Why did I create my blog “365 things that I love about France”?
One: I wanted to challenge myself to find something positive in my life every single day for one entire year.
Two: I love living in France.
France has given me and my family so much. I decided it was time to give back.
Every day for one year, I am going to put some positive energy out into the world by sharing my positive personal observations of this beautiful country and its kind and generous people.
Yesterday was la fête des mères in France. I was offered a delicious and enormous cafe au lait, which I rarely drink and therefore imbibed with great relish.
With that I was served my favorite pastry, choux à la crème, (see my blog) a thin and delicate pastry absolutely stuffed full of freshly whipped cream.
Zoe and I brought our fantastic breakfasts into the living room and proceeded to watch A Place in the Sun with Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters, an absolutely fabulous film to watch with one's daughter on Mother's Day with a belly full of whipped cream and coffee.
But my favorite part of la fête des mères was my present.
Ten years ago, I took this photo of my kids imitating the two little lap dogs at my Aunt and Uncle's house: mon fils was four and ma fille was seven with a mouth full of no teeth!
One of the things I love most about France is how the French eat in harmony with the seasons. Beets have begun to make their appearance at the local markets. Betteraves or beets, an excellent source of potassium, folic acid and magnesium, a delicious and incredibly healthy vegetable.
And they come in several colors!
Here in France, you can get them pretty much all year round, precooked and hermetically sealed in plastic. With these, I love to make a simple Beet Tapenade to spread on crackers, thinly sliced baguette or simply dip with a chip.
Take your precooked beet, cut it up in rough chunks and toss in your mixer.
Add a little olive oil
salt
pepper
and mix!
Beet Tapenade, so simple and it adds a real zest of color to an aperitif.
Yesterday, I rummaged through Epicurious.com's beet recipes and the following caught my eye, I made it yesterday and it was exquisite!
6 medium beets with beet greens attached
2 large oranges
1 small sweet onion, cut through root end into thin wedges
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel
Preheat oven to 400°F. Trim greens from beets. Cut off and discard stems. Coarsely chop leaves and reserve. Wrap each beet in foil. Place beets directly on oven rack and roast until tender when pierced with fork, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Cool. Peel beets, then cut each into 8 wedges. Place beets in medium bowl.
Cook beet greens in large saucepan of boiling water just until tender, about 2 minutes. Drain. Cool. Squeeze greens to remove excess moisture. Add greens to bowl with beets. Cut peel and white pith from oranges. Working over another bowl and using small sharp knife, cut between membranes to release segments. Add orange segments and onion to bowl with beet mixture. Whisk vinegar, oil, garlic, and orange peel in small bowl to blend; add to beet mixture and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour. Serve.
I popped the beets in the oven to roast while I did a little (ahem, a lot of!) housecleaning.
Aidan, over at Conjugating Irregular Verbs cooked up some beets yesterday on her Seasonal Sunday blog. Her recipe looks great, but then again, everything she cooks looks great!
I found a huge amount of truly varied recipes for beets on a French website. Remember, you only have to copy and paste the recipe into Google Translate to have the translation plus conversion.
Betteraves are used more often than you would think in cooking. Here are a few photos to make your mouth water:
Shredded cooked beets served with tender baby greens and goat cheese melted on toast.
A typical French apero.
Yummy yellow beets sliced thin and drizzled with olive oil, fresh basil, salt and pepper.
Beet and beet greens bruschetta!
Beet soup with a dollop of fresh cream.
Beet greens are tastier than you would imagine. I loved them as a kid and love them even more as an adult. (Yeah, I know, weird kid!)
Salad!
A classy beet dish: beets with fennel pesto.
Almost looks like a desert, doesn't it! Another French apero of betteraves and crème fraîche.
Gros bisous, bon dégustation des betteraves et a très bientôt!
A very special event happened back in March, Aidan organized a Blogapalooza where a number of us anglophone bloggers met up for lunch in Aix-en-Provence. One of those bloggers was Kirsty at You Had Me At Bonjour. Her profile says,"An Australian mother of three and lucky wife to the mister, this is my record of our life in southern France." Kirsty is quite the quilter and photographer. She has a wicked sense of humor and a wonderfully original regard on France and all things French. I always have a good laugh when I read her blog.
So, here is what Kirsty has to say about France. Enjoy!
Thank you Charley for inviting me to write a guest post on what I love about France. All I can say is where do I start?
- The postman delivers six days a week here in France. Coming from a mail-only-on-weekdays country, I find this awesome. He still only rings once though.
