Vegetarian in France

crack muffins

I should warn you - these muffins are insanely dangerous, and should only be made if you have a large group of people who will eat them for breakfast. Otherwise, you may end up eating them all yourself, and this is the kind of recipe that, considering the amount of fat and sugar, you really shouldn’t. Consider yourself warned.

But look at how delicious they look! I mean really, who can resist?!

Anyway, as most muffin recipes, these require flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, butter, salt, milk, and also a bit of nutmeg. I forgot to include the milk in the photo. Whoops.

First thing is of course, to mix all the dry ingredients together (including the sugar).

Next add the butter, which you need to melt first. Fair warning - watch your butter! I stupidly looked away while the butter was in the microwave and it exploded all over the interior. I cannot stress how unpleasant it is to clean melted butter out of a microwave.

Then the eggs, which you should mix together before pouring them in.

Then the milk (it’s at this point that I realized I forgot to take out the milk - once I realized how gloopy the mix was - in my defense, I got up super early to make these muffins for Marc before he had to leave for work).

Stir until just combined. It is extremely important that you don’t overmix the batter, otherwise the muffins will be hard and yucky.

Pour the contents evenly into a muffin tin. I have silicon muffin tins, which I wouldn’t recommend. They’re super floppy. However, I will say they’re nice because you don’t have to pre-grease them. Actually from what I read, you should never oil or grease any silicon baking gear, because it will discolor them and make them gross, essentially. However, if you don’t have silicon, obviously grease your muffin tins ahead of time!

Put the muffins in at 350°F or 180°C for 20-25 minutes (seems to take my oven exactly 22 minutes at 180°C). While you’re waiting, get the topping together - melt even more butter in the microwave, and mix some sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl (big enough to fit one muffin in at a time).

Once I pull out the muffins, I check that they’re done by putting a toothpick through the middle - if it comes out clear, then they’re done. Mine look weird and slanty because of me trying to flop the silicon inside the oven. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

Now this is where these muffins become truly evil. As if all the butter sugar, and milk in the muffins weren’t enough, after you let the muffins cool for 5 minutes so you can handle them without burning your fingers off (or hey, if you’re like my Dad and have asbestos hands, go ahead and handle them immediately - but don’t say I didn’t warn you!), you dip these beautiful muffins in more butter.

Then you roll them in cinnamon sugar.

Oh god, I think I can feel my arteries clogging and diabetes might be knocking at the door.

You can ask my husband though - they’re totally worth it. He got SO excited when he saw I had these out on the table for him.

You could make these slightly less evil by only dunking the muffin tops in butter and cinnamon sugar, but where’s the fun in that?

Recipe: crack muffins

Ingredients, for the muffins:

• 2/3 c. (151 g.) butter
• 1 c. (240 ml) milk - just about any milk works, I’ve used both 2% and whole in the past and didn’t taste a difference
• 2 eggs (leave them out over night so they can get to be room temperature)
• 1 c. (200 g.) white sugar (sucre à poudre)
• 3 c. (390 g.) all purpose flour (farine de blé type 55)
• 1 T. (10 g.) baking powder (levure chimique)
• 1 t. (1 cuillère à café) salt
• 1/2 t. (2 pincées) of nutmeg (muscade)

Ingredients, for the topping:

• 1/2 c. (113 g.) butter, melted
• 1 c. (200 g.) white sugar
• 1 1/2 t. (1 cuillère à café généreuse) of cinnamon (cannelle)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. If you have non-silicone muffin tins, grease them butter or cooking spray.
2. Melt the butter in the microwave. While waiting, mix all the dry ingredients together well in a medium-sized bowl. Also mix the eggs together in another small bowl.
3. Pour the melted butter, mixed eggs, and milk into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix until they just come together - don’t be afraid of lumps! Whatever you do, you do not want to overmix.
4. Evenly distribute the batter into 12 muffin cups. Put in a pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
5. While waiting for the muffins to finish, melt the butter and mix the cinnamon sugar together in 2 separate bowls.
6. Once the muffins are out of the oven, let them sit in the muffin tins for about 5 minutes so they can cool slightly. Right before using the melted butter as the topping, make sure to give it a good stir.
7. With each muffin, dip in melted butter, then roll in cinnamon sugar. Put them either on a plate or a cooling rack (I don’t have a cooling rack - a plate worked just fine for me).
8. While these muffins are delicious at any time, they are ESPECIALLY amazing when they have just come out of the oven. Enjoy them with a big glass of milk!
9. Try not to eat them all and fall into a sugar coma.

crostini

It’s funny how, no matter how simple a recipe actually is, if you’re accustomed to someone making it for you, it just can seem too difficult. I’ve had this block with my Dad’s crostini. He’s always insisted that they’re super simple to make, but since I associate them so strongly with him, I was convinced that mine wouldn’t turn out as well as his. However, I absolutely hate wasting, and I had people coming over, so I finally was forced to try and make them a couple months ago. Now, I can’t seem to stop!

