I hope you and your families are happy, safe, and warm this holiday season. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!
Food
Happy New Year!
May 2015 be full of joy and laughter and only the best of times. Happy New Year to one and all!
Here’s some reading material and ideas for you: Continue reading
Happy Hanukkah!
To my Jewish friends and readers all over the world, I wish you a happy and healthy Hanukkah, filled with joy and light.
I hope one of these links will add a little extra cheer to your celebration: Continue reading
Vegetarian Thanksgiving
Less than a week to go! American Thanksgiving dinner, with its traditional turkey as the main course, can be difficult for vegetarians. Here are some ideas to mix and match for your vegetarian Thanksgiving.
Crete, Greece
From Santorini, we took the ferry over to Crete. The plan was to spend our three mornings in a private cooking class, then visit a few nearby towns by bus in the afternoons, but that didn’t work out. During the first “cooking” class, we made a salad and some tomato-topped bread. No joke. For the second, the teacher was half an hour late; we were on the verge of leaving when she finally arrived, but after expressing our unhappiness with the state of things, we went ahead and did the second class, and made a few things like stuffed veggies and three different arrangements of spanakopita – though all with pie crust rather than phyllo!? While it was much better than the first class, overall we were still pretty unhappy, so we canceled the third. Continue reading
Happy Valentine’s Day!
It’s only a few days away – here are some links to help you celebrate with your beloved.
French love language
French terms of endearment
Spanish love language
Vegetarian aphrodisiacs
Happy Bastille Day!
14 July is the French national holiday. Learn about the history behind the celebration of Bastille Day and make some French food to celebrate! 🙂
6 corners of the Hexagon: Lille
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 marchĂ© populaire and sat at a cafĂ© 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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6 corners of the Hexagon: Week 3
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 RibeauvillĂ© in hopes of buying more of the wine we’d liked best during our dĂ©gustations the week before, but we were 45 minutes too late – everything had closed at 7pm.
Niederbronn’s weekly marchĂ©, 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 FĂŞte de la myrtille in Dambach, bought a bunch of blueberries, and tasted blueberry wine, beer, and jam.
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Happy New Year!
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:
