http://www.lefrancophoney.com All things French as seen by an outsider... Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:11:45 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Yes, apparently the French aren't happy with just eating fully-grown snails. Now, you can buy snail eggs. I read about this in a magazine a few weeks ago and decided to keep the article as a worthy snippet for my blog. The words basically say that in these times of ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/want-a-treat-try-snail-caviar/ My childhood Christmas dinners involved roast turkey and hot plum pudding (sometimes on 40+°C days) in Australia, and they always started with the Christmas cracker. You know, those bits of paper or foil with a 'party' crown (a thin paper hat that often tore before you stuck it on your ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/the-french-version-of-a-cracker/ Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but Copain des Alpes is my new favourite book. Although it's a children's book, it's great for adults learning French. I discovered this one at a French friend's place the other day, and it answered all three questions that another friend and ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/the-best-book-ever/ Sunday was a very windy day in La Clusaz. Outside my window, I could see the snow being picked up in mini-tornado fashion and taken away to somewhere else. So what do you do when it's so windy? Well, if you're the La Clusaz ticket office, you keep selling lift ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/what-to-do-when-its-windy/ As I predicted, Candide will indeed be holding an event in Tignes. It's not actually called the Candide Invitational 2009, but it seems to be the closest thing so far. The Riderscup (yes, one word) will see two teams competing against each other: one led by Candide and the other ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/the-new-candide-invitational-2009/ The cross-country World Cup was held in La Clusaz last weekend, so I went up to check it out on Saturday afternoon. Of course, as soon as I arrived, the competition ended for the day, but I was surprised at just how many people were there to watch a sport ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/a-snowy-world-cup/ The great thing about visiting a ski resort that one of your friends lives in is that you get to be a complete tourist without having to worry about people knowing you. Of course, this isn't so good for the friend in the resort, but when the group consists of ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/a-pub-crawl-in-tignes/ Well, what a start to winter: La Balme here in La Clusaz opened last weekend, providing an entire area of untracked powder — and a few rocks underneath. With my snowboard relatively unscathed, I popped over to Tignes with some friends for Sunday and Monday. Despite the sunny weather on ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/tignes-french-for-cold/ Let's start with the dumb. This letter from EDF arrived in a letterbox in Annecy last week. You can see from the date circled at the top (click on the letter for a larger image) that the letter was printed a month earlier. This seems to be standard practice with ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/so-clever-and-so-dumb/ I woke up a few mornings ago to discover that the green grass was covered with a blanket of white, sparkling snow. Across the road from my place, a group of friends were having a snowball fight and one wandered further away to kick snow for the dogs to play ... http://www.lefrancophoney.com/winter-is-officially-here/