Chocolate Chip Cookies

One of the most popular American dishes known in Europe is the chocolate chip cookie and everyone loves it. The chocolate cookie in France is more hard and crunchy than the soft chewy American version. My friend Coco [who is German] really wanted to learn how to make them, so one Sunday we got all of our ingredients together and attempted to make them.

 Mixing butter and sugar... French butter is probably the best butter I've ever tried!!

 Mixing up the dough

 Adding in the chocolate.. we added dark chocolate, milk chocolate and M&M's

 Before putting in the oven

 After baking

Mmmm gooey goodness

Carcassonne

On our trip we stopped at this small village named Carcassonne, and in Carcassonne is a small medieval "city" called Cité de Carcassonne. La Cité is a medieval structure that  holds a smaller tourist area today, but it's history is over 2500 years old and has had a lot of people walk through its streets. The city has about 3 km of wall, and 52 towers throughout its perimeter. We hiked up to the city when we arrived in Carcassonne from the train station, and when we finally enter La Cité the view was very amazing. I didn't do it justice with the photos I took. Sorry there are so many people present in my photos in this post, it makes me feel like I'm posting in facebook.

Les Vacances

We had our week of vacation the week of Oct 26, so of course every one left Poitiers. I took the week off and traveled a little bit in the south of France, Barcelona and Paris. It was a great trip, and I will spread out the trip in various post.. which I promise will be consecutive.

Our first stop on our trip was in Toulouse. Toulouse was an amazing city with lots of musicians and hipsters, everything was pretty there.

 One of the buildings in Toulouse

 Coffee/tea break we took in a cute "American" style café

Tea timer! (3mins, 4mins, and 5mins)

 A nice door in Toulouse

 Some ruins

 mmm.. art work!

 Someone's house

 We left Toulouse Sunday afternoon, and these are some pics of us waiting for the tram.. they are suppose to be a little nostalgic because we didn't want to leave. 

After Toulouse three of us left for Carcossonne, and Coco left back home to Germany for the rest of the break. I really love the ease of traveling in France/Europe, travel like this would be impossible in the US without a car. 

Where does time go?

Sorry for not updating my blog in a while! I promise that I will write a new post soon!
I have been on vacation for a while because we had a week long break which turned into almost a week and a half because today (Tuesday, Nov 1) is a national holiday so they gave us Monday as a break also..

Here a pic for the mean time!

Le Vegetarian Cooking series

I have been cooking Thursday nights with two girls who are vegetarian and we are on a quest to learn to make French dishes! 

We bought pre-made dough. I couldn't believe that they just sell it like this in grocery stores. 

 The insides.. creme cheese, creme fraiche, some grated cheese, a million eggs, and spices. We cooked the broccoli separate.  

 This is Coco. 

The dough in the mold. What's even more cool about this dough is that it comes in parchment paper and you can just slip it in place. 

 All the ingredients.. mmm :)

 Me and my awkward smile about to slide the pan in the little oven.

 The finished product (no flash)

The finished product.. flash

The Gardens of Villandry

During the quick one day castle excursion, our second stop was Villandry. Villandry is also a castle from the renaissance with gorgeous gardens that are still kept today. By the time we got there, the castle was closing for tours, but we visited the gardens which were some of the most beautifully kept organic gardens that I have ever seen. What is even more cool about this place is that people go there to buy their groceries. My favorite part was the walkway that encircled the gardens which was lined with grape vines. I am in love with French/Italian grapes, I have never eaten a fruit this good, I wish I could save that taste and bring it back home for everyone to taste. 

The garden area was huge and it has various ornamental gardens, vegetable gardens, a large pond, play area, and some mazes. Enjoy the pictures! 

  A small collage of some of the vegetables and a spider that looked like a bee

 All the vegetable gardens were very nicely arranged. 

 A grass tennis court! 

One of the ornamental gardens with a view of the castle from behind. 

Castles

Last weekend Samantha's host family invited me to go to the Loire Valley with them. The Loire is known for its wine, food, and castles. There are literally hundreds of castles in this area. This was my first time inside a castle and the first one I walked through is the largest castle in France.

This is Château de Chambord, the biggest of them all in France. My pictures of the actual castle didn't turn out that great that I might just post the postcards I bought on here. 

The King's pointing stick and crown.  

 One of the cool doors. The whole castle was really cold, I think the rocks make very poor insulators. I tried not to walk around with an engineering eye.. 

 The queen's bed.. separate from the king's bed.

 A stove like thing, it was next to the queen's bedroom, which I guess was used to keep her food warm when they brought it in. 

 On the roof! This is a closer look at the architecture. 

 A heating stove, I am not sure how effective it was during the winter, but there are fireplaces everywhere. There is at least one fireplace in each room, two in each hall way, and some random ones also. 

The king's bedroom. All the bedrooms had cloth on the walls which were used as insulators.. 

Many people lived in this castle, I couldn't keep track of the history because it took a few years to build.. like hundreds... 

I want to apologize for my poor memory of facts. It also doesn't helped that much that everything I read/hear is in French, so I retain very little of it... and I'm not that interested in the history of the wealthy.. I'm sorry :'(