Crazy trucks!

I love the crazy trucks they have in France!! And the crazy way they park them!!

A demain!

Love, Charley

Eew!

Okay everyone, prepare to be totally grossed out!!!

Last night we had dinner at a Lyonnais Institution, Carnegie Hall. For about one hundred years, mostly during the 20th century, the area around the restaurant Carnegie Hall was were all the meat was butchered, in what the French call an abbatoir.

The butchers would cut up the meat all night long. At about nine or ten o’clock in the morning, they would come in to the restaurant Carnegie Hall for a breakfast of Tete de Veau, or Head of Veal.

You have to understand a few things before I continue. Lyon is the gastronomic capital of France. Lyon has many food and wine traditions. Quite a number of the gastronomic traditions came from what the blue collar workers ate. Construction workers and butchers had physical jobs, they need a lot of fat and calories to keep them fueled. In the past, food was hard to come by and all parts of the animals ere consumed: brains, head, tongue, feet, intestines. Some of the food that is served here is not found anywhere else, not even in Paris. I am pretty adventurous, but there are a few things I just won’t touch.

These kinds of dishes are still served in Lyon’s Bouchon restaurants (which I’ll write about another time), brasseries and local restaurants like Carnegie Hall. There are several restaurants who still serve Tete de Veau only in the morning.

Last night we ordered:

Beef tongue

Double gras or double fat intestines.

And the infamous Tete de Veau of Head of Veal

A friend wanted to have the Cervelle de Veau or Veal Brain, but they were out, it was in popular demand. He settled for the double fat intestines and the head of veal. 

Everyone was happy with their traditional food. I was content with some fresh asparagus and a nice steak slathered in morel mushrooms in a cream sauce.

Voila!

A demain.

Love, Charley

Messob

An Ethiopian restaurant just around the corner from our house. The food is delicious!

You eat with your fingers (Just like Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller in "Along Came Polly"—ha ha.) and pieces of a spongelike bread called Injera.

There are lentil dishes, spicy hamburger, super spicy chicken, hard boiled eggs, spinach in a sauce to die for, green beans mixed with carrots and green salad. I took my kids to dinner here tonight. They loved it! They were all excited to eat with their fingers.

In our neighborhood there are all kinds of little hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants: Italian, greek, Indian, Arabic, African, Hungarian, classic French, French and even an American restaurant. It is so nice to be able to simply stroll out your front door and say, “Hey, what should we eat tonight?”

I love that!!

A demain

Love, Charley

VO

Version Originale.

Just went to see the Prince of Persia with my son Teo who is thirteen. There are many things I love about the cinema. The primary thing being that they show all Anglophone films in English with French subtitles. It feels sooooo good sometimes to go into a dark room and hear nothing but English for two hours.

I love that they sell beer in the cinema and all kinds of food.

I love, love, love sugared popcorn! They have salted as well and there is nothing more delicious than a large popcorn half sugar half salt.

Deaf people go to the VO films so that they can read the subtitles. Cool. Nice for them.

I love that every time I watch the trailers, Gerard Depardieu is in a film. That guy is in every French film and tons of American films as well.

(I just looked Gerard up on imdb.com, he has done 183 films in 40 years. Egads! Well, no wonder.)

You should see him in Mesrine Killer Instinct. A true story about a 70’s French gangster who wreaked havoc in Canada as well. Vincent Cassel won the Palm d’Or Best Actor for the film. An incredible actor. So many great French actors. I love that too!

To sum today’s blog up, “Vivre VO!”

A demain.

Love, Charley

My Muse

I have always loved France. I first came here when I was sixteen. (Won’t tell you all how many years ago that was!) I lived with a family for six months; they were lovely and didn’t speak a word of English. I came back when I was nineteen and attended the Sorbonne University for a semester. Both times, France inspired me to do better, grow up and gave me a thirst to learn more about myself and the world.

