The Tomato Knife

It’s the Quatorze Juillet back in France. A good day to write about cheese, no? I haven’t been in Oxford very long, but I’ve already noticed quite an admiration for France – in culinary terms at any rate. Walk down the streets in the city center and you’ll come across many French-style bakeries selling croissants, [...]

Amboise, a small town in the Loire Valley, is known primarily for its overbearing medieval castle- once home to some of France’s most famous rulers, as well as to Catherine of Medici’s ten children! Amboise is also renowned for Clos-Lucé, the stately home where Leonardo da Vinci (invited by the French King Francois I) spent [...]

Though I was hopeful for spring with my last post, this week’s on-and-off flurries of snow have officially confirmed that winter is not yet over. In fact, this has been the strangest, coldest winter I’ve experienced in Paris so far.  Today, alone, has been proof of divine indecision: one minute, unbelievably large snowflakes are floating [...]

It all started with the bourru wine I talked about in this post. Thanks to my sister, last weekend we got the chance to visit a seventh-generation, family-owned vineyard in Cour-Cheverny, a small rural town near Blois in the Loire Valley.  After writing about bourru, Sébastien and I were wondering if it was only a [...]