Picard

I don't know how many non-Frenchies know about 'Picard' (pronounced 'Pi-carr') but it is an excellent shop and definitely deserves more 'pub'.

Freezer-lined aisles.

If you're British, think 'Posh Iceland' or 'Frozen Waitrose'. If you're not, I don't know what to suggest but in simple terms, it's a very nice frozen food shop. 

You name it, and it will come in frozen form at Picard. From ready meals, to vegetables, sea food, and patisserie. 

Fabulous place. 

The Patisserie and Cake section

The place is really modern too. It has freezer lined aisles arranged in a clever way which means you pass everything.

We had to take a load of freezer bags when we went. Charly always forgets to take the stock so ends up buying more almost every time he goes (so they have hundreds).

Yes, that's right. It really is a Chocolate Praline Chicken.
I was really tempted to buy this. But I didn't.
Self Control - 1, Patisserie Chicken - 0. This time anyway...

Thankfully they also have a chest freezer (although I think I'd need two after just 1 trip to this place). Said chest freezer got well and truly stocked up in here!


They have some of the coolest and weirdest stuff in here. There were ready to cook fruit tarts, pre-stuffed meats, defrost and eat cheese selections and cakes, all vegetables under the sun in diced, sliced, whole, mashed and roasting variations.

They also had a huge selection of ready meals. I'm talking curries, chinese, pasta dishes, roasts, risottos, stews and caseroles etc. I found it hilarious that Fran just picks the same 3 or 4 every time she goes. (I know she's allergic to a lot of stuff, but there must be more than three she can eat with so much selection, no?)

Spotlessly clean and bright.

My personal favourite was a chocolate praline patisserie dessert in the shape of a chicken. Who came up with that?! And what is the relation between Chocolate Praline and chicken??

This didn't stop me being tempted by it. I bet its the tastiest chicken anyone has or will ever eat. But I didn't buy it. Not this time (also, it's limited edition, perhaps it will be a 'Dindon Patissiere Chocolat-Praline' (Turkey shaped) next time I go ready for Christmas...!)

Possibly my most favourite French shop so far! (It's even beating Printemps in Paris!)

Un Charmant Boulangerie à Cherbourg

Bakery delights

On Monday I decided to go to the bakery. I've been trying to eat healthily so I have tried to steer clear of the French Boulangeries and Patisseries on a day to day basis.

Patisserie goodies

I also had half a vanilla Millefeuille but I forgot to take a picture of that...

Finally had a famous Cherbourgeois
(Like a brioche swirl with vanilla creme and chocolate bits)

Beignet au Chocolat
(Like a doughnut/sandwich with chocolate creme)

La Pâtisserie, Le Shopping et Le Bébé

Cherbourg has some lovely green bits!

Today (Saturday), I didn't officially have anything to do so got up, and cleaned the bathroom while I was in there. I don't actually have to do any cleaning/tidying - a little after the children, and obviously my own stuff - but sometimes I feel like I should help as Fran's really busy and struggles to keep on top of it all, particularly as Aurianne isn't settling at garderie (she's in her clingy phase at the moment so doesn't really want to leave her mum) and Marc is being difficult lately. Also, cleaning is a good way to move about and I need to do a bit more of that.

This afternoon I thought I'd go for a wander into town. Fran and Charly were going to a wine and cheese party at Charly's bosses house this evening and Fran wanted to make chocolate and vanilla éclairs to take with them and Charly needed a haircut. They were having a bit of a dilemma about how they were going to get Aurianne down for her nap so I just said I'd take her with me instead as she'd sleep in the pram.

The Theatre and Fountain in Cherbourg Town Square.

They have two prams - one is a little city three wheel pushchair and the other is a really pretty old fashioned pram. I'll take a picture of it at some point... The little one is great to get out quickly - you literally just pull a handle at the bottom of a seat and the whole thing folds up. The big pram is really great for getting Aurianne to sleep as she can lie down properly but is a little less maneuverable. I took the small one into town which I'm glad about as I wouldn't have been able to get the big one into all the shops.

I want to buy a new purse so I can have a french one and then I won't have to carry around all my English bank and loyalty cards when I'm out shopping in France. I saw lots but couldn't decide what kind to get. I really only need one that can fit money in it, plus a card or two and ideally capable of fitting my railcard in too, however in the shops I went in I could only find either coin purses or large purses. I'll just have to keep looking!

Detour on the way home - discovered a big graveyard.
Not sure how to get to it though
as this road was a dead-end.

I also wanted to buy a pot plant for my room, a few toiletries, a USB disc drive for my laptop (my disc drive isn't working properly and too much hassle to get the part replaced) and an SD Card for my digital photo frame. I managed to get toiletries in Carrefour Cite (a smaller, city version of Carrefour - think Tesco v. Tesco express) but as it's only small they didn't have pot plants, USB disc drives or SD cards. I did wander around for almost an hour but couldn't work out where else I could get those things. I saw one upmarket florist which probably had pot plants, but I expect they were €25 minimum and I didn't really want to spent quite that much...

View along the railway (right)

Aurianne was asleep by the time I got into town. I was ready to go home after about 45 mins but as this wasn't quite long enough for her to sleep I took a long detour, while trying to negotiate my way around Cherbourg's streets. We got to the house after about an hour and half of sleep but as she was still asleep I carried on walking past it. I'd not been that way before as it's leading out of the city and I don't think there's much in that direction (school and town etc. are all the other way) so wandered up to have a look. I had to cross a deserted (I think) railway line and then found a path leading up a hill towards the main road and a grassy area. I got to the top and took some pictures and then Aurianne woke up so I walked her back home.

