming for dinner tonight. She’s pregnant and can’t eat raw milk cheese.” She sold me some Comte, and a surprisingly good Saint Nectaire made from pasteurized milk. Then I came back the next Saturday with the same lame excuse. She looked at me and nodded knowingly. Clearly, she had seen this look on the faces of a thousand women – women who were about to be deprived of creamy spoonfuls of Mont d’Or at Christmas dinner and the violet veins of Roquefort for 9 months. She didn’t confront me directly, but complicity was clear: the cheese lady and I had no secrets.

So it was with joy in my heart that I loaded up on Domaine de Bresse – a mild blue cheese made with goat’s milk and a Montbriac – already oozing from its ashy crust. Next I headed for the stand from Auvergne – and asked them to slice an entire saucisse seche – a dry but slightly chewy sausage – that I could now nibble – gasp - with an actual glass of wine. There is something about the mellow saltiness of smoked pork (the pickled tang of the giant capers I ate throughout my pregnancy was no substitute). I couldn’t wait. I plucked a red, fat speckled round right off the scale.

Friends have been coming round to meet the baby – and unwittingly contributing to my forbidden feast. Katherine and Sylvestre – two kids ahead of us – returned from their trip to the Dordogne with a jar of foie gras and a bottle of Montbazillac for a very adult picnic. We toasted to Augustin’s health, and I secretly toasted my return to the land of all things raw and yummy.