A Taste of Garlic

Even before I moved to France, some seven years ago, I used to avidly read blogs by people who had already made the move. In a way, it’s what prompted me to start my own blog, BretonDiary.com

I still read other people’s blogs and here, at a Taste of Garlic, I intend to review some of the best blogs about living in France. If you know of a blog that you think should be mentioned here (even if it is your own), please don’t hesitate to contact me at contact@aTasteOfGarlic.com

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Little Brown Pen is Nichole Robertson’s blog.

Nichole describes herself as a… “Girl of many words and few exclamation points, married to a fantastic man named Evan, and we have two young sons, Alexander and Liam. I rarely shop, travel often, and would choose a night in a new town over a new pair of jeans any day.”

Now, looking at all the comments on the About Page and noticing the 1176 followers on Google Friend Connect, I realise that I am the last person in the world to discover this blog!

And, I’m guessing that, being the last one to the party, everyone knows each other and all about Little Brown Pen and this will be an easy review for me.

However, just in case any of you have been stuck up the Orinoco river for the last three years (and thus out of WiFi range), detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure or otherwise unable to connect to the internet, I’ll give you a little run down on this blog so that you can catch up and will know what everyone else is talking about at parties these days.

Read more about… Little Brown Pen

Marianne Goes to France has only been going since November 2009 but has already got a host of great posts.

To find out more about the author of this blog I took a look at the about page from her Gite rental site, French Farmhouse Holidays.

And this is what I found… “Marianne first fell in love with France when she spent a summer in the French countryside as a teenager. A few years later, she arranged to spend a year in Clermont-Ferrand, where she worked as a nanny and studied at the local university. All this made her love for France grow and she dreamed of one day buying and renovating a place of her own in the countryside. When she met Caitlin, she found a good friend who shared this same love for France, and this dream started to blossom into reality. Since the purchase of the house in May 2000, Marianne has spent every summer at the farmhouse, and in 2009 she permanently moved to France with her husband, Jean-Marc.”

So, now we know that, let’s take a peek at the blog.

Read more about… Marianne Goes to France

The visitor statistics seem to be creeping up every month…

Many thanks to each and every visitor to A Taste of Garlic!

All the best

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Now, to date, An English Artist in Brittany and Perry are the only blogging painters that I’ve done (in the purely non-biblical sense, you understand) so I felt that it was about time that I did another artist here at A Taste of Garlic.

I searched high and low to find a suitable one.

I do have to admit that I used Google to assist me.

I also have to admit that the search phrase “Reclining Nude” did play a part in the decision making process!

Eventually I found what I was looking for, not starving in a Garret in Paris but down in the Aquitaine.

Dordogne Painting Days is Adam Cope’s blog about bus spotting in Peckham.

Read more about… Dordogne Painting Days

Over at www.BooksAboutFrance.com, the nice, nice people at Summersdale, publishers of Karen Wheeler’s new novel, Toute Allure, have very kindly sent us a review copy. As Karen sent us a copy herself, we have decided to offer the spare copy to any visitor to Books About France for free. There is, of course, a catch! All we ask is that the lucky recipient of the free copy of Toute Allure writes us a little review (perhaps about 200 words), that we can publish on www.BooksAboutFrance.com We are currently busy contacting Publishers and Authors and hope that this is the first of many great giveaways at www.BooksAboutFrance.com.

If you are interested in getting your hands on a free copy of of Karen Wheeler’s new novel, Toute Allure, please take a look at www.BooksAboutFrance.com for further details.

All the best

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Every Tuesday I intend to do a quick review of some of the posts from the last week that have made me smile, made me chuckle or, even…. just made me think.

Some of these you may have seen yourselves.

And some of them you may have missed.

I don’t think of these in any competitive sense at all.

This isn’t a top-ten listing.

They’re merely the posts that have stuck in my head.

Read more about… That was the week…..

CheekyLemur is the blog of Julia Quinn. Julia moved to Northern France in January 2010 to live the country idyll lifestyle. She is married with two lively little girls and is a full time shed worker, housewife and doer of homework.

The shed-working bit refers to her jewellry making, which she does in a shed built by her husband, whose blog, Mr Lemur’s French Folly was recently reviewed here at A Taste of Garlic.

Avoiding all references to sheds…..

Now, I think I talked enough about all that shed building stuff when I reviewed Mr Lemur’s French Folly a few weeks ago and so I am studiously going to avoid that subject now (interesting as it may be to the sort of people who are interested in that sort of thing!)

Getting Laid…..

Now, even though CheekyLemur’s blog does start in March of 2009, I’m going to painstakingly ignore all posts from before January 2010 when the real adventure starts.. with the move to France.

All, apart that is, from the post named Getting Laid!

Read more about… CheekyLemur

For me, one of the joys of reading other people’s blogs about their lives in France is to taste, in a virtual sense, some of the delicious food that they describe.

So many of the blogs I look at are full of great recipes!

I sometimes put on 2 kilos just reading them!

I thought it might be an idea to review some of those great recipes here, on a weekly basis.