Is it all the art? The rich and flamboyant history? The architecture? The sophisticated culture? The immense pleasure taken with food, wine and life in general?

There definitely exists a certain je ne sais quoi.

I moved here eight years ago to live and write, confident that France would be my muse and help me to fulfill a lifelong dream of being a writer.

I was right.

Everyday I find inspiration. Some days I simply walk down the street and think, ‘I can’t believe I live here! Look at these buildings, the people are so interesting, so nice. The odors are so delightful and often times delicious. Wow, wow, wow!’

I live in France and I write everyday. She is my tireless Muse; she never let’s me down.

Thank you, France, merci mille fois.

A demain.

Love, Charley

Caramel au Beurre Salé

The French know that if you want your food to taste out of this world, you gotta use real ingredients.

Real butter, mmm….

Yes, its diabolical! Yes, its beyond delicious! And wouldn’t you rather put real, fresh butter in your body that chemical substitutes?

I could go on and on about everything they put butter into here. (And look, the French are so thin!) The list is long and gorgeous. What I came here to talk about today are salted butter caramels. Oh, (sharp inhalation of breath) yummy!

Caramel au beurre sale are a speciality of the Bretagne area of France. Bretagne is located along the Atlantic coast. Cows graze on grass that is covered with salt from the ocean. Their milk is naturally salted, therefore the butter in the region is naturally salted. These caramels are made in Bretagne with local naturally salted butter and sugar. (By the way, sheep in Bretagne also graze on this salted grass and the lamb is natuallry salted—delicious!)

Ya, I know. Pretty tempting, n’est ce pas!

It looks like this when ready to eat.

An evil friend dropped by with a package of caramel au beurre sale three days ago. Since then I have been making myself sick eating them. They are sticky and chewy and sugary and salty. They call to me from the little drawer in my desk where I hide them from the kids. I can’t resist!

Oops, eating one now! Sticky fingers on keyboard is not a good thing! Must go and finish the rest!

A demain.

Love, Charley

Spring Blossoms

Spring has come late this year. As I drove home from work today, I decided to stop, get out of the car and look closely at the blossoms I had been so admiring for days.

Mother Nature makes such perfect beauty.

A demain.

Much love, Charley

May days!

Today is a holiday. The third of four consecutive three or four day weekends in the month of May.

When I first moved here I used to go kook-a-lock-a-nagee in the head during the month of May. I would practically foam at the mouth, scream, yell, toss things across the room shouting “How do you people get any work done with all these days off?!”

Already a work week is challenging enough because on Wednesdays, in grade school, there is no school. So, you begin your work week on Monday, you get in the swing of things on Tuesday and then you have to take a day off of work to take care of the kids on Wednesday. Thursday is like a second Monday and then its Friday and you’re back into a weekend. Argh!

But now, I have been here eight years. This is my eighth month of May. Maybe I’m getting older, feeling a little more mellow … mellow yellow, yeah. Maybe its all beginning to rub off on me. Who knows?

I’m beginning to like the month of May. As long as I know its coming, I can schedule my work around these pesky thirty-one days and I have come to appreciate a little extra time off. I try and do things that I never have the time to do during the normal, manic work week.

Read a book all day long. Watch a couple of movies in a row. Wander aimlessly around town, enjoying myself with no particular schedule. Hang out with the kids. Work out a little extra. Spring clean the house.

All in all, the month of May provides a lot of time to just Be.

And I like that a lot.

A demain.

Love, Charley

French Sunday lunch in the country

A beautiful day in the French countryside.

We were invited to dine at my ex-mother-in-law’s house an hour out of Lyon at Chatillon sur Chalaronne, a gorgeous village in the heart of Ain, near Les Dombes. There are many ponds in the area that nourish a healthy flora and fauna. Les poulets de Bresse, the best free range chickens in France are raised there. People come from Paris with their Michelin Guides tucked under their arms to eat the most succulent frog legs in France. The Beaujolais wine region is just next door. Chatillon boasts its own ancient castle complete with walls and ancient doors to enter the village.

