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 :'(