The reason why I mention wasting is because the crostini are best made with stale bread - although I have often been guilty of letting bread go purposefully stale so I have an excuse to make them. Since the boulangerie (a baker of sorts, for the non-French speakers) that is within short walking distance of our apartment doesn’t have that great of bread, I much prefer eating them in crostini form than in fresh.

This recipe is so simple, I keep kicking myself for not making it earlier. First thing first, you need to preheat your oven to 400° Fahrenheit, or 205° Celcius.

Next, cut your bread in about 3/4” inch, or 2 cm long pieces on a diagonal. Then stick them on a cookie sheet. I always get about 1 cookie sheet’s worth of crostini out of one full baguette. You of course, are not required to use baguette, but since I’m in France, that’s the easiest bread for me to get.

Next, you want to drizzle olive oil all over the bread. You need to be careful not to go overboard, because if you do, it will ooze out of the bread after it’s been baked and trust me, it’s gross.

Once you have drizzled the bread, and the oven is heated, stick in the bread and cook it for about 6 minutes. The important thing is if it’s your first time, you really want to watch it. You want it to start to brown some, but not too much. After six minutes, take it out, turn the bread over, and put it back in the oven. How long? Well, it’s going to depend. I have found with the bread I use, if it is stale, 3 minutes on the other side suffices. If it is fresh, it needs an extra minute. This is something you have to watch carefully. In any case, once you take it out, it should look like this.

Now, for the fun part! I usually let the bread cool down for about 5 minutes, and then I cut a garlic clove in half, and rub the cooked bread with garlic. Now, it’s easy to get carried away, but you really should only swipe the bread once or twice, because raw garlic is strong, and you don’t want the garlic to be overpowering. Or if you don’t care for garlic like a family friend of ours doesn’t, you can just let it be and not add it. In any case, usually after a full cookie sheet, I’ve used up the entire half clove.

You can see what’s left of the poor garlic clove at the end here.

Now, just a note. Like I said, the bread at the boulangerie next to us isn’t that great, but it’s funny because a couple weekends ago, my mother-in-law sent us home with a stale baguette, because we told her we could make something out of it. I knew the bread at our local boulangerie wasn’t that great, but can you tell the difference between the good, stale baguette slices that we got from Marc’s family, from the local boulangerie’s? It really just affirmed to me what I’d already suspected - that they must buy their dough pre-made or something.

In the end, when you’re making crostini, it doesn’t matter if you have fabulous bread - all you’re doing is toasting it in the oven. But I have to admit, since having made this comparison, I’m struggling with my desire between convenience and quality.

In good news, we finally have the last kitchen cabinet that we’ve been waiting for!!! I never thought I could be SO excited to actually organize a kitchen, but I spent lots of time yesterday organizing everything. It’s nice to not have spices all over the desserte, about to fall out. Just waiting for my DH Marc to finish with the very last drawer, and then I will update with pictures.

the progress on my kitchen

It’s funny how I can ponder about posting for days at a time, but I really struggle to actually do it. Part of it is because I feel like I have so much I’d like to share, but I don’t really know where to start. Another part of it is trying to decide if I should do at least part of this in French. Marc was telling me there might be a way that we could put an area where people could switch back and forth between English and French. Of course, this means I’d end up having to translate my thoughts from English to French, which is hardly my favorite pasttime. Part of it is also just logistical issues, and by that I mean the state of my current kitchen, as well as our horrible internet issues. Unfortunately, I have no idea when our internet issues are going to be resolved. It’s been months and months, and the internet company seems unwilling or unable to actually resolve it. Essentially, despite having ADSL, our internet is horribly slow, and likes to cut in and out CONSTANTLY.

