Vacation Souvenirs from the South of France by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Vacation Souvenirs from the South of France Bought by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

You never have to worry about coming home to a house empty of food after a vacation to the South of France if you plan correctly.  You could outfit another trip with the vacation booty you can pick up at grocery stores and gas stations, which sell “produits regionaux,” or regional products, along the way.

On my family’s recent trip to the French Catalan region by the Mediterranean (Rousillon), we brought home cassoulet, duck confit thighs, nut cakes, powdered sugar cookies, and Catalan touron.  Each of these delights comes with a little story.  I will begin my autoroute, or highway, tale with cassoulet.

Everyone agrees that cassoulet is bean stew.  However, there are three ways to prepare it reflecting styles from the cities of Castelnaudary (pictured), Carcassonne (pictured), and Toulouse.

The Old Foodie Blog featuring a A Food History Story and Recipe Every Weekday of the Year summarizes the differences among the three different cassoulet styles using the French version of Larousse Gastronomique as a source.

Cassoulet bean stews feature these ingredients by city:

Castelnaudaray:

pork
ham
knuckle of pork
fresh bacon rinds

Carcassonne:

The same ingredients as Castelnaudary cassoulet plus

shortened leg of mutton
partridges in season

Toulouse:

The same ingredients as Castelnaudary cassoulet plus

breast of pork
mutton (neck or boned breast)
confit d’oie (preserved goose) or confit de canard (preserved duck)

My favorite cassoulet is from Toulouse with confit de canard (preserved duck).  We bought several cans of it including a Toulouse one parading as Castelnaudary with confit de canard.  (It’s sold to tourists and still tasted good.)

We bought confit de canard from Périgourd just in case we want to make our own cassoulet.  It takes several hours to boil the beans depending on their age.  (Older beans are drier and harder.)  Once the beans are sufficiently soft, you then bake them with the confit and other ingredients until the beans become really, really soft, but do not lose their shape.

Or, you can heat the confit de canard and eat it with steamed potatoes and green beans.  A red Bordeaux or Cahors wine goes well with the confit de canard thighs like the ones we purchased.

Another goodie purchased along the highway was the package of nut cakes we bought from Rocamador.  Rocamador sits perched high above the Dordogne River.  It houses a sanctuary for a Black Madonna pilgrimage site.

We did not visit Rocomador.  You could never reach your destination in France, if you want to visit all the sites advertised by brown tourism panels along the highway.

We did eat the Rocomador cakes made from chestnuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts.  The nuts are ground into flour.  The nut flour replaces wheat flour in making the cakes.  The cakes had a good flavor, but were somewhat dry and crumbly in the hot weather.

As we entered Rousillon (French Catalonia), we bought rousquilles de Rousillon.  These are ring cookies coated in powdered sugar that melt in your mouth.  Rousquilles remind me of powdered sugar donuts that have longer staying power.

Rousquilles de Rousillon are a Catalan specialty from the Franco-Spanish border area.  They are flavored with vanilla, lemon, and anis.  The cookie itself is made with flour, egg, and honey.

Catalan touron, a popular Christmas candy, tastes good in summer, too.  It is made with honey, almonds, and anis.  It is a nougat, which reminds me of divinity fudge.  The more almonds you have the better the quality.

We did not save any touron for Christmas.  We ate it after vacation as a last vestige of lazy days at the beach and tours through Catalan towns.  Like the French, though, we hoard our little cans of vacation booty confit de canard and cassoulet for the winter months.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Carcassonne - Laurent Paget Photography

Castelnaudary - Laurent Paget Photography

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Making a Porcelain Pilgrimage to Aixe-sur-Vienne (Outside Limoges, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Making a Porcelain Pilgrimage to Aixe-sur-Vienne (Outside Limoges, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


Every time my family heads towards the South of France on vacation, we stop at Aixe-sur-Vienne located west of Limoges to shop for porcelain.  Porcelain is pricy, but the Maison de la Porcelaine allows you to buy pieces direct from the factory, which keeps prices lower than you would pay for porcelain on rue du Paradis in Paris.

Aixe-sur-Vienne is a visual treat.  You can walk along the Vienne River in a park by the Maison de la Porcelaine and visit the town, which lies along a pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostella in Spain according to the France This Way website.

The Maison de la Porcelaine is the main tourism draw in town, though.  The store offers free factory tours (in French) with most of their commentary summarized under links to porcelain’s history and manufacture on their webpage, which is available in English.

The story of porcelain in the Limousin is a story of kaolin.  According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, kaolin is a “soft white clay used in the making of porcelain.”  The clay is named after the Chinese hill where it was mined called kao-ling.  The Chinese began to use kaolin to create porcelain during the T’ang Dynasty (AD 618 – 907).

The Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama (1460 or 1469 – 1524) helped create the craze for porcelain among emperors and heads of state when he opened the route to India and China after 1498.

According to the Maison de la Porcelaine website, Portugal, Holland, England, and France all competed for the right to import porcelain, which had become a highly sought after luxury good.

While they were importing Chinese porcelain, European countries were also trying to make their own versions of porcelain during the Renaissance.  The Italians and French came closest to succeeding with their “soft paste” porcelain.  Soft paste porcelain was not durable and lacked the sheen and luminosity of Chinese porcelain.

The Encyclopedia Britannica credits a French Jesuit missionary with introducing Europe to kaolin as the ingredient that made Chinese porcelain special around 1700.

