LKL's Blog

14 July is the French national holiday. Learn about the history behind the celebration of Bastille Day and make some French food to celebrate!

We spent a long weekend in Lille, and to no one’s surprise, it wasn’t enough time to really get to know this vibrant city. But we did walk a lot, visit the basilica, and take the city bus tour, which was quite good.
 
 

We also visited the marché populaire and sat at a café drinking beer and eating frites in la Grande Place writing postcards of, justement, la Grande Place. We’re such tourists sometimes.

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About 6 corners of the Hexagon

While in Strasbourg for Bastille Day, we also visited the terrific Musée alsacien and had dinner at our favorite restaurant in Strasbourg: Poêles de Carottes. One of the employees (owners?) can be a little grouchy, but the food is terrific.

On the 15th we headed south from Strasbourg to retrieve the wallet in Annecy – more than 4 hours each way. To make the most of the trip, we rented another paddleboat and spent two glorious hours out on Lake Annecy. We also found a terrific fromager and stocked up on our favorite cheeses plus some local specialities.

Coming home, we stopped in Ribeauvillé in hopes of buying more of the wine we’d liked best during our dégustations the week before, but we were 45 minutes too late – everything had closed at 7pm.

Niederbronn’s weekly marché, held every Friday, was a little disappointing, as it is mostly clothing, with only a few food stands. (The one in the nearby town of Reichshoffen, on Thursdays, is much bigger and better.)

On Sunday, we went to la Fête de la myrtille in Dambach, bought a bunch of blueberries, and tasted blueberry wine, beer, and jam.

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About 6 corners of the Hexagon

Here are some links to help you celebrate with your beloved.

French love language
French terms of endearment
Spanish love language
Vegetarian aphrodisiacs

Good-bye 2009 and the unnamed first decade of the new millenium! Hello 2010 and another difficult to name decade! I spent nearly the entire year in France, other than my three weeks in Italy, and I’ll likely be in France for all of the new year as well. Best wishes to all!

Here’s some reading material and ideas for New Year’s Resolutions for you:

New Year’s in France
French New Year’s Resolutions
Veggie Table New Year’s Resolutions

I hope you and your families are happy, safe, and warm this holiday season. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

Vegetarian Christmas Menu
Christmas in France
French Christmas Vocabulary
Spanish Christmas Vocabulary

It’s the third Thursday in November, which means that the year’s Beaujolais Nouveau is being drunk in France and all over the world. Learn a bit about this annual wine fest: Beaujolais Nouveau

I spent my third and final week in Italy taking private cooking classes at Apicius Culinary Institute. I had spent a long time looking for another group class but just couldn’t find something that appealed to me yet didn’t cost a small fortune, and then I discovered that private classes were fairly competitively priced. For €1,060 I received

• 4 private cooking classes (2-2½ hours) followed by lunch
• 1 private and 1 group wine appreciation class (1 hour each)
• Private gastronomic walking tour (2 hours)
• 1 group cooking class (2 hours) followed by meal
• Recipes before each lesson
• Apron

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The second Italian cooking program I attended in September was Convivio Rome. While it’s not a vegetarian program, I contacted the school ahead of time and they assured me that I would have something vegetarian to cook while the other students cooked meat. For €999, the program included the following:

• 6 nights accommodation in a local cottage
• Daily breakfast in the local café
• 3 cooking sessions (2 hours each) followed by lunch
• 2 dinners, including one with wine tasting
• Guided tour of Rome
• Visits to nearby villages
• Olive oil tour and tasting session
• Transportation to/from train station
• Recipes before each lesson
• Welcome gift (a lovely kitchen towel from a nearby village)

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The first of the three Italian cooking programs I attended this past September was Organic Tuscany. While the school is not vegetarian, it offers week-long vegetarian programs a few times a year. For €1,300 (the price has since gone up), the program included the following:

• 7 nights accommodation in a 19th-century villa
• 4 cooking sessions (2-3 hours each) followed by meals
• 5 additional meals
• Baskets of breakfast items to be shared among the group
• Guided walking tours of Florence and Siena
• Visits to two local farms and a potter
• Olive oil tasting session
• Wine tasting session
• Apron
• Recipe e-book (after departure)

Participants are required to rent a car to get to the offsite visits, so that is another charge to keep in mind. The director helps arrange car sharing. (more…)