But the good news is that at least one of the issues is starting to get resolved! Now, as an American, this shocked me to my core. But whenever my now-husband was looking into apartments for us to rent, he surprised me whenever he told me that you have to buy your own refrigerator, stove, and kitchen cabinets. Sure enough, talking to multiple French people, this seems to just be a given, nevermind how impractical it is when you will likely have to sell your cabinets and get new ones that will fit every time you move. Whenever I address this, the French just shrug. C’est la vie.

Thankfully, we got our refrigerator and stove quickly, but we took a while in choose our kitchen cabinets, just because we wanted to have the maximum amount of space, and when you’re buying cabinets for an apartment, nothing is going to fit perfectly, because you’re not going to buy custom cabinets. We finally settled on 3 cabinets at the beginning of August. For over a month and a half, we’ve had to basically do camp out cooking while waiting for the others. Let me show you what I mean.

Just about all our dishes that we were using were housed on the dish drainer, because we had no place else to put them. The rest that we weren’t using yet, were housed on the floor next to the oven. I know, it’s an incredibly elegant system, you don’t need to tell me. I also tended to leave my most used pots and pans on the stove. The rest …

Went up here, on top of the fridge, along with the rice, couscous, and cereal. Next to our fridge (which I LOVE, I should have taken a picture of the inside, because there’s a wine bottle rack inside, which is something I’ve never seen in the US) is Marc’s booze, which he keeps on hand to try and forget how annoyed he is that it’s taking But so long to get us our stuff. Oh, also, the very nice ice cream maker we got, and an electric kettle, which is such a wonderfully useful thing. I was so happy whenever I found out Marc already had one.

The space where the liquor, ice cream maker, and electric tea kettle live is where our buffet is supposed to be. Sigh.

And this desserte (I don’t know what to call it in English) is the only kitchen cabinet we got in a timely manner, namely because we bought it at the Toulouse Ikea and walked out with it. The idea is that it’s supposed to eventually house our thermomix and microwave (which is rather unelegantly living on our dining room table, and which I end up moving it to the guest room whenever we have guests). For now, however, it’s housing a number of spices, cooking products, and also has been doubling as the place where I chop things. Not the best place, because I have to stoop to chop, so it’s been killing my back.

But thank GOODNESS, in the last couple of weeks, we got the cabinet I wanted to use as my plan de travail (chopping area? I’m not sure how to translate that into English). So while things still aren’t perfect as we’re still waiting for the buffet we ordered, in the meantime I no longer have to kill my back while chopping vegetables. We also got the thermomix, which is super, super exciting.

You can see in this picture that we moved the desserte to the place we had originally planned. Unfortunately, since we still haven’t gotten the buffet, it’s still housing all of the spices and cooking stuff. I did of course immediately clear out space for the thermomix though. In this picture, you can see the cute cover we got for it to protect it from dust and such while it isn’t being used.

New kitchen cabinet! I absolutely love it, because I no longer break my back while chopping - it is the perfect height for me. We completely lucked out on that, because we just saw it online and ordered it. In case you’re wondering, the third door is black because it’s supposed to be a blackboard where you can write in chalk. Who the heck has chalk these days, though?

In this picture, you can see how the dish draining area has cleared out, since all our dishes are inside the new cabinet now. Thank goodness. Having all thoses dishes out was driving me insane(r).

Close up of my new wonderful toy, the Thermomix! It’s a shame these aren’t sold in the US. They’re expensive, but the great thing is that it does the work of a whooole bunch of different small appliances. It is a food processor, flour/spice/coffee mill, steamer, slow cooker, blender, and so forth. So far, I have used it to make the my Dad’s pizza dough recipe for skillet pizzas, and mango lassis. Tonight however, I am going to try a recipe for mushroom risotto. Super excited! It’s amazing how you can make entire meals out of this small appliance. I am very lucky, as my mother-in-law also has one, so she gave me a ridiculous amount of recipes to try out with it.

I promise, in the next two days I will go back to posting a recipe, but I had to share my excitement over having a better-equipped kitchen. À la prochaine !

pickles!

Hello again! I have been trouble deciding what recipe to post, but I think my friend Beki decided it for me, so here is my Dad’s recipe for bread and butter pickles.

Now, just a couple notes about the recipe. My Dad originally got this recipe from Cook’s Country, which he changed to give it a slightly spicy kick. I love his recipe so much, I always just end up doubling it anyway, so I am giving it to you the way I make it. However, you could easily half it if you want, since that’s the way it was intended to be made.