In 1707, a German alchemist named Böttger discovered a deposit of kaolin at Meissen outside modern-day Dresden, Germany.  He made the first “hard paste” porcelain with this clay.  Saxony, where Meissen is located, was able to guard the secret of porcelain fabrication by draconian means until 1767 when “hard paste” porcelain was produced in Limoges.

A large-scale porcelain industry was begun in Limoges in 1771 under the direction of the minister Turgot.  This marked the birth of porcelain production as we know it in Limoges today.

Limoges porcelain is made with kaolin (55%), quartz (20%), and feldspar (25%).  It goes through at least two firings, usually three, to obtain the sheen we associate with Limoges porcelain.

The last time we were at the Maison de la Porcelaine, we bought a teapot, chocolate pot, cheese plates, and a butter dish.  The plates had been made with a jollying or jiggering process used to make round objects on a spinning base.  The teapot, chocolate pot, and butter dish were all made with a casting process whereby the “paste” is pour into a hollow mold leaving a thin layer of paste on the surface of the mold.

There is a difference in shape among a teapot, chocolate pot, and a coffee server.  Teapots are usually short and round, but if they are tall, they should have a wide and round base.  The spout is found midway up the side of the pot.

Chocolate pots are tall and somewhat slender with a small spout at the top.

Coffee servers are tall and slender.  Coffee server spouts are placed at the bottom of a pot to retain the heat.

I have included a photo of a tall teapot.  I use a moka pot for coffee.  (Another blog topic!).

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Photo by Ruth Paget

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Lunching on the Camino de Santiago at Parthenay (France) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Learning about the Camino de Santiago at Parthenay (France) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


On the way to participate in our cousin’s marriage in Limoge, my daughter Florence and I went through the town of Cholet, the shoe capital of France.  Many of Cholet’s interesting sites were destroyed during the French Revolution.  The town’s fame came from the white handkerchiefs that the Chouans (residents of Cholet) used to rally themselves against Republican forces during the Vendéen War.

We stopped in a picturesque town called Parthenay for lunch.  Off in the distance stood an old city gate.  Pilgrims going to the church of Santiago de Compostella in Spain passed through this town during the Middle Ages right up to modern times.  The pilgrims are called “Jacquots.”  The medieval bridge passes over the Thouet River.

There were many churches along the pilgrimage route in the Middle Ages.  It was quite profitable for a town to have pilgrims pass through.  Parthenay was mentioned in one of the earliest guides written for Jacquots by Amery Picot in the twelfth century.

One day I wanted to do the Camino de Santiago as it was called in Spanish, but until then I would be happy with eating in this pilgrimage route town.

We went to a bistro called the Challenge Rallye in the town’s main square and ate  I had a delicious salad – warm chicken gizzards with cheese on lettuce.  Florence had a ham and cheese salad.  The cheese on Florence’s salad came in little cubes.

“This is not gouda,” Florence said when she ate the cheese.

It’s the gouda of Parthenay,” I joked with her.

“It doesn’t taste like gouda,” Florence insisted.  The cheese was emmenthal, but Florence would have none of it.  I had a little connoisseur on my hands, who was connecting with her French heritage.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Medieval Theme Park at Puy du Fou (Vendee, France) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Medieval Theme Park at Puy du Fou (Vendee, France) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


My daughter Florence and I visited a French theme park with no rides called the “Parcours de Puy du Fou” in the Vendée region south of Nantes.

The Parcours de Puy du Fou was a recreated medieval town built using materials which would have been employed at the time.  There was no sewage in the streets, so it was not completely authentic, but the concept was a good one.

Florence touched the horns of an ox and pet a horse.  She liked the wooden shoe carver and ran her hand over the whittled wood surface without running into any splinters.  A blacksmith made horseshoes in a blistering hot shop.

From the village street, we walked to the medieval fort.  There was a defensive fence around the moat.  Florence touched everything she could and ran excitedly around the streets.  Florence liked history, and I believed childhood should be one big field trip.

After lunch, we went to the Old Castle and saw a show with trained eagles, vultures, hawks, and falcons.  They had been trained as hunting birds as they would have been in the Middle Ages.

I like the birds the best of everything here,” Florence said as she tried to catch a hawk that flew overhead.

When the show was over, a falcon flew up to us in the stands and perched.  I felt like a queen standing next to it.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Walking amidst Celtic Menhirs and Dolmens in St. Just (Brittany, France) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Walking amidst Celtic Menhirs and Dolmens in St. Just (Brittany, France) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


After participating in the Marian Procession at Rochefort-en-Terre, my daughter Florence and I went to see Celtic menhirs (standing stones) and dolmens (horizontal stones often tombs) outside St. Just, France. 

We climbed along the rocky side of a river trying to find the Celtic site before giving up.  We drove into town to the tourist office just as it was closing.

We received directions to the Celtic site.  The tourism agent insisted on staying open another half and hour, so the Americans in the group could read all about the their site in the well-documented exhibit they had up about the discovery and preservation of the site.

We took photos of Florence running through the stones, connecting with her French heritage.  The French venerate the past, because they have sites like this unwritten link to their heritage.  These Celtic sites also link this part of France to Celtic regions in Great Britain and Northwestern Spain.

Carnac is the most famous Celtic site in France, but there are many others such as this one at St. Just.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

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