An invitation to a Sunday lunch is not to be taken lightly. You must arrive promptly at noon and you are expected to stay until six or seven o’clock at night. The meal itself usually lasts at least three hours.

You begin with the apperatif, which consists of champagne and little tasty appetizers.

Next, you have a fresh salad of some sort. Then a main dish. Today we had blanquette de veaux, slow cooked veal in a creamy sauce to die for. (Not usually a summer dish, my ex mother-in-law just had to make it for us.) Next there is a hallucinatory amount of cheese with crusty French bread and a good Cote du Rhone wine.

Followed by homemade desert served with fresh seasonal berries. The final touch is thick strong espresso coffee served with dark chocolate.

All of this is drunk and eaten with the accompaniment of lively conversation. The French love to talk and talk and talk when they get together. They discuss politics, food and wine, la politique, la bouffe et le vin! Politics usually spark good arguments—the French love to argue. It is good manners to speak of the next big meal, analyze it, break it down and get at the little details. And wine, well, wine is a topic so vast that one always has something to learn.

Afterwards it is customary to take your incredibly large meal for a stroll. As luck would have it, my ex-mother-in-law has a pool, so we took our incredibly large meal for a swim and then lay like beached whales in the sun!

I love, love, love a Sunday meal in the countryside, there is nothing more relaxing!!

A demain.

Love, Charley

A typical French Saturday in the city

Here in France, shops close at 7:00 pm, so people get home around 8 or so. On a Friday night, that doesn’t leave you with a whole lot of time get your groceries or run your errands, especially since the grocery stores all close at 7:30pm. Can you imagine?

When I first moved here, it was a BIG adjustment getting used to not being able to run errands any time of the day. Open-all-night supermarkets or convenience stores simply do not exist here. Plus, everything and I mean everything, is closed on Sundays. Sundays are family days and that is sacred. Pretty nice too, if you ask me.

Friday night is a night to go out to eat, have people over or simply relax.

Saturday is a fun day! Typically, you take care of your groceries in the morning: you get all of your fruits, vegetables and cheese at the farmers markets that are scattered through out the city, you go to the butchers and get your meat for the weekend, you get your bread and any cakes you might want at the Boulangerie or Patisserie. (No one makes their own cakes here like we do in the States. Why would you when you have these incredible pastries at your disposal?!)

You do your grocery shopping in the morning, then you go home and make a nice big lunch for the whole family.

In the afternoon, it’s a fashion parade in the streets. Everyone goes out dressed in the latest fashion to either shop or do a little leche vitrine (window licking). On a beautiful day like it was today, the sidewalk cafes are full of people talking, laughing, smoking, sipping coffee. The sidewalks are chock a block with people strolling arm in arm. Everyone comes out to bask in the sun and see or be seen. If you like people watching, Saturday afternoon is the best!

Voila! An agreeable day was had by all.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Sunday Lunch at the mother-in-law’s in the French countryside.

Love,

Charley

Avoir Mon Cher Oncle

One of the dearest, most amazing, magical, beautiful people I have ever known passed away today after a nine-month struggle with cancer. Alvin Taylor, my uncle—or as he preferred to be called “Mon Cher Oncle”—was 58.

Alvin loved France! He was a walking wikipedia when it came to France and her history. You could plunk him in front of any French monument and he knew its intimate details and recounted them in a deeply fascinating way. He loved a good palace intrigue; he had all of the French kings, queens and their lovers memorized. Alvin was more than well-versed in French literature. He loved the great classics. He adored French films, and never ceased to tell me what I should go and see at the cinema! Alvin loved a lazy summer afternoon lunch on a terrace in the French countryside. He loved French people and was never shy about using his French—which was quite good—to speak about the most sophisticated topics.