- France's love of food and the ritual of the meal. The rest of the Western world could learn a lot from the French here - food isn't just fuel, it is one of life's most satisfying pleasures and should be given the attention and time it deserves. This love of food is encouraged from a young age, both in the family home and at school. Here is one of the daily menus from my kids' school, where they enjoy a four-course lunch every day:
For those not well versed in français:
~ Starter: Diced vegetables with a Provençal dressing ~
~Main: Provençal braised beef casserole served with penne pasta and organic, butter-glazed carrots ~
~ Cheese course: Pont l'Eveque cheese (similar to brie or camembert) served on baguette ~
~Dessert: French pound cake ~
May I stress that the maternelle school system starts at age three. Yes, three year olds are eating this meal. It's enough to make me cry into my Vegemite sandwich.
- the French kiss. No, not the slobbery one, but rather the European tradition of kissing on both cheeks when greeting/parting, which my very young children refer innocently to as a French kiss. This isn't a cliché - everyone does it, everywhere. The police officer who mans the pedestrian crossing at school greets the parents he knows in this way (while standing in the middle of the road). Male teenagers with butt-cracks hanging out of their undies (which are respectively hanging out of their jeans) will hold their cigarettes aside to kiss their male friends. It's different to anything I've ever seen and I love it - any custom that encourages the breakdown of stereotypical macho culture is A-OK with me.
Thanks Kirsty!! For anyone interested in being a guest blogger, the rules are simple: you have to have a blog and be able to write on something you love about France. Feel free to send me an email.
Oh, and, Aidan, when are we doing the next Blogapalooza?? :-)
I realize that I have done an awful lot of blogging with a macabre twist lately. My apologies, I am finishing up a haunted guide to France and have a bit of a one track mind. Here is a little artistic cleansing of the pallet for you....
I can't believe it took me this long to blog about Marc Chagall. One of my favorite Belarusian-French Jewish painters!
Marc Chagall (née Moishe Shagal) 1887 - 1985
To be honest, I am not quite sure whether I adore his work for its original surrealistic twist or because, when I was doing my stint at the Sorbonne Univeristy in Paris at the tender age of 19, I met and fell madly in love with a stunning Parisian of Argentinean descent who simultaneously introduced me to the Cure and Marc Chagall (we went to the George Pompidou Center for a massive exhibition--wow!). Hot, intellectual, cultured boyfriend vs cool artist??? Like a Pavlovian dog, I now have a conditioned reflex whenever I see a piece of work by Chagall ... great memories rise immediately into my conscious brain!
Oh, and, on an aside: the Pavlovian conditioning process was a major theme in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. One of my favorite author's, one of my favorite books. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.
Oh, and, on another aside: As I am busy querying a super cool, historical, French, nonfiction manuscript I just finished translating--entitled ADP: Secret of the Knights Templar (see my website)--I ran into a very intriguing and fabulous quote by Aldous Huxley's literary agent, the late Dorris Halsey:
"Let's be realistic and do the impossible!"
I love, love, love that. A motto to live by!
Bon, back to Monsieur Chagall. As I have blabbed on and on, you can click here to read all about his life and you can scroll down to see some of his fantastic, magical, inspiring thought-provoking work.
Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel
For some reason, I just adore this one
Daydreaming
La Branche
He did many stained glass windows: for the Reims and Metz cathedrals, United Nations and Jerusalem windows in Israel.
Joli, n'est ce pas?
Gros bisous de l'art extraordinaire et a très bientôt!
Lyon, esoteric capital of France: city of witchcraft, secret societies, hub of the Knights Templars and home of Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, father of modern-day Freemasons.
Under the city, there are approximately 50 kilometers of underground tunnels. The oldest date from the Romans 2,000 years ago who used them as aqueducts; during the Middle Ages people dug them looking for water; and the most recently, modern tunnels were built for drainage.
Very few people are aware of the veritable city that lies beneath their feet as the city of Lyon has painstakingly kept the discovery of these tunnels secret. Only when obligated, have they released information regarding these underground galleries to the public.
For example: during the night of November 12, 1930, at approximately one o'clock in the morning, a violent explosion erupted causing several houses to collapse and sink into the earth on the Fourvièrehill in Lyon. Forty people died, among them 19 firemen and 4 policemen as they attempted to save people's lives.
There was another event in 1963 where a few houses collapsed into the ground on Croix-Rousse hill, and again in 1977.
Bit-by-bit, Lyon municipality became aware of just how riddled with subterranean galleries the city was. Still, no word to the public.
Why does the city of Lyon choose to keep this vast underground treasure secret? Why is Lyon the only city in France and in Europe who shows no interest in its underground history? Why has there been no official archaeological studies done on these underground tunnels? Why have these not been classified as UNESCO World Heritage sites?
Mysteries.
Today, a simple man hole in the road can hide an access to the most incredible places.
(photo courtesy of Esion / Skenge)
Just hop down the well
(photo courtesy of Esion / Skenge)
and Voila!
