Our old house in Normandy, which is now a charming rental cottage . We highly recommend this place! For the first 10 years that we lived here, whenever I was visiting the U.S. and met someone new, they would inevitably ask me where I lived. When I would reply that I lived in France, their response, every single time , would be, "so how long have you lived in Paris ?" I always found that pretty funny. It's like telling someone that you live in the U.S. and they respond by asking how long you've lived in New York City. But I get it. Paris represents "France" to most foreigners. However there is much, much more to l'Hexagone than Paris! And over the years we've been fortunate enough to live in a few regions and have enjoyed exploring a good chunk of this beautiful country on many of our vacations. I know that once you've chosen where to go, picking where to stay can be daunting. The sheer number of holiday rentals out there is crazy, so I thought ...
Walk into any fromagerie in France during goat cheese season (April to November) and you will be faced with a tempting array of wrinkly rectangles, fresh drums, blue mold covered cylinders, two-toned cones, grey pyramids, white diamonds, discs wrapped in leaves, and a distinctive four-leaf clover, le Trèfle du Perche. In the French cheese world, this one is fairly recent creation. Back in 1999 a group of 7 artisan cheesemakers in the northern part of the Loire Valley and the southern part of Normandy established l’Association des Fromagers Caprins Perche et Loir (after numerous meetings involving copious amounts of local cheese and wine I like to think) and created a new goat cheese. Their goal was to come up with a fromage de chèvre that would be instantly recognizable and that would become associated with their region. During its inception, one of the members spotted an unusual, four-leaf clover shaped clay cheese mold in a local rural museum and the rest is h...
Les grèves in Paris continue...* I've been averaging seven miles a day on foot since last Thursday to get to and from my food tours , but this morning I had a long walk across the river for a cheese workshop , and as an added bonus there was a huge protest march this afternoon, so it took me almost two hours to get home after being rerouted due to closed bridges and roads. The entire time I was walking (and hungry!) I was focusing on two things; one was not getting run down by the inexperienced cyclists and trottinette drivers, and the other was making a giant bowl of comforting, filling spaghetti carbonara for dinner when I got home. And a giant bowl it was! I should have invited several friends over to share it with us. (However, I know I'll appreciate the leftovers when I get home tomorrow night!) *There are a few more days of strikes (grèves) predicted, but hopefully things will get back to normal by this weekend.
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