View along the railway (left)

When we got back I found out that Charly still wasn't back from his haircut (he'd left at the same time as me) and that Fran was really annoyed. One of the reasons I'd taken Aurianne out was so that she could make the patisserie desserts for the party however the first batch of Choux buns had been knocked on the floor by Marc. Her second attempt also didn't go so well as Marc had been naughty and distracted her from the oven so they burnt. She was completely fed up as a one hour baking exercise had now taken nearly two and she still wasn't finished. I took the children into my room to let her get some peace and quiet to finish. About half an hour later Charly turned up so I passed them over to him.

I found a little corner shop/off-license style shop
which sold international newspapers and magazines.

They had these books (part of a series) called
'La Patrouille des Castors' (or 'The Beaver Patrol' in English)
which looked like it was about Beaver scouts!

Fran came in a few times to get me to taste her Vanilla Creme Patisserie, Chocolate filling and then a complete éclair once she'd put it together. The semi-burnt ones were fine, and you could hardly taste the burnt bits with all the tasty chocolate filling. She was rather pleased with that and so she filled up the burnt ones with chocolate/vanilla goodness so that we can eat those!

The children were fed and washed, and then Charly and Fran got ready to go out to the party. Aurianne was refusing to settle in her cot so they just passed her over to me for cuddles until she got sleepy. Aurianne isn't used to her parents leaving her so I spent over 2 hours trying to get her to sleep. She wouldn't let me put her down so I tried the baby carrier thing to relieve my arms, which didn't work the first time, but thankfully did the second. I think she finally fell asleep at about 10:15pm. I managed to get her out of the carrier and into bed without waking up, but 10 minutes later she woke up again. After nearly half an hour of cuddles back to sleep, I managed to get her back into her cot where she stayed asleep until they got back at about 1am. A pretty exhausting day!

Hopefully Aurianne will get better at sleeping/I'll get better at putting her to sleep, else it's going to be really difficult whenever they go out!

View from the top of the hill not far from the house.

Alsace le Soir

As a historian, Helene has lots of interesting things to talk about. She told me lots about the history of the area we were going to – Alsace. It was an area that was taken over by the Germans during WWII and so had a lot of German influences. She also told me about the Saint-Laurent cross which is on a few mountains around here (thought I might be able to find more info about it online but Google is failing me). Her husband Benoit was from Ventron and that he told people he was German. I was really interested about this. It seems odd to me that an area outside of Germany would want to call themselves German after the atrocities of the war. She kept saying that the area didn’t have national pride for any particular nation before or after – yet she was saying that people from that area call themselves Germans…

The Alsace region looks very German. I think if I didn’t know any better than I would have thought it was Germany! It also seemed quite old and a bit rundown; most people hadn’t repainted their shutters, broken garden fences etc. but maybe that’s just rural France in general?

It’s an interesting area though. Apparently the schools in Alsace don’t have to follow the French National Curriculum and can adopt the German version if they want to, or just make something else up entirely. Lots of schools also teach in German. Very strange!

As we travelled through, Helene promised to take me to visit lots of the local villages properly. She said that somewhere near they made the proper German pretzels, and that there was lots of local German sausage shops too. There was also apparently lots of interesting historical sites which, again, she promised to take me to visit.

We arrived in Saulxures-sur-Moselettes at around 5:30pm. Helene decided to stop at the shop on the way to the house as we needed food. I decided to go in with her as I needed a few things – face wipes and paper etc. I didn’t realise but France doesn’t really make basic things like lined paper so I had to buy squared paper (like the stuff we use for maths in UK) instead - very annoying. I did manage to get myself some more fruit juice though.

It was around this point that Helene told me that there wasn’t any internet at her house. Not impressed. Apparently they sometimes went to the ‘Maison de Tourisme’ (Tourist House) to get internet but as we drove past it we saw it had been burnt down… Helpful.

We finally got to their house at around 7pm. It was in quite a pretty area next to a farm and was a very old house. More to come about the house later…

Helene was very tired but we still worked out way round all the bedrooms making beds and vacuuming the rooms (well, I vacuumed the rooms). We then, finally, got to have something to eat!

Helene told me all about how her sister was very strict and hadn’t let the children eat with the rest of the family in Corsica. She had thought it very mean (I didn’t) and said that her children were all very constipated from eating too much pasta and bread, but not many vegetables. It’s for this reason that we ate pretty much nothing but vegetables for the next week.

For dinner we had a really nice creamy vegetable soup, followed by lentils with hot dog sausage bits in it. For desert it was natural yoghurt (which all the kids put 4-5 teaspoons of sugar into – disgusting) and I had a peach.

Apparently her oldest daughter, Alienor, is allergic to just about everything – almost all types of fruit, nuts, some vegetables etc. Helene says it is because she let her try everything before she was 1yr old and so for her other children she only gave them plain potato, milk and bread (or something super plain like that) until they were almost 2! Therefore, the family didn’t eat much fruit and continued to eat not much fruit for the whole time I was there…

No pictures to cover this part I'm afraid, and I didn't take that many pictures during most of my time in the Vosges either - sorry!