Holiday food

I know it's almost 3 weeks since Christmas, but I have to share the unique food experiences we had at Christmas. Under advisement of our French tutor, I ordered a chapon (capon) from the butcher for Christmas dinner. She informed us that turkeys here were not the same as in the US and that we'd be disappointed with how small and dry they are. So I ordered the chapon.

We picked it up on Christmas Eve and when I unwrapped the butcher paper Christmas Day to begin preparations, I was in for a bit of a surprise. Having the head and neck still attached kind of "threw me for a loop." Once we had taken all of the pictures and had a good laugh about it, it cooked up nice and tender.

We also enjoyed Panetone. It's a holiday bread with fruit inside, very tasty. The French celebrate Epiphany with a Galette de Roi (cake of the king). The cake (puff pastry with fruit inside) has a small prize baked inside it and it also comes with a paper crown. The person who gets the prize becomes the "king" for the day. It's sold a few days either side of Jan. 6th.








The other holiday food that we tried was a yule log cake. It was pretty tasty. It's baked with brandy or some similar kind of liquor as there was a bit of a surprise in the first bite. It was all good though.