Tag: France

On the Cagots


By accident I came across this article in Jstor on the Cagots, the forgotten untouchables of France. They suffered discrimination  for many centuries, but no one knows seems to know why, although there are many theories. They were erased as a group from France through assimilation, even though up until the beginning of the 20th century it was shameful for a non-Cagot person to marry a Cagot.  You can still see evidence of the discrimination they felt in churches in France, where the Cagots had a separate entrance and separate fonts.

All in all, a fascinating story of a mysterious people. I find them especially fascinating because this shows how a group can suffer discrimination and persecution, even though there is nothing different about them, other than the fact they can be labelled and considered worthy of such poor treatment.

For more on the Cagots, see wikipedia. For a story on someone who claimed Cagot ancestry, see this.

Two great hotels that reflect two things I am a fan of

Anyone who knows me and my blog will know I have always been a fan of Philippe Starck. I am especially a fan of his hotels. So of course I was delighted to hear about this new place he is working on, the Maison Heler hotel (shown above) in Metz in the north of France. It’s fantastic and fantastical, as many of his hotels are / were.  It’s worthwhile to read this here and check out the lots more great photos.

While I am a fan of Starck, I aslo a fan of the city of Charleston. Which leads me to point out another great hotel, The Nickel, that has just opened up in that city.

Just as the Maison Heler is a reflection of Starck, the Nickel hotel is a reflection of Charleston. Other than that, they are both very different hotels. To see what I mean, check out this piece here. That piece too is filed with details on the hotel, not to mention great photos.

If you liked those two hotels, I recommend you head over to the website Design-Milk for many more great hotel stories.

P.S. For even more on hotels, specifically hotels next to railways, read this.

The rise and fall of Beaujolais Nouveau Day in Canada

For many Novembers the LCBO and other alcohol distributors in Canada made a big deal of Beaujolais Nouveau Day. In Ontario it started with a few French winemakers and expanded to winemakers in Italy and other countries releasing similar styled wines on that date. I personally thought it was fun and a bit over the top and expected it to grow and get bigger in the future.

That’s why I was surprised to see at the beginning of November that the NSLC in Nova Scotia was dropping the whole thing. No doubt plunging sales had something to do with. Then the LCBO in Ontario dropped it as well. The bubble had burst.

Well. the bubble has burst in Canada, anyway. As far as Wine Spectator is concerned, 2023 is a solid year for fun Beaujolais Nouveau. And winemaker Georges Duboeuf put out a press release to exclaim:

Beaujolais Nouveau Day is not just about uncorking a bottle, it’s about a shared experience—a time when wine lovers around the world unite to raise a glass and celebrate.

So now doubt they are still into it.

If you are in France or elsewhere, grab a bottle and have a fun time. In Canada, you’ll just have to drink the older style of beajolais wine. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

P.S. If you are curious, here’s a piece on  the story behind Beaujolais Nouveau Day.

Starck + Perrier: two good things that go together well

Glad to see that Perrier has come out with a new and cool bottle done by my favorite designer, Philippe Starck. Vive la France!

Sadly this will not be in Canada. I need to find a way to get a bottle. Perrier, if you are listening… (Just kidding, this is 2023. Now if it was 2009…. :))

You can read more about it here at UnCrate and the Perrier site.

 

Why the Quebecois version of the Simpsons is so great

Apparently, there are two French versions of the Simpsons: one for France, and one for Quebec. This is great for two reasons, I think, as this piece explains: The French version of the Simpsons is oddly fascinating | indy100 | indy100:

  1. “When faced with an episode that used the French language itself as a narrative tool, the Canadian team were again able to fall back on the differences between French and French Canadian.” (Bart in Paris shows this brilliantly.)
  2. “In the Quebec dub, the Simpsons family speaks with a thick working-class dialect of Montreal French called joual. They also do something the France dub doesn’t do: they regionalize the scripts, subbing in Quebecois politicians or places for the more US-centric references.” You can see this in the famous bit with Principal Skinner and Steamed Hams bit:

Brilliant/brillant!

The Louvre’s Mona Lisa problem

The Louvre has two problems with the Mona Lisa. 1) It’s too hard to see:
Looking for Elbow Room, Louvre Limits Daily Visitors to 30,000 and 2) it’s too delicate to take out of the museum: The Mona Lisa Will Not Be Going on Tour After All, the Louvre Says.

Sadly you could paint a fake Mona Lisa and no one would know, since it is so hard to see it if you are in the Louvre. Maybe that’s what they should do! Seriously I don’t know what the solution is: people have it on their bucket list of things to so (and I can only imagine it is worse now in the heyday of social media).

Needless to say, billionaires like the fictitious one in Knives Out: Glass Onion could not do what was portrayed there. 🙂 Want to see the painting: take your chances and battle the crowds in Paris.