This recipe calls for Kirby, or pickling cucumbers. I always wondered what would happen if you didn’t use them. Well, my friend Beki found out for me. She couldn’t find them, so she used regular cucumbers. Unfortunately, pickling cucumbers have a thinner skin, so that is why they are best for pickles. Regular cucumbers’ skins tend to be thicker, so what happened when she made this recipe was that the inside was soft, but the outside skin was tough. However, considering I can find pickling cucumbers at the open air market in a small town in southwestern France, I feel fairly confident that you can find them too!

My Dad’s recipe calls for jalapenos, which are impossible to find here. Trust me, considering the amount of jalapenos I consume, this has been a major loss for me. It’s been more than a little depressing. However, my husband and I have found that espelette peppers (or piment d’espelette) seem to be a pretty good substitute, so that’s what I use. I’ve actually come to love them. I’m drying them now so that I can make my own powder, because buying powdered piment d’espelette here is ridiculously expensive.

The leftovers I’m drying.

This is what the fresh ones look like.

All right, let’s get started! First thing you need to do is slice a bunch of Kirby cucumbers into 1/8 inch thin disks. Back in the US, I used my fabulous food processor with the slicing attachment, but here, I’ve come to use this great small appliance that my mother-in-law gave us.

While you’re slicing everything up, I stick everything in a colander in the sink, like so. Especially since this recipe calls for 2 lbs, or about 900 grams of cucumbers.

Next you want to cut up 1 1/2 medium-large onions (I just used plain yellow onions) into large chunks.

Then you are going to stick them in your food processor or other small appliance and also slice them into 1/8 inch thin slices. Once done, put them on top of the cucumbers in the colander.

Then you are going to take 2 espelette or jalapeno peppers, whole, chop off the top, and get them sliced. (You can tell with mine they’d already started drying by this point - but they still worked just fine). Stick them in the colander with everything else.

Now you are going to take about 1 1/2 ounces of sea salt, and pour it over the ingredients in the colander. (Note: usually most pickling recipes call for kosher salt. However, since I’m lazy, I figured out a way to substitute the salts).

Mix them all up well, and let them sit in the sink for an hour. When you come back, there should be some liquid in the sink. Basically, the salt is helping to get some of the water out of the cucumbers and other ingredients to make a more delicious pickle.

While waiting, you can do what I do, and get the rest of the ingredients ready in a pan. Which I forgot to take a picture of, whoops. Anyway, once the time is up, you want to put some apple cider vinegar, sugar (I know that sounds weird, but you really need it to balance all the salt that was added at the beginning), mustard seeds, celery seeds, and turmeric in a pan, and let them boil. Once it starts boiling, then you’ll want to stick in your cucumber mix. I don’t have a large enough pan, so I have to use two. Also, put the heat down to about medium.

Yum.

Now you really need to make sure that you cover everything with the liquid, because otherwise you’re going to have some cooked and uncooked pickles (ie cucumbers). Cook over medium for about 10 minutes, or until your cucumbers are a dull, olive green color, like so.

Now, what you really should do is sterilize a couple jars and put those pickles to good use. I personally used these huge jars that my husband had bought for green olives (gross). The jars on them say that they can hold 475 grams of pitted olives, or 950 grams, including the juice. This pickle recipe makes enough to fill them up to the top, plus a small bowl for us to snack on in the meantime.

I cannot believe how crazy people go over these pickles. My husband says he’s ruined for industrial (ie store-bought) pickles now. We’ve also had several people tell me that they hate pickles, but love these. While they can be a bit time consuming, with all the slicing and the down time in the colander, these are super super easy and extremely delicious, so I highly suggest making them!

Recipe: bread and butter pickles

• 900 grams or 2 lbs. pickling (Kirby) cucumbers, sliced crosswise into 1/8-inch disks
• 1 1/2 medium-large onions, halved and sliced thinly
• 2 jalapeno or espelette peppers, sliced thinly
• 43 grams, or 1 1/2 ounces sea salt
• 50 cl, or 2 cups cider vinegar
• 188 grams, or 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 coffee spoonful, or 1 teaspoon of yellow mustard seeds
• 1/2 coffee spoonful, or 1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
• a few pinches, or 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

1. As you’re slicing the vegetables, put them in a colander set inside a sink. Toss them with the salt. Let them stand for one hour.
2. Bring the vinegar, sugar, and spices to boil in a large pan. Reduce the heat to medium, and add the vegetables into the hot liquid, making sure to get all of them covered. Cook for about 10 minutes, until the cucumbers become a dull olive green color.
3. Set the pickles aside and let them cool, or pack them into sterilized jars. Enjoy them with cheese and crackers, in sandwiches, or just by themselves.

appetizers for a “girls night” ???