(photo courtesy of Esion / Skenge)
A rectangular gallery under General Giraud Street in Croix-Rousse.
(photo courtesy of Esion / Skenge)
Roman galleries that have defied time
(photo courtesy of LaBuche / Skenge)
The Trident Snake reserve under Fourvière hill
(photo courtesy of JohnRoss / LaBuche)
Imagine: 50 kilometers of amazing, well preserved underground tunnels--most of them yet unexplored--none of them have undergone a proper archeological study!
(photo courtesy of Esion / Skenge)
Some have been reenforced with cement by the city of Lyon without prior study of original material. Lamantable (a crying shame)!
(photo courtesy of Youyou / Skenge)
There is a legend of an underground lake in the Fourvièrehill. Shortly after the catastrophe of 1930, rumors ran abundant. "The Widow Richard" wrote a letter to the mayor of Lyon testifying to having visited the underground lake in a boat.
Rumors of sects and secret societies meeting in these underground galleries have existed for decades. A local group of cataphiles have attested to finding "burnt crosses, strange inscriptions and candles ..."
Mysterious sculptures.
(photo courtesy of Esion / Skenge)
Legend says that there is an ancient underground tunnel that traverses the Saône River, running from the ancient Templar Command Post at Saint George in Vieux Lyon to the Ainay Basilica on the Presqu'ile. People keep searching, it has not yet been found.
In 1959, municipal workers discovered a complex and ancient underground network inside Croix-Rousse hill in the city of Lyon when part of a street crumbled and collapsed into a thirty meter well. Keeping the discovery secret from the public for twenty years, city workers explored the 2.5 kilometers of underground tunnels eventually indentifying thirty-two short tunnels that branch off a main tunnel or vertebra, much like the skeleton of a fish, giving birth to its moniker "Arêtes de Poisson" which translates as Fish Bones.
Le Gros Caillou or Big Rock stands guard at the entrance to this mysterious labyrinth. No one knows why or how it got there or what it symbolizes.
(photo courtesy of Esion / Skenge)
Fifty-two years later, very few people are aware of the network's existence. Off limits to the public, a team of cataphiles (illegal urban explorers) has spent seven years meticulously investigating and mapping out this virtual underground labyrinth.
5m3 of human bones were found in one of the galleries in the Arêtes de Poisson.
More mysteries.
Gros bisous de Friday the 13th et ses mystères et à bientôt!
Fasten your creepy seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, baron de Rais (1404–1440)
Gilles was born in the small village of Champtocé-sur-Loire. Legend tells us that, on the night he was born, an ominous and tumultuous storm broke out over the Château de Champtocé, marking the destiny of this privileged and wealthy noble who grew up to be one of France's most infamous mass murders.
Château de Champtocé is located in the small village of Champtocé-sur-Loire, population 1,000. In a rather shocking way, this is the first image of the village one sees when rounding the corner of a lazy and peaceful country road. The ruins of the castle are massive, bigger than life, and exude a morbid and dark energy that envelops one immediately.
Giles de Rais' father was gored to death by a wild boar when he was eleven and his mother died shortly after. He and his brother, René de La Suze, were then raised by their maternal grandfather, Jean de Craon, a cruel and ruthless man. Although the death of his father left Gilles with immense wealth, his grandfather plotted and schemed to marry him off to wealthiest heiresses.
Gilles de Rais was handsome charismatic and elegant with a willful character. He first scandal involved kidnapping his young cousin, Catherine de Thouars, and marrying her one year later. A daughter, Marie, was born of this union. Shortly after their marriage, Gilles assumed control over his property against the wishes of his grandfather.
Gilles then began behaving in a wild and excessive manner, spending his vast wealth on debaucheries that shocked his fellow aristocrats.
The haunting image of a tower who's insides seem to have been blasted outwards.
Then came the call to arms from the King of France, Charles VII. The Hundred Years War was near its end, France was teetering on the edge of collapse. Enter Joan of Arc (see my blog). King Charles VII appointed Gilles de Rais Marshall of France and protector of Joan. It is said that Gilles worshipped Joan of Arc, something in her spiritual nature called to him, and that he never left her side.
Gilles de Rais was awarded the right to bear the royal Fleur de Lys on his coat of arms for the bravery and courage he showed during battle. In reality, the bravery and courage was merely the awakening of a blood lust for butchery.
An excellent film on Joan of Arc is Luc Besson's The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc starring Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich and Dustin Hoffman. One of my favorite French actors, Vincent Cassell, plays Gilles de Rais. The film certainly gives you a feel for the period of time when this all happened.
When Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, Gilles de Rais' mind is said to have snapped. Even though he was officially bankrupt, he sold off half his castles to pay for an extravagant theatrical piece re-enacting his campaign with Joan. The play had 140 speaking parts, 500 extras 600 hundred costumes that were created to be worn once, discarded and then created again for other performances. Gilles supplied unlimited food and drink for the spectators. HIs family put an official hold on the sale of the rest of his properties and he was obliged to move back to Château de Champtocé.
The remains of the main entry and drawbridge. There were once 11 towers.
Financially devastated and utterly mad, Gilles turned to the occult under the tutelage of the infamous and sadistic sorcerer, Francesco Prelati, who convinced him he could regain his fortune by sacrificing children to a demon, which would allow him to successfully practice alchemy--the art of turning base metal into gold.
And so the killings began.
Gilles de Rais kidnapped, tortured, sodomized and murdered hundreds of children, mainly boys, with the help of his cousin Gilles de Sillé and his body servant Étienne Corrillaut, known as Poitou. Gilles committed these heinous crimes in his own bedroom, the bodies were burnt in his own fireplace and, afterwards, the ashes disposed of in the moat.
The moat today.
The details are vivid and gory, I won't post them on this blog. I'll leave your imagination to do its own work. If you want read more click here.
After brutally murdering hundreds of children from 1431 to 1440, Gilles kidnapped a priest in effort to rob a church and local authorities had finally had enough. A secret inquest was convened, Gilles and his evil henchmen were arrested and charged with child murder and heresy and a scandalous trial began which ended with Gilles' confession and subsequent hanging and burning at Nantes on Wednesday, October 26, 1440.
Unfortunately, the chateau is now closed to the public as it recently passed from private hands to a public domain. There is a massive crypt under the castle that I wanted badly to see. I spoke with several locals, lunched in the only local restaurant (which felt right out of the David Lynch film Lost Highway, I kid you not), and went to ask permission from the Mairie or Town hall. Everyone was incredibly tight-lipped about the castle and clearly not happy with my questions. Even the gardeners who pulled up to trim the grass along the edge of the castle refused to give me any information, merely firmly repeating what I already knew.
Hot, disgruntled and in need of the loo, I headed back to the restaurant where I had lunched. The Mister was in the back, the Misses at the bar, drying off wine glasses with a linen towel. I could have been in the middle of the Nevada desert at some deserted roadside diner, the ambiance was the same. The woman looked as though life had worn her hard, suspicion had left its marks on her face, her mouth was a straight line of a lifetime on non-communication.
I engaged her in conversation; lunch over, work slower, she obliged, albeit reluctantly. Eventually I asked, "I hear there are spirits that haunt the castle?" Just then a local man walked in and she spat out a terse, "C'est pas vrai!", "It's not true!", signaling the end of the conversation. I left her with, "Well I have the phone number with someone who might allow me to visit the underground crypt." Her eyes showed a flicker of fear and, almost as though she couldn't help herself, she leaned over the counter and hoarsely whispered, "Don't go in there alone!"
From Chrétien de Troyes' Le Chevalier au lion in 1179, to 12th century's Jaufré, to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King, the mythical forest of Brocéliande is the stuff of legend.
Many people believe that the forest of Paimpont in Brittany is Brocéliande. It is here where Merlin fell in love with the Fairy Viviane (the Lady of the Lake who raised Sir Lancelot) at the fountain of Barenton. After Merlin fell in love with her, Viviane absorbed his magical powers and entombed him forever in these woods.
The mythical forest of Brocéliande was the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth realm, Beleriand.
Ridley Scoot recently filmed Robin Hood with Russell Crowe in these woods. (Great film, see my blog)
The forest is filled with ancient funeral mounds dating back to the Bronze Age. There are many lakes, rivers and fountains which the Celts, who inhabited Brittany, believed had supernatural powers. Brocéliande is believed to be the doorway to another world. Druids have worshipped here for many, many centuries and still do.
As mon fils and I walked through the forest, we felt a clearly defined energy; it was stimulating, exciting and simultaneously peaceful. Mon fils was desperate to get off the beaten paths, to climb the rocky mounds and see parts of the forest that other visitors never get to. He dragged me to the top of this rocky perch.
Here we were well above the tree tops and I must say, it was breathtaking. While he climbed around some more, I had a nice quiet meditation and have never felt so rejuvenated, so fresh with energy. Thank you, mon fils, for dragging your mother up those rocks!!
Don't get lost in the Valley of no return Val sans Retour and, please, if you discover the secret of life in the Miroir-aux Fées (Fairy's Mirror), do share.
As we drove out of the forest and headed towards the Chateau de Champtocé, where the evil Gilles de Rais lived in 1404, I couldn't help but feel that the entire area had a mystic feel to it. The trees are bent in odd shapes almost as though they are inhabited by spirits of the past. A cluster of haunted, spiritual and esoteric places exist in this part of France and, when you are there in person, it is easy to understand why.