Everyone who met Alvin adored him—instantly! He is the only person I know who had no enemies. Everyone loved him and I mean, everyone.

Alvin brought more joy, love, and happiness to people in this world than is imaginable. He only had kind words for people and was always there when you needed him. I can only imagine how many of us are devastated tonight. My heart goes out to you all.

Bon voyage, Mon Cher Oncle. We have a beautiful lunch in the French countryside planned in your honor this Sunday.

Love, love, love,

Ta chere niece, Charley

Msieurdame

I love the fact that people are so polite here. And you are thinking, ‘Hmm, what about that French sassiness we’ve heard so much about?’ Ying Yang, French people can be sassy and French people can be wonderful, warm and polite.

It is an old world polite. When people walk into a doctor’s office, a butcher shop or the post office, they will always greet everyone else by saying, “Msieurdame.” Translation, Bonjour Messieurs et Mesdames, or hello ladies and gentlemen. This greeting is delivered in the most humble of ways; spoken calmly with a slight bow of the head, in a sweet and respectful manner. Any people waiting in line or those serving, will stop what they are doing and murmur a collective “Bonjour” in return and continue about their business of waiting or serving.

I think its lovely to acknowledge perfect strangers. I think that if more people in the world were courteous to one another each and every day, our world would become an even lovelier place!

A demain.

Love,

Charley

George Sand

This particular blog is in homage to my uncle Alvin who adores George Sand, taught me all about her and gave me her books to read. I love you, Alvin. 

In Indre, the heart of France, lies the home of the famous 19th century novelist George Sand. Her first independent novel, Indiana, was written in 1832, she went on to write thirty-seven more novels as well as various plays and other works. A brilliant writer, she is sometimes known more widely for her scandalous lifestyle.

Leaving her husband in 1831, she moved to Paris where she sported men’s clothing, smoked pipes and cigars and had various affairs with brilliant men, the most famous being Chopin. She and Chopin lived together for twelve years. He composed some of his most brilliant music in George Sand’s family chateau at Nohant.

Visit the 18th century family chateau and gardens at Nohant where George Sand entertained the likes of Delacroix, Flaubert, Litz, Turgenev and Balzac. Hear the echoes of Chopin’s music as you tour his intimate boudoir. Imagine George Sand bent over a manuscript as you see her writing nook and actual desk where she composed most of her famous works. Enjoy a delightful walk in the chateau’s garden—classified by the French Ministry of Culture as a Notable Garden of France—taking in the flowers, vegetable gardens and forested path that leads to her family plot where the great lady herself is buried.

Literary events, readings and concerts are organized all year round. Check the Nohant website for details and dates.

For a magical bed & breakfast in one of France’s most famous medieval castles eight minutes away from George Sand’s home in Nohant, please read the article Stay the night in the 650-year-old medieval Chateau de Sarzay.

A demain.

Love,

Charley

Gros Bisous!

Bisou means kiss in English. Gros bisous means big kisses. The French are all up in their kisses. I love that! Men and women alike, when you greet a friend, you give them a kiss on each cheek—mwah, mwah! In some parts of France they greet one another with three bisous, in others four. Whew! Thank goodness I’m in Lyon where its only two.

You give bisous to say hello, you give bisous to say good-bye. When you go to a dinner party and you are one of the last to arrive, conversation comes to a halt, everyone gets up and the room is suddenly full of teeny little squelching noises as you do the rounds and greet everyone with bisous.

You can use bisous on the phone when saying good-bye. The standard procedure is to actually say good-bye for about two minutes and then end all the procrastinating with a quick “Okay, ciao, bisou!”

When I first moved to France eight years ago, my son was five years old. My mother-in-law did what any French mother-in-law would do; she promptly invited all of her friends to come over and see the kids. I imagined what it must have been like for my young son to have all of these French ladies dressed to the nines, lined up and just dying to see him. They towered over him and bent down with their lips all done up in bright red lipstick, grabbed his cheeks and screeched, “Oh, qu’il est migon! Oh, bisou, bisou, bisou!” (Translation, “Oh he is so cute! Oh, kissey, kissey, kissey!”) Ahem, my son had rather an aversion to bisous for rather a long time.

