Emily in France 🇫🇷 Get Nerdy Friends and Your Life Will Be Filled with Fun Facts
Cannes couldn't wait.
While Paris has been my home for 15 years, when I first decided to move to France, I was living in Cannes. And for the past decade or so (with the exception of the past three years), I've spent a week here with one of my favorite people in the world.
People get the wrong idea about our yearly trips to Cannes. When you say you're vacationing here, people imagine ritzy dinners along the Croisette, a fancy hotel, nights at exclusive clubs with princes and moguls. We spend our time at the public beach at the la Bocca side of the city, where we feast on picnics of hummus and cheese kept cold with a frozen water bottle, cooling our skins with dips in the sea and catching up on all the reading we've neglected over the rest of the year.
Oh, and exchanging facts. We love exchanging facts.
Did you know, for instance, that while France is now home to 46 AOP cheeses (and over a thousand more), Ancient Gaul was divided into just three: Roquefort, Comté, and Cantal?
How about that the pressure in a Champagne bottle is eight times that in a car tire?
Or that the vines producing Château d'Yquem Sauternes are pruned so intensely that whereas a vine elsewhere in Bordeaux produces enough juice for about two bottles, here, the six bunches per vine give you just one glass.
(Sensing a trend?)
Spag bol was invented in honor of Italian unification. Napoleon was instrumental in the invention of bottled food, margarine, and beet sugar, but had no role in the invention of the baguette.
Get yourself some nerdy friends, friends, and every day will be rife with learning opportunities.
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Cheese of the Week
I've spoken about Salers Tradition before, but I wanted to highlight it again given the drought currently plaguing the region where Charlotte Salat works. In the heart of the Auvergne, Salers has been made for over 2,000 years, but this year, production has halted due to a lack of grass for the local cattle to graze on. Buttery with grassy notes, this cheddared cheese is similar to Cantal, which is made according to the same recipe but doesn't have the same grazing requirements.
To discover more of my favorite cheeses, be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france and tune into the Terroir Podcast, where Caroline Conner and I delve into France's cheese, wine, and more one region at a time.
What I'm Eating
Eating in Paris is glorious in many ways, but despite the bounty of cheese and produce and phenomenal restaurants, this native New Yorker has long found international options... wanting. Luckily, that's currently changing, but when a friend recently suggested we visit "the best Thai in Paris," I happily came along. And seeing as she is a regular, I let her do most of the ordering. More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france.
What I'm Writing
1. My brother bestowed two of these Maille squeeze bottles on me before I returned to France from New York. To understand why I was reverse-smuggling mustard, this story on why there's no 'Dijon' in (most) Dijon mustard should offer some clarity. For the BBC.
2. From the archives: Given the New York Times' recent coverage of the problems with wine bottles, I thought it might be time to resurface my piece on the ways in which boxed wine were going upmarket, for Pix.
3. This fish slider recipe begins the best way possible: with beer. For InsideHook.
What I'm Saying
1. Alsace has been passed back and forth between France and Germany for centuries, and as a result, it has a wholly unique culture and cuisine. Home to Caroline's favorite wine grape – and another stinky cheese – it's ripe for discovery on the Terroir Podcast.
2. When a burger is deluxe, it’s bigger. But de luxe in French has no such connotations of size. Here to explore the je ne sais quoi that has given anything French such a connotation of luxury is Lane Nieset, an accomplished journalist and specialist in luxury travel here in France. Tune in here!
What I'm Reading
1. Sea urchin fans, unite – and rally around this evocative short story about one first taste of the divisive seafood in the New Yorker.
2. I don't take issue with burrata per se, but I do take issue with its omnipresence. Here's one exploration of why it's everywhere right now for Time Out.
3. Not highlighting a book I'm reading right now, but that's not because I'm not reading. Indeed, most of my Cannes holiday is spent devouring books on the beach, a distinct pleasure recently explored by the New York Times.
A bientôt !