Live to eat! By Alexandre

You do not live just to eat... You also live to enjoy all that life can offer. Eating is just one of the activities that gives our lives meaning.

You eat in order to survive of course, but everyone to some degree lives to eat too because eating brings us pleasure. We are all hedonists to some degree even if we do not like to admit it.

If you are a happy person, you tend to enjoy eating and sharing a meal. If you are miserable, you tend to make eating, and everything else, a mundane necessity.

A three-star restaurant is high art appealing to all our senses (the only form of art to do so)! What greater pleasure than a good restaurant from time to time? What worse torture than a slimming diet?!

However, enjoying food does not mean eating indiscriminately; you can have a well-balanced diet and can (should) eat healthily. And you do not have to give in to temptation as regards food, despite the plethora of adverts inciting us to eat more, different, new...

Food is a daily pleasure especially shared with the family or with workmates, but it is also necessary for special occasions: parties, weddings, etc. Food is all about sharing and creating or maintaining social bonds; without food, no social life, and with no social life, no meaning to life at all...

Some people say that for them eating is not a pleasure. These people often have eating disorders; they are unhappy and they make eating (or not eating) a means to torture themselves...

Some people say that it is immoral to consider eating a pleasure when there are so many people who go