La Chandeleur - 2nd February

La Chandeleur, also known as Jour des crêpes (pancake day) is celebrated in France on 2nd February each year. It is 40 days after Christmas (Noël).

I am not religious but I do like home-made pancakes ! Being busy with work on 2nd February, I made my Crêpes the day after with free range eggs from our chickens and full fat milk from my neighbours cows.

You know La Chandeleur is coming as all supermarkets have special offers on frying pans in France about 10 days before!

In France, we often have pancake parties for La Chandeleur. We invite friends and eat pancakes together! We usually have jam or chocolate spread on them.


I can't really share my recipe with you because I don't measure anything! It is called 'au pifomètre' or 'au pif' when we just put ingredients together without measuring them.

For the 2 of us, I use 2 eggs, about 2 handfuls of flour, a pinch of salt and add milk until I get the right consistency. I don't put sugar in as jam has already enough sugar in it. If needed (if the pancake sticks to the pan) I put a bit of oil but the full fat milk from the farm replace the oil!

Enjoy!

Snow drops - the sign of nice weather on its way!!

It always cheers me up when I see the first snowdrops (Perce-neige in French) blooming in my garden! And yesterday was the day!!

If you don't have any snowdrops in your garden, plant a few bulbs this autumn. They are very easy to grow - you don't have to do anything and they keep coming back each year! That is what I call easy gardening....

Bulbs can be purchased from garden centres or supermarkets in France.

Bonne Année !

In France, we wish our friends, neighbours or acquaintances a “Bonne année” (Happy new year). We also say

“Meilleurs Voeux” (best wishes), and “Bonne santé” (good health).

We only start wishing “Bonne année” or “Meilleurs Voeux” on 31^st December and we have right up until the end of January to do so.

We send “Cartes de Voeux” in January rather than Christmas cards. Usually to people who live far from us and / or that we don’t see often.

If you haven’t wished Bonne Année to your neighbours, hurry up! You only have a few more days…

Photo: French carte de voeux showing Dinan, our local medieval town.

Unhappy Breton pig farmers

At the moment, pig farmers (éleveurs de porcs) only get €1.30 per kilo of meat. The price is at rock bottom and farmers are furious.

Yesterday, sixty unhappy pig farmers visited 4 supermarkets in and around St Brieuc in Brittany and took off the shelves all products (pre-packed ham, patés, sausages, etc) that didn’t have the mention « Viande de Porc Française » or « Origine France ».

Pig farmers have been asking supermarkets to promote French pigs and they have not kept their promises.

Looking at the photos of OuestFrance (see link here), there were not a lot of items left on the shelves!!

Hopefully local supermarkets will change their attitude as we know how bad French strikes can be!

Census - the forms are on their way!

If you reside in France, you might get a form called ‘Recensement de la population’ in your letterbox. It is a census done in France every 5 years. Our village of Evran was surveyed last year and in 2005.

Don’t just bin the form; you have to fill it in!!

You will be asked for the names of the people who live with you, dates of birth, nationality, qualifications, how long you have lived at your present address, where you lived before, your occupation, if you are retired or unemployed, what job you previously had, etc.

A person will either fill the form with you or drop the form in your letterbox and pick it up later that day or the day after so don’t just leave it, do it straight-away!

If you require assistance with the census, don’t hesitate to contact me here.

Electric cars for La Poste

The French postal service (La Poste) is testing electric cars. The tests are starting in Brest and Rennes in Brittany with 22 cars. Postmen and post women get a short training of 15 minutes, (they need to get used to the 2 pedals and not to change gears!). The staff who have already tried the cars are amazed how quiet they are.

At the moment, an electric car can only do about 50 km, so it can’t be used in rural areas.

Each car will save 3 tons of CO2 per year and per car.

Other French companies have followed this environmental friendly idea and have ordered altogether 50 000 cars for the future.

Who knows? We will all be driving an electric car soon!

French school holidays 2011

If you run a gite in France, you might be interested to know the French school holidays. Here they are:

	Zone A	Zone B	Zone C
Winter/hiver	26/02/11-13/03/11	19/02/11-06/03/11	12/02/11-27/02/11
Spring (Easter)/Pâques	23/4/11-08/05/11	16/4/11-01/05/11	09/4/11-25/04/11
Summer/ été	02/7/11-05/09/11	02/7/11-05/09/11	02/7/11-05/09/11
Autumn (Toussaint)	22/10/11-02/11/11	22/10/11-02/11/11	22/10/11-02/11/11
Christmas/Noël	17/12/11-02/01/12	17/12/11-02/01/12	17/12/11-02/01/12

Zone A: Brittany, Pays de la Loire, Lower Normandy, Lorraine, Midi Pyrénées, Languedoc-Roussillon, Auvergne and the Rhône-Alps.

Zone B: Provence, Alps, Côte-d’Azur, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Picardy, Higher Normandy, Champagne-Ardennes, Poitou-Centre, Charente, Alsace, Burgundy Franche-Comte and Limousin.

Zone C: Aquitaine and Ile-de-France (Paris + around Paris).