Newsletter #234: September 2022

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In this issue:

Start Planning for the Journées du Patrimoine

Journées Patrimoines

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450th Anniversary of the St-Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

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Forget about fictional bloody weddings like the ones in Game of Thrones or even Monty Python’s Holy Grail . Nothing compares to the very real wedding that set the stage for one of the bloodiest massacres in French history on August 24th, 1572: St-Bartholomew’s Day. If you have never heard of it, here’s the short version: in order to try and put an end to the ongoing French Wars of Religion between the Catholics and the Protestants (also known as the Huguenots), Queen Mother Catherine de Medici arranged for the head of the Protestants, Henry de Bourbon, King of Navarre (future Henri IV) to be married to her daughter, the sister of King Charles IX, Princess Marguerite de Valois (the future Reine Margot). Thousands of Protestant nobles attended the wedding at Notre Dame Cathedral on August 18th, and festivities lasted for over a week to celebrate what many thought would be the beginning of peace. But they grew agitated after an assassination attempt on one of their leaders, Admiral d...
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Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

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If I can share this recipe for perfect chocolate chip cookies today, it’s because I’ve always enjoyed the food sections of American newspapers, these pull-out pages that appear in the regular edition on a given day of the week ( usually Wednesday ) to cover local food and drink news, with recipes. Not all of them have the same standards or budget, and I am told the good ones are an endangered species, but between the Seattle Times , the Washington Post , the San Francisco Chronicle , the Boston Globe , the Los Angeles Times , the Oregonian , the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times *, the hungry reader has more than enough to last him through the week. The French newspaper scene has a completely different structure, but still, I wish major publications such as Le Monde , Le Figaro , Libération , or Les Echos devoted more ink to a subject that is, after all, a source of national pride. Aside from restaurant reviews, a column here and there, and all too brief discussions on trendy ...
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Caramelized Sesame Chocolate Bar Recipe

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Not long after my second son was born, I received a message from Audrey, a reader I’d been conversing with via emails and comments, who wanted to recommend a recipe drawn from the French blog La Belle au blé dormant *. It was a recipe for a sesame chocolate bar garnished with squash seeds, sunflower seeds, and caramelized sesame, which both she and the blog’s author Nolwenn had found instrumental in surviving the first few weeks with a newborn. I read through the recipe and at first the idea of my finding the time and brain bandwidth to make something like this seemed laughable, but it turns out my appetite for chocolate is strong enough to move mountains: I could not get that recipe out of my head, and within a few days I was indeed preparing a modified version for myself — one with just the sesame — accomplishing one small step at a time in between maternal duties. The smooth bitterness of the dark chocolate combined with the crunchy, nutty, caramelized sweetness of the sesame...
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