Okay, I wasn’t really planning to blog about this, but this was just too crazy for me to be able to resist.

There is an interesting tradition in French culture known as the apéritif, or appetizer. It’s fascinated me since I was an exchange student so many years ago I’d rather not count. A lot of times, what it consists of is little store-bought appetizers, like pieces of cheese, nuts, olives, charcouterie (more specifically dried sausages, sliced into thin pieces), chips, and also occasionally sometimes even little finger foods that need to be heated up in the oven, like mini versions of spanakopita, puff pastries with cheese, etc. More traditionally, it’s served with a kir, or kir royal, although other times people may serve rosé as well - it just depends on the family, and also the region of France.

A lot of times, the apéritif is just the beginning to a very long but wonderful meal, but other times, it can just be a pretext for friends to get together and drink. I think I find this fascinating, mostly because of the ridiculous amounts of snack foods you will find in grocery stores that are touted just for these occasions. Since I love cooking, I have to admit that just buying a bunch of pre-made snacks just feels wrong to me, and so usually if we have people over, I’ll prepare a sauce to go with crudités, I’ll make my favorite salsa from my Dad, and I’ll maybe make pickles and crostini (also recipes from my Dad) to go with some delicious cheese. I do understand however, because sometimes you might have a last minute guest, and you don’t want to have NOTHING on hand for them to snack on otherwise.

In any case, while I was going through a bunch of mail and store advertisements (hey, we are still slowly buying stuff for our apartment, I figure it can’t hurt to look to see if anything we need is on sale!) that have built up today, I found something that is just …. incomprehensible to me.

Those in the US may know The Laughing Cow cheese, which in French is known as La Vache Qui Rit. Along with their little individually sized cheeses they put out in wheels, they also make apéricubes, or little cubes of cheese that have different seasonings, to put out for an apéritif. Except now apparently, they have special ones for la “soirée filles” ! Uh …. can someone explain this to me? It is so not surprising that it is in pink, but I wonder what is so special about the apéricubes that are for girls’ nights. From what I can tell, their girls’ night apéricubes include summer (or sun) vegetables, goat cheese, and sauteed scallop flavors. I guess those are girly flavors and therefore relegated to girls’ nights only???? I would so love to understand this logic.

White beans with caramelized onions

Hello again! I have been formulating this post in my mind ever since I finally got around to writing my first entry, but I’ve been forcing myself to wait, because I don’t want to start off writing every day and then just abandoning it. So, I’m trying to pace myself.

Anyway, I originally had in mind one recipe, but then last week I kind of came up with something on the fly, and it was so good I decided I NEED to share it. We kind of snarfed these beans the first time, so this gave me a good excuse to make them again. I also figured it would be a good recipe to start with, since the French always seem to wonder where vegetarians get their protein (this is something I never heard anyone ask a vegetarian in the US - usually only vegans get asked that question).

First off, for this recipe, you need dried white beans. I got these cute tiny white beans at Carrefour. You could of course use canned beans, but I much prefer dried beans, because you have better control over the quantity and the seasonings - especially the salt.

I didn’t take any photos of my beans while soaking and cooking, but in case you don’t know what to do, what I did was soak 225 grams (or about 1/2 lb) of white beans overnight in a big bowl of water. The next day, I drained and rinsed them, put them in a medium saucepan, covered them in water, and added 2 bay leaves. I put them on high heat (if you have an induction cooktop like mine, I put it on P), and then as soon as it started boiling, I cut the heat down to medium-low (3 on the cooktop), covered them, and let them simmer for about an hour and a half. Once one hour was up, I added about a teaspoon of salt. Now, if you have slightly larger beans, you will likely want to cook them for 2 hours, it’s just that my beans are so small, they didn’t need a full 2 hours. I then let the beans get to room temperature, removed the bay leaves, and put them in a container with the cooking water, like so.

Good? Easy, right? If you have a pressure cooker, you can seriously cut down on bean cooking time, but pressure cookers terrify me (I am super clumsy so having one in my kitchen just sounds like a recipe for disaster), so I do it the old fashioned way. If you have a slow cooker, you could also cook them in one for about 8 hours, and that way you can let them cook while you’re at work, and have them ready for you when you get home.

So now that I’ve gone on forever about cooking beans from dried, here’s the actual recipe.