However, I’m not going to pick them myself; I’m going to leave that up to the readers of A Taste of Garlic and the creators of the recipes themselves.

I shall review one great recipe from a Life in France blog every Sunday and, obviously, I shall link back to the original site so that readers can find out where the recipe came from.

So, if you have a blog and have a great recipe that you would like to share here, please let me know.

Or, if you have discovered a great recipe on a blog of the sort that I review here, please let me know and I’ll get in touch with the blog owner to ask permission to re-publish the recipe here.

Please get in touch at… contact@aTasteOfGarlic.com

This week’s recipes come from Galloping Gourmets – (reviewed on June the 3rd – the blog with the lots of recipes, lots of horses and a Chicken Run that vies with mine for the title of poshest chicken run in Brittany!)

Now, Mrs A Taste of Garlic and I haven’t tried out these recipes for ourselves yet as we’re still at that “Oh, aren’t all our home grown tomatoes lovely – so much better than the shop bought ones!” stage and, as a result, aren’t quite sick of the glut of tomatoes yet!

We’re getting there, though!

And, as for our cucumbers; well, they’re the size of water melons (or small barrage balloons) and we are, I have to admit, starting to get worried about spending the next 6 months trying to come up with novel cucumber recipes!

There are two recipes here – especially chosen from the host of great recipes on Galloping Gourmets – for all of you who may be starting to worry about your cucumber and tomato gluts!

Read more about… Recipes from France

Whilst reviewing sites for A Taste of Garlic  I often come across sites that don’t really fit in with my self-imposed rules about the sort of sites that I should be reviewing.

My general rule is that the site  should have a blog element that has at least 30 posts and has been going for at least 3 months.

Obviously, I occasionally break this rule!

Some of the sites that I can’t review are still good sites though and I’ve decided to mention some of these general sites on a Saturday just so that they don’t get lost.

If you know of a site that should be promoted to readers of A Taste of Garlic, please let me know.

The best way is to get in touch at… contact@aTasteOfGarlic.com

Read more about… The Saturday Site Review

I’m very sorry but there is no post today as I am suffering from MAN FLU!

As you know….

“Man Flu is a crippling and debilitating disorder indiscriminately striking down male members of the human species without warning.

The illness is often referred to pejoratively by female members of the species who are in fact immune from the illness as man flu is now known to exclusively attack the XY chromosome carrier.

If Man Flu is kind enough not to kill the infected party it will definitely leave him weak, sick, hurting everywhere and in dire need of TLC.”

For further details, take a look at www.ManFlu.org.uk

Hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow – if I survive!

All the best

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The Really Big Dream Blog is Burgundy Dreamer’s blog.  The blog starts in October 2009 with the words… “Today marks the day I join the 21st century, I am now a blogger!”

Burgundy Dreamer goes on to explain that… “Once upon a time there was a girl (sorry, still can’t always see myself as a woman) and a dream.  The dream was to live in Burgundy in a beautiful house in a beautiful location and run an activity centre surrounded by enthusiastic and happy people.”

Well, it seems that the house and location chose her in 2007 and the rest of it is beginning to take shape now. And Burgundy Dreamer has to keep pinching herself to make sure that this is all real. Life is good!

Indeed it is!

In fact, the only thing that could make life better is a few mushrooms and a handful of nice chewy snails!

Read more about… The Really Big Dream Blog

Every Tuesday I intend to do a quick review of some of the posts from the last week that have made me smile, made me chuckle or, even…. just made me think.

Some of these you may have seen yourselves.

And some of them you may have missed.

I don’t think of these in any competitive sense at all.

This isn’t a top-ten listing.

They’re merely the posts that have stuck in my head.

Read more about… That was the week….

You know, I was going to wait a lot longer before reviewing Paris and Beyond.

Unfortunately, temptation has got the better of me and I’ve had to give in and review it now.

It’s still a very young blog but, even so, it is already full of interesting posts.

Now, I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again….  I like photoblogs and I also like blogs about Paris.

Paris and Beyond is Genie’s blog.  Genie says of herself… “Paris reached out and grabbed me when I was 8 years old and it only took me 40 years to actually get there! I love Paris, its people, its architecture and all of France.”

Well, that’s nice. I can’t imagine people feeling the same way about Bognor (or Basingstoke, even?)

I’ll start of by asking the pertinent question; the one every visitor to her blog must have asked themselves….

Does Genie have a thing for  men in uniform?

Well, the evidence would suggest that she does!

Read more about… Paris and Beyond

For me, one of the joys of reading other people’s blogs about their lives in France is to taste, in a virtual sense, some of the delicious food that they describe.

So many of the blogs I look at are full of great recipes!

I sometimes put on 2 kilos just reading them!

I thought it might be an idea to review some of those great recipes here, on a weekly basis.

However, I’m not going to pick them myself; I’m going to leave that up to the readers of A Taste of Garlic and the creators of the recipes themselves.

I shall review one great recipe from a Life in France blog every Sunday and, obviously, I shall link back to the original site so that readers can find out where the recipe came from.

So, if you have a blog and have a great recipe that you would like to share here, please let me know.

