TouteFrance

If you’re stuck as to what to buy a francophile friend this Christmas, there’s some great websites selling an array of French food and French home accessories and I’ve found a few sites to give you some ideas.

French Home Accessories

Lavender & Sage - has a selection of lovely French home accessories from Comptoir de Famille and some unusual Alpine designs from Les Sculpteurs du Lac.

The French House - sells some really nice retro French accessories for the home, plus a nice selection of hardware for fires and doors and other unusual stuff.

French Food

Hampers always go down well at Christmas and some on offer are as follows:

Eat French Food has a range of patés, jams and olive oils.

French Flavour has various gift boxes containing patés, olive oils and wines.

Le Bonjour has some very reasonable gift baskets which include fish rillettes, jams & patés

Dordogne Direct specialises in food from south west France

Wine Lovers

This is quite an easy one as you can pick up some great French wines in your local supermarket or specialist off licences such as Oddbins or Majestic. Some of the French wines found online are as follows:

Bordeaux Undiscovered - wines from the Bordeaux region and other regions, includes a Christmas pick & mix option.

Best Cellars has a box of 12 bottles of French wine for £69.70 - very good value.

The Sussex Wine Company sells a range of French wines from a variety of regions

Vin Vert has a range of French organic and biodynamic wines

Books

Where do I start? There’s plenty of books on Amazon depending on what the recipient of your gift’s interests are from travel to language, culture, classic literature, fiction, cookery! Here’s a few French cookbooks, which is what my money would go on:

French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David, after all these years, her books are still popular and this one is on my shelf.

Ripailles by Stéphane Reynaud - I don’t know this book but the reviews of it look like it’s a good buy

Nobody Does it Better & Trish’s French Kitchen by Trish Deseine - great review on Nobody Does it Better

The French Kitchen by Joanne Harris - more great reviews from the author of Chocolat

Rick Stein’s French Odyssey - great reviews on this book from the popular chef

Tomorrow is Halloween - a pagan festival with its roots from celtic Britain. Traditionally, the French celebrate ‘Toussaint‘ instead (All Saints Day) on 1 November, which is a public holiday. However, the commercialisation of Halloween spread to France but more recently the French are starting to shun the event, claiming it to be too commercialised, too American and a marketing gimmick - according to an article on the BBC website.

If, however, you fancy trying out a few French ‘Halloween’ themed recipes, this website has all sorts to try out, including ‘la soupe de la sorcière en bocaux’ (witches’ soup), ‘Guacamole de vampires’ (vampire guacamole), ‘Salade du squelette’ (skeleton salad) and ‘la bave de crapaud pour petits monstres ‘ (toad slime for little monsters!).

Happy Halloween!