Do you dunk?

My stomach can just about cope with watching my children dunking their breakfast bread into their milk, then pouring their cereal into the milk and finally drinking the milk (I am reassured that THIS is the French way).

This dunking habit is firmly ingrained into the French culture.

Last week I was invited to have coffee. I arrived with several other women and we were served coffee and fresh cake. The woman to my right took her cake, broke of a small portion and dunked this deliciously fresh cake into her coffee. Would our host be offended by this, was this woman insinuating that the cake was stale?. I looked at the host and she was doing exactly the same thing !.

Sunday, we were invited to lunch with a French family. After a deliciously slow lunch, coffee was served at about 4.30pm. The remains of the cheese remained on the table. Isabelle, another guest, took a slice of Camembert and dunked it into her coffee, I looked around the table, and her husband was dunking a hand made truffle into his coffee was anyone else shocked?.. no, everyone was smiling at me for being shocked.