France: Pique-nique

We did some creative eating while traveling through France, mainly in the form of "pique-nique" or "picnic" for those of you who aren't fluent in "franglais."  By eating pique-nique meals some of the time, we were able to save some of our budgets for the important meals (and of course, ice cream)!

How simple to run to a Monoprix or Carrefour for some cheese, bread (though generally crappy), yogurt (because Europe has greatly superior yogurt than the US has), fruit, and probably something sweet.    Ironically, I'm not a big cheese fan (except for parmesan) in my daily life in the US.  Nor  do I particularily fancy yogurt (thought I've taught myself to tolerate greek yogurt).  But in France, neither of those indifferences mattered!

Mmmm.... Cheese!

Delicious comte cheese, my second favorite cheese variety of the trip, devoured in Lion-sur-Mer  

Amazing, amazing Mustard cheese from Alain Hess in Beaune.

Seriously best cheese of my life! 

And then the delicious mustard cheese was turned into one of the best sandwiches ever during our "biking through burgundy" picnic!  We bought all our ingredients from the "smashing" Saturday market.

Baguette, cheese & local tomatoes, combination recommended by the owner of the bike shop where rented our bikes. 

But alfresco meals pose a few challenges one often doesn't think of prior to buying the desired ingredients.....

picnic in Nice 

Like I said, we consumed copious amounts of yogurt.  But, we didn't have any spoons! So, we drank all our yogurt!

mmm.. rhubarb yogurt, consumed during a pique nique in Dijon!  

Aaand, we also didn't have any forks.  So a wicket from a bottle of Cremant (French sparkling wine that is not from the champagne region) was used to eat carrot salad!

yes, we are very creative.

But, even with all these pique-niques and creative eating, we still had many memorable times filled with laughter and good food! 

only a couple more France posts... I promise!  I'm using these as a sort of visual journal for myself as well!