Or, if you have discovered a great recipe on a blog of the sort that I review here, please let me know and I’ll get in touch with the blog owner to ask permission to re-publish the recipe here.

Please get in touch at… contact@aTasteOfGarlic.com

This week’s recipe comes from Susan at Days on the Claise – (reviewed on February 19th – the blog with the sexy Citroen that isn’t a 2CV!) for the detailed recipe for  Super Simple Mini Clafoutis.

Now, Mrs A Taste of Garlic and I haven’t tried out this recipe for ourselves yet as we’ve eaten all our cherries (or, all the ones that the birds didn’t eat!) but we are going to try something along the same lines with the 286 tonnes of plums that our one plum tree has provided this year (perhaps I exaggerate slightly?)

I ought to say that it was Jean at A Very Grand Pressigny who suggested that I contact Susan about using her recipe here.

Actually, Jean did mention that she’d tried the clafoutis recipe using quartered apricots and a few strawberries and … “It was scrummy!!!” and that she has also made it using a mixture of strawberries and blueberries which.. “was delicious too.”

Thanks for the tip, Jean!

Read more about… Recipes from France

Whilst reviewing sites for A Taste of Garlic  I often come across sites that don’t really fit in with my self-imposed rules about the sort of sites that I should be reviewing.

My general rule is that the site  should have a blog element that has at least 30 posts and has been going for at least 3 months.

Obviously, I occasionally break this rule!

Some of the sites that I can’t review are still good sites though and I’ve decided to mention some of these general sites on a Saturday just so that they don’t get lost.

If you know of a site that should be promoted to readers of A Taste of Garlic, please let me know.

The best way is to get in touch at… contact@aTasteOfGarlic.com

Read more about… The Saturday Site Review

Who is Poulette, I hear you ask?

Well, according to her about page she is… “a 28-year-old Australian girl living in Paris. Fashion lover. Mustard lover. Chicken lover.”

And, in her first post, Poulette in Paris, she says that… “I have named myself ‘Poulette’ for a combination of reasons, but whilst on the topic of all things food related, it’s primarily because I just love roast chicken. I really just bloody love it.”

Well, that makes sense….

“Secondly (and lets be real – no less importantly) because if you type poulette.com into your browser (go, on), you will find a very explicit warning page from what I have derived is that of an ‘adult’ website.”

Hmmmm…

“Thirdly, I am female and I work in fashion….”

I think I’m beginning to understand….

“Lastly, I’m Australian. I just realised this doesn’t actually relate in any way to why I so named myself. But I do feel it necessary to highlight the point.”

Yes, it all makes perfect sense now!

Read more about… Poulette

Mr Lemur’s French Folly is Marcus Quinn’s blog about leaving Coventry (I can understand that bit), packing wife and two daughters into a car and moving to France, renovating a stone farmhouse and setting up a small business in France.

There is, it has to be said, quite a lot about sheds in this blog!

But please don’t let that put you off!

You know, I was in two minds about how to review this blog because Marcus’s wife also has a blog which covers some of the same ground but from a different angle.

I didn’t know whether to review Marcus’s blog or Cheeky Lemur (his lovely wife’s blog.)

In the end I tossed a coin and it came up heads and so I’ll have to review Cheeky Lemur at a later date.

Read more about… Mr Lemur’s French Folly

Eric (one of A Taste of Garlic’s readers) recently asked me if I know of any books/diarys/blogs of tales of folks walking any of the GRs in France.

And you know, after racking my brains (or what passes for brains in my head) for a while I couldn’t think of anyone apart from Wendy Mewes (Brittany Blues) who seems to be the local (Brittany) expert (and she has also written a number of books.)

However, if any of you know any other walking resources, please could you pass them on by posting a comment here.

I’ll let Eric know and he can pop in every now and again to see what you come up with.

All the best

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Writing Home is SueJ’s blog about her life in the Lot at Garonne.

SueJ explains that the blog came about (and was aptly titled) because… “In the 1970’s I lived in Brazil and I wrote home to my mother in the UK every week. Those letters became the story of my life there. In 2007 I moved to south west France. Not quite sure where “home” is, I have no family left in the UK. If I did, these words would be my letters home, capturing the first impressions of my life here, to share, enjoy and perhaps re-read in years to come.”

Bearing that in mind, I diving in for a good poke around.

The first thing that I saw was that this is one of those blogs with interesting blog post titles.

Read more about… Writing Home

No sooner than our weekend guests, Leesa (from News from France) and Alex got in their car to drive all the way back to Paris, I received a rather welcome email informing me that A Taste of Garlic has received an Expat Focus Recommended Website Award.

This, apparently, is a relatively new initiative at Expat Focus and is intended to bring the very best expatriate websites to the attention of Expat Focus’s visitors.

Websites are selected based on various criteria, the most important being that they are genuinely useful to anyone moving or living abroad.

For anyone who hasn’t taken a look at Expat Focus, the best place to start (for people living in or, thinking of living in, France) would be … http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-france

There’s also a Facebook Group at (I think, I’m not so clever with Facebook!)…. Expat Focus Facebook Group.