First, you need about a medium-large yellow onion, sliced as thin as you can, like so.

Heat a medium-sized pot over medium heat (a 5 on my cooktop) with about 2 tablespoons, or 4 soup spoonfuls of olive oil. Once you can put your hand over the pot and feel warmth (don’t touch it - trust me :), then you can slide in your onions. You want to cook them until they become really soft, and a bit browned in spots, like so. For me, it took about 20 minutes. Make sure to mix the onions often, otherwise some will be raw, and others will get burnt!

Once they’ve gotten nicely caramelized, you want to add in about 3 medium cloves of garlic, minced, about half a tablespoon of dried sage, and a teaspoon of marjoram.

Only let them sit in there for about 30-60 seconds before adding in your beans. More importantly, if you’ve cooked your beans yourself, you’re going to want to also add in about 1 cup, or 250 ml of the water which your beans were cooked in. Why? Because hopefully you added in the dried bay leaves, which will give the water more taste, not to mention it has all the wonderful beany taste. However, if you are using canned beans, I DO NOT suggest using the water from the can, because in order to preserve the beans, they tend to use a lot of sodium. I suggest that you rinse those beans well, and then either use plain water or vegetable broth, if you want to give it extra flavor.

Now you’re going to have to be patient. While this recipe is super easy, it isn’t super fast. Either you can spend the time making a side dish like couscous and a nice vegetable, or your can spend your time knitting, painting your nails, or plotting the takeover of the earth - whatever works for you. I like these best when all the water has essentially been cooked out of the pot, like so.

This took about 40 minutes on medium heat. However, there is nothing wrong with wanting to have it be a bit saucy if you so desire. You could probably cut that time down in half if you want to make serve this in a bowl over some rice.

Mmmm.

I served the beans with a recipe for peppers à la provençal, which are okay but way too lemony for me. I also served it next to some fine-grained couscous, which I absolutely love because it takes 5 minutes to cook, and you don’t even need to turn on the stove.

Yum. I’m thinking next time I should serve these next to some lightly sauteed mushrooms. I think the earthiness of the mushrooms would be fantastic with the earthiness found in the sage and marjoram.

Recipe: White beans with caramelized onions

• 225g, or 1/2 lb of dried white beans, cooked and cooled, plus 1 c, or 250 ml of the cooking water
• 1 medium-large yellow onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
• 3 medium cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 T or 4 soup spoons of olive oil
• 1/2 T, or a coffee spoonful of dried sage
• 1 t., or half a coffee spoonful of dried marjoram
• salt and pepper, to taste

1. Heat a saucepan to medium heat, and add the olive oil. Slide in the sliced onion, and cook until it gets really soft, has given off its liquid, and is browned in spots, making sure to mix often - this should take about 15-20 minutes.
2. Once caramelized, add in the garlic, sage, and marjoram, mix with the onions, and cook for about 30-60 seconds.
3. Add in the beans and their cooking water. Cook for about 30-40 minutes, stirring at least every 5 minutes, until there’s almost no water left. While cooking, taste to see if it needs salt or pepper. You could also add up to a tablespoon, or 2 soup spoons of olive oil, for extra taste.
4. Profit!

Hello!

Hi! For those who don’t know me, I’m Julia. In my former life, I was a French teacher in Atlanta. That is, until I randomly met a French man, fell in love, and he asked me to marry him and I moved to France so we could do that. The thing is though, I’m vegetarian, and we live in a small town in southwestern France. It’s not a problem per se, but vegetarianism is still pretty esoteric in France. Most of my husband’s coworkers still ask him if I at least eat fish, because according to most French, fish isn’t actually meat. (Well technically I guess it isn’t, but nonetheless, vegetarians don’t eat animals. Period).

A bunch of times, Marc and I have jokingly discussed me doing a blog to show French people that eating vegetarian isn’t just carrotes râpées (grated carrots) and salade, but we finally bought a domain name, so here we go!

I will warn that I do not have a fancy dSLR camera, but I try to get by as I can. In addition to showing what we’re eating and some recipes, I also hope to share a little about the French way of life, and interesting cultural differences.

While eating out may be a bit of a challenge if I don’t want to eat pizza, I will say one thing - it certainly is beautiful here.

If you’d like to see more photos of Mont-de-Marsan, you’re welcome to visit my flickr page here.

I have a few recipes lined up for the next posts, so I hope you will come back and take a look. À la prochaine !