The Surprise of Rousseau (be surprising too)

Henri Rousseau is the Great Outsider. An outsider to the Establishment of the Art World, from the Salons to Picasso. Despite rejection and mockery, he persevered and painted and exhibited.

Recently the Guardian featured one of his masterpieces, Tiger in a Tropical Storm (also known as Surprised!). It is seen here. (That National Gallery link provides a nice interface you can use to zoom in and out of.) You can read more about the painting here. I highly recommend you check both of those sites out.

In some way Rousseau surprised his fellow artists. Artists like Picasso were fans but mocked him too. You can read about that here (Le Banquet Rousseau: Picasso and Rousseau’s Friendship) and here (When Henri met Pablo, The Guardian).

Keep Rousseau in mind whenever you are doing something you love with little encouragement and even mockery. You may not be making something great, but you never know. Keep going nonetheless. Surprise them.

 

 

 

COVID comes for the French Wine Industry


And the result, if you are a fan of French wines, is tragic: Of Wine, Hand Sanitizer and Heartbreak – The New York Times.

You can read it straight up, but it’s worth pondering what it tells us about our values right now, and what they were before. Times are tough in the pandemic era, for winemakers in particular as well as all of us in general.

(Image thanks to Sven Wilhelm).

The rise and fall of French cuisine?

So says this article: The rise and fall of French cuisine | Food | The Guardian.

I tend to disagree with the pessimistic assessment, but regardless, I recommend the piece because it really does cover what has happened to food and cooking in the last 50 or so years. For people who love food, it’s a worthwhile read.

I think the decline of French food is relative. So many more cuisines have been discovered and appreciated, from Italian to Vietnamese, that French cuisine has competition for people’s attention. That comes across in this piece: Bon appétit! How I rediscovered the joys of French cuisine | Food | The Guardian.  

It’s a good thing we have so many people writing and thinking and preparing food in new ways. French cuisine may no longer be dominant, but it is still great. And if you are going to Paris,  then check out this list of David Lebovitz for what he recommends in his city.  Or this list, somewhat dated, may still have value:
Top 10 budget restaurants and bistros in Paris | Travel | The Guardian

A marathon for food lovers: Marathon du Médoc

Not your average marathon, this. For example:

Marathons and footraces are a world of granola bars, blister care, and sugary packages of energy-giving goo. This classic French race through wine country has all that, as well as a party atmosphere and 23 stations that offer wine, cheese, oysters, and foie gras, often set out like a tasting at a picturesque winery. The tone is set the night before, when participants tend to complement the traditional carb-loading pasta dinner with healthy helpings of local wines. Each year’s race has a theme (think “Amusement Park” or “Tales and Legends”), so don’t be surprised to see a runner dressed as Robin Hood vomiting at mile five.

If this sounds like you kind of marathon, get more information here:  Marathon du Médoc – Gastro Obscura

How to forge a painting in the Louvre 

Painting in the Louvre
Easy! Just follow these three simple steps:

  1. Apply for one of the 250 permits the museum gives out each year.
  2. Bring your supplies and stand in front of the painting you want to copy. You can do this most days in the months of  September through June from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
  3. Start painting.

Ok, it’s not quite that easy. Even if you can perfectly reproduce the work you stand before, the staff of the Louvre take steps to insure no one mistakes your work for the original, as this NYTimes article points out. For example, in this article, they made sure that the copyists used

canvases that were one-fifth smaller or larger than the original, and that the original artists’ signatures were not reproduced on the copies. Then (the staff) stamped the backs of the canvases with a Louvre seal, added (the staff’s) own signature and escorted (the copyists) from the museum.

It’s a fine article highlighting a great tradition of the Louvre: well worth reading.

(Photo by IVAN GUILBERT / COSMOS and linked to in the article)

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a candidate right out of a Philip K Dick Novel

Melenchon hologram
In France, politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon plans to be in seven places at once using  something similar to a hologram. According to Le Parisien:

Strictly speaking, these are not holograms. Jean-Luc Mélenchon will be present in seven different places thanks to … an optical illusion discovered for the first time half a century ago by an Italian physicist

Virtual Mélenchon reminds me of the politician Yance in Philip K Dick’s novel, The Penultimate Truth. We may not be far off where we get virtual candidate that look like people but behind the scenes we have AI or some combination of AI and people.

For more on the technology, see the article in Le Parisien. For more on Dick’s novel, see Wikipedia. Read up now: I think we can expect to see more of this technology in use soon.

Autumn is here. You need new dishes to make. Here’s coffee-braised lamb shanks from David Lebovitz

If you enjoy lamb, this recipe for lamb shanks braised in coffee with ancho chile and other great flavouring sound great. Not too hard to make, either. See this link, Coffee-Braised Lamb Shanks – David Lebovitz, for the recipe. (Check out the other recipes on the site, too. Lots of great things there.)