Sometimes I miss good old American hugs. They don’t do that here. But I will admit that I have grown fond of bisous. And I believe that the world could use a whole lot more. So spread the love, baby, and give as many bisous to as many people as you can!

À demain,

Love,

Charley

Escargots

I love escargots. Delectable snails in the shell with loads and loads of butter, garlic, parsley and salt. After you have eaten the snails themselves, it is very important to take a thick slice of crusty French bread and mop up the buttery sauce.

Last night we partook in escargots as well as succulent Quenelles at a superb Lyonnais Bouchon called Cafe du Soleil. 2, rue St. Georges in Vieux Lyon for those of you who live in Lyon or are planning on a visit. Unfortunately they do not have a website. Their food is excellent and the prices are moderate.

We dined with our friends last night. As you can see, my friend Walter takes eating his escargots pretty seriously, HA HA!!

Cheers!

À demain.

Love,

Charley

No GM Food!

France voted not to grow Genetically Modified food. Halelujah! I can offer myself and my family healthy natural food. Thanks, France.

À demain.

Love, Charley

Turkish Toilets!

Okay, had to blog about these Turkish Toilets!! Every once in a while you come across these original water closets in restaurants and brasseries. I came across one in a restaurant today. They make me laugh, I love it.

No joke! First of all, they’re pretty tricky for girls—especially after a couple of glasses of wine with dinner!—and, second of all, they’re pretty tricky to flush. You have to open the door, back out, lean back in, and simultaneously pull the chain while leaping backwards as the water comes gushing out and goes everywhere. Splendid!

So, voila! French Turkish Toilets!

Have a great weekend everyone and à demain.

Love,

Charley

Roman Ruins

I live in Lyon, France. Founded by the Romans in 43 BCE and dubbed “Lugdunum” (the hill of lights), the city was a communications hub for the Roman Empire. Consequently, you practically trip over Roman ruins! I love that!

We have an enormous Roman Amphitheater on Fourviere hill overlooking the city. Much of it remains today; it is absolutely stunning to visit.

During the summer months, evening events are held in the amphitheater: ballets, concerts, classic films. The first month that I lived in France, I was invited to see a Stravinsky Ballet. It was magical. We sat on the 2,000 year old rock benches with our baguette sandwiches and beer. It was a warm evening, with a full moon and, all around the Amphitheater, soft blue and purple lights had been draped on the trees. A moment I will never forget!

I’ve written an article about the evening shows—Les Nuits de Fourviere on Examiner.com Please click to see the Fourviere schedule and reserve tickets if you like. http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-44942-SF-France-Travel-Examiner~y2010m4d18-Outdoor-summer-concerts-in-Lyons-2000yearold-Roman-Amphitheater

A second amphitheater lies on the next hill over, Croix Rousse. There the Romans persecuted Christians by feeding them to lions. Lyon has a legend of how Blandina, a christian slave who not renounce her religion, was tied to a stake in the arena and the lions refused to touch her. She became Saint Blandina.

I also visited nearby Vaison La Romaine. There, the Roman ruins are in excellent condition. You can still clearly see: bathhouses, kitchens, toilets and such. There is also a Roman bridge that is still used today.

Here we are goofing off in the ruins!

Kitchen

Toilets

A demain.

Love,
Charley

Why?

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, love, love living in France. More often than not, I wake up and say to myself, “Self, you are one lucky girl!”

But then again, luck has nothing to do with it. You make your own destiny, you get to decide how you want your life to be.

Eight years ago, I decided to move to France and become a writer. And that’s when my life really started turning around for the better. 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.

A demain.

Much love,
Charley Appenzellar