Adventures of my Weekend

Without computers to entertain us. (Yes, unfortunately we were that dependent on the!) We decided to go out and explore the other side of our town, seeing as it was the nicest and warmest day here so far!

We strolled right on over to the Naturist Village. (Nuddy Colony!)

Though it was warm, not that many people were prancing about in their birthday suits. (We were feeling both relief and disappointment!)

The Naturist Beach.

I think we counted a total of five naked or partially naked. 

(Our eyes weren't too badly scarred!)

We came across the funniest sign, but unfortunately I didn't get a picture of it. It said "If we go nude, you have to too!" or some rendition of that in French. Because it's still not high season we were not requested to undress ourselves, but in the summer people are not let in wearing clothes!

Each restaurant (or anywhere with public seating) had little signs saying that you must sit on your towel when sitting at a restaurant. 

At least they are somewhat sanitary..

Our little apartement.

(Yes, we splurged on flowers to brighten the place up!)

Ever since we got to Cap d'Agde, all we see is this bird. We never knew what it was called. They are big, have glimmers of blue on their wings, and they are evil. (Well, at least they sound evil!) They have a cackle that is so mocking. 

And since our first sighting of this bird, we wanted to get a good picture of it.

This proved to be practically impossible. They never stay in one place. I counted, we took seventy one pictures, only these ones had decent shots of this bird.(And we had to use Ultra Zoom! 18x!)

Our attempt at getting a picture of the bird in flight!

We later learned that this bird in French is called a Pie, which we were then told it translates into a magpie, in case you were interested.

The first sighting that I had of this bird was at a rest stop somewhere along the drive from Paris to Cap d'Agde. My dad and I tried to take pictures of it, none of which were good.

So Daddio, these are a couple decent shots of it for you!

Hope you enjoyed our creative adventures as much as we did. (We're running outta things to do, can you tell? Haha)

xox

Bread Week! (or should I say Carbs, Carbs, and more Carbs?)

I always find bread week to be a fun week, even though I've never really exploring (or showed any interest) in making breads and doughs. I guess what I really like about it is all the fresh baked goods that we come home with throughout the week! We come home with so much that we give more than half of our supply to the boys in the kitchen class, and still some of them go bad!

But bread week isn't any fun when you are trying to limit your intake of carbohydrates. Oh well! 

The first thing we made are buns with chorizo (a dry sausage, that can be mild or spicy)

They were very good, with just a piece of cheese and lettuce inside!

Chef also decided to get a little creative, and bake these buns with little strings inside, so they can hang just like chorize sausages found in little meat shops!

Add kinda a nice touch, don't you think?

Because this was the week, of the robbery, we had to miss Monday's class to sort everything out.

Chef was nice enough to give us little private extra lessons during our lunch hour, to compensate for what we missed! During this time we made specialty croissants! 

I made croissants filled with a chocolate almond cream, with pear cubes. Desiree made Hazelnut butter croissants. They were good, but in my opinion the hazelnut flavoring  was prominent enough. (They looked just like normal croissants, so there are no pictures of them!)

Before baking the pear croissants.

After baking!

Soo good!

Third on the list was a "Tarte au Sucre," this got me really excited because the "Tarte au Sucre" that I know is the delicious pie filled with the even more delicious deathly sweet sugar cream! So this was slightly disappointing. But when I tasted it, (and made it slightly my own) I was not longer disappointed and accepted it as the French "Tarte au Sucre."

Chefs perfectly circular tart.

Our not so circular tarts.

My special way of eating it! 

Next up is the Pistachio and Chocolate Rolls!

I was excited when I saw these on schedule because my newest flavour obsession is pistachio!

Before rising and baking.

Don't they just look delicious?

Palmiers!

And they weren't just any old palmiers, they were embedded with cinnamon and vanilla sugar.

Crunchy and sticky biscuits.

The last on our list for this week is a "Chausson au Chocolat".

A feuilletage turn over filled with the same chocolate almond filling of the croissants.

Surprisingly, I preferred these ones to the croissants filled with chocolate, I think its because the feuilletage is so much lighter and crispier than the croissant dough.

And that's all the sweets for now!

xox