Slow food in Beaune

Slow food in Beaune

Beaune is beautiful.

It’s small, localised, brimming with excellent Burgundy and has a very sweet little walled city centre. It’s so sweet that we didn’t mind that it took us seven hours to get there from Normandy, we nearly ran out of petrol after our naughty Nav Girl told us to exit somewhere in the middle of somewhere sounding like two sneezes and a cough and had a mild tantrum consisting of seven, non sensical “perform a u turn now”‘s.

No Nav Girl, we shall not. Shush now.

I’ve always firmly believed that if you don’t have anything helpful to say you shouldn’t say anything at all. It’s going to be …

Paris picks and pilgrimages

Paris picks and pilgrimages

Ten days in Paris.

It’s not a movie, not a song- it’s the first step of a honeymoon. Now that we’re safely south we can look back on it with some perspective.

There were some wins, some absolute must dos and some things that I probably only needed to do once- Friday night at the Louvre where everyone under 26 gets in free might be one of those. I’ve never seen so many slack jawed study-abroad students crammed in one place, with a camera held aloft because “Mom said I had to come here -can we go get a beer now…?”

Here’s a shortlist of some of our picks of Paris and …

A trip to a Paris supermarket

A trip to a Paris supermarket

I’ve had a light bulb moment and they don’t happen that often anymore.

I’ve discovered the elementary reason why French cookbooks are so frustrating.And I should know-I have enough of them- but here’s a secret- I very rarely cook from them.

The frustration starts at around about this point;

“Take half a cup of crème fraiche. Take a rib eye of beef. Take 300 grams of boudin noir.Take half a dozen snails. Take 200 grams of lardons. Take some sweetened chestnut puree. Take some unsweetened chestnut puree.Take two cups of du puy lentils. Take four different types of goats cheese. Take 500 ml of Belgium beer. “

Absolutely . I’ll do all of …