More food!

First, some fruit confiture. I was right, they did taste incredibly sweet. Still, there is something to be said for aesthetic appeal.



Second, a gift from two AWESOME campers. We got it about a week after they left. A huge wheel of cheese and some sausage from their region. Such a French gift, such awesome campers!

Lyon and more ideas...

So I think I'll need to make a blog post reviewing my past blog posts and compiling all of my ideas so that I have some direction for my cooking when I get back home.

I spent today in Lyon with some fellow counselors. We travelled around, saw the zoo park, and shopped. We also came across a wonderful little chocolaterie... naturally I had to go in and look at the local delicacies.



The little green guys are called something that translates roughly to 'cushions' and they are indeed the speciality either of Lyon or of that specific chocolaterie. Next to it was a kind of marzipan peach filled with liquor. That was a treat just for me, heh.



The cushions contained a chocolate orange ganache filling that was then wrapped in marzipan. The marzipan helped cut the ganache so it wasn't terribly rich. Basically, it lived up to its name as a light cushion of chocolate. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, I'm not a fan of orange infused chcocolate. They're great as seperate, distinct flavors, but in one ganache it's just too much.

It's a bit lower on my list than, say, maple bacon ice cream, but I definitely would like to try my hand at candies and confections like this. I didn't purchase any, but the chocolatierie also had some fruit confit; whole fruits that had been cooked in a sugar syrup. The appearance is beautiful even though I imagine the taste to be just this side of diabetes-inducing. I will have to try those as well.

Something tells me these treats will be abundant as I get closer to Christmas... they will make excellent gifts wrapped in celophane and all decorated up fancy-like :P

Three days off in France

So I get to post some... which is actually quite nice. Granted I'm finished with my time off now. Work starts back promptly at 9am tomorrow and I can say with a disturbing amount of certainty that in 24 hours this beautiful, grand estate will once again be lousy with pubescent children. In the meantime, however, I just wanted to share some pictures I took and some food I've eaten. I really need to try this orange and chocolate tart that the local bakery makes.



Try to remake it at home that is. It's hard to tell if the filling is orange curd or an orange pastry cream - either way it's covered in delicious chocolate ganache. Personally, I'm not a fan of orange infused chocolate, but that's why I love this tart - there are two distinct layers that let each flavor come through.



Also there are some pretty amazing gardens around Aze which definitely make my runs and hikes much more enjoyable. I think everyone around here has a green thumb.



And this is perhaps nature's most beautiful color, in my humble opinion.



Part of me can't wait to get back... I've got so many ideas for the fall and new desserts to try out. It just occurred to me that in the sugar free category, many french pastries I've had don't really contain much sugar. In general, they aren't overly sweet, so it strikes me that using a substitute of some kind could still make for a delicious treat.