TouteFrance

One of my favourite French desserts is ‘tarte aux pommes’ - I don’t think there’s ever a trip to France that doesn’t involve a few portions while I’m there! Recipes for tarte aux pommes seem to vary hugely, I’ve not found a ‘traditional’ recipe for it. I have a bit of a cheat’s version that I make at home from time to time using puff pastry. I roll out a slab of puff pastry which is enough for two good sized tarts and make it into a circle to fit a round baking tray.  Roll out some golden marzipan so that it fits within the puff pastry circle and sprinkle some nutmeg and cinnamon on top. Then place sliced apple onto the marzipan to cover it completely and sprinkle with brown sugar before putting it into oven for about 20-30 minutes. A lovely quick dessert!

I’ve found an apple frangipane tart recipe on Waitrose’s website, which looks just as good, but will involve a bit more labour - enjoy!

May - the time that most of France seems to shut down for the various holidays that they have. The French have three public holidays in May - 1st May which is the ‘Fête du Travail’ (labour day), 8th May which is ‘Victoire 1945′ - the day World War 2 ended and finally 12 May ‘Lundi de Pentecôte’ - Pentecost. The day of the week the holiday falls on is a holiday, whether it falls on a weekend or not, so if 1st May or 8 May are a weekend, then they don’t get the day off during the week.

However, many French take the opportunity to ‘faire le pont’, which means they bridge to the weekend if the holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday. Two of this years’ holidays are on Thursdays, so no doubt most French won’t work on 1st or 2nd May. To add to their holidays even more, the 8th May holiday will no doubt turn into 5 days as they’ll take off 8 & 9 May, plus 12 May. Oh, to be in France in May!!

So, not only do the French do very well with public holidays, they are also the world leaders in the number of days holiday they have per year, according to the Daily Telegraph - 37 on average in total!

There are loads of French language learning tools out there, books, CDs, videos, DVDs, all for those with varying levels and wanting to learn the language quickly or slowly. I’m going to be looking at various tools as and when I come across them, but recently I found a good French language tool on LanguageGuide.org that has pictures with an audio of the word as you hover your mouse over the image. I really like this one, not only do you find out what the word is, but how to pronounce it at the same time!

Along with the pictorial vocabulary guide as they call it, there are grammar lessons and some readings to follow with audio.

According to a post on ‘Talking Retail’ this week, imports of French cheese into the UK have overtaken Irish imports for the first time, making France the number one cheese importer to the UK.

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love a good cheese and there is such a wide choice available nowadays to suit all tastes, strong ones and milder ones which I prefer. Not only does France have a diverse range of cheeses, but so does the UK. There are some great British ones to be had too (I love Cornish Yarg).

As for French cheeses, I like a good goat’s cheese, ‘tomme’ (mountain cheese) and emmenthal, but am not so keen on camembert. When it comes to buying brie (in the UK), I often go for the ‘Somerset’ variety!

In this increasingly obese world, many of us wonder how some nations manage to stay slim and one of those nations is France. You rarely see obese or overweight French people, and they’re renowned for taking care of their body and their looks!

For those of you who would like a few pointers, here’s an article on how their eating habits keep them slim:

11 Reasons Of French Paradox - in a nutshell, eat less (don’t eat all those croissants at once!), drink red wine (but not the whole bottle!), get some exercise and eat lots of fresh fruit & veg. Mostly things we already know, but don’t like to adhere to!

The Duke and Duchess of Hamilton have decided to boycott Selfridges while they sell ‘foie gras’, according to Thursday’s Daily Telegraph. The Prince of Wales has also banned foie gras from Royal menus.

 The debate on ethically produced food is really starting to heat up, not only with boycotts on traditionally produced food such as foie gras, which is a delicacy in France, but  recently in the UK too with high profile campaigns such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Chicken Out campaign to encourage people to eat free range and organically produced chickens, instead of cheaply reared broiler chickens. Veal is another meat that has been hotly debated.

Will the British public follow the royals’ ban on foie gras? That remains to be seen - many top restaurants will continue to serve it until they find an alternative that tastes as good as the traditionally produced foie gras. This was Gordon Ramsay’s take on the subject after trying ethically produced foie gras from Spain on an edition of the F-Word.

Since the French President’s visit has been all over the newspapers this week, we won’t go into detail about his visit or about his wife’s outfits! However, according to The Telegraph, some French ex-pats haven’t been too keen on the idea of their President visiting the UK.

This follows on from my last post that more and more French people are choosing to relocate to the UK because work opportunities are so much better. For them, perhaps it’s not so much ‘vive la France’, but ‘vive l’Angleterre’!

I was reading an interesting article in yesterday’s Observer about the number of French people who are choosing to live in the UK. Most of them are  here because employment prospects are much better here in the UK, and setting up a business is such a bureaucratic nightmare in France.

I have several French friends over here and their main reason for staying is work. One friend has been looking to return to France but hasn’t found any jobs anywhere near as good as his job here, so it’s just not worth moving. Another friend has a high flying job over here and knows she would never have got such a well paid job back in France. Another friend of mine’s husband works in the States as a software engineer, no doubt earning far more there than he ever would back in France.

There are many positive things about France such as the quality of life, traditions, food, beautiful countryside that are so appealing to us Brits. I think many more of us would like to live in France if it weren’t for the fact that earning money could be so difficult (including me!). Just have to make do with holidays there for the time being!

It’s made me laugh since I was a child that the French have a sweet pastry called ‘Pets de Nonne’, literally translated means ‘nun’s farts’! They’re small deep fried dough shapes, rather like small doughnuts (without the jam).

Here’a recipe if you’re interested in making them, though definitely not for those of you on a diet!

I was reading an interesting article in The Times this morning about a website that has produced a list of people who were beheaded during the French Revolution. The site, Les Guillotinés de la Révolution Française, has been created by an amateur genealogist called Raymond Combes who estimates that up to 5 million French people have ancestors who fell victim to the blade of the infamous guillotine. From his research, there could be a lot more people who fell victim to the violence than the 17,500 which is the official figure.

It looks like the French are just as much into genealogy as us Brits, and for those of you who have French ancestors to research, Cyndi’s List has a lengthy list of websites to help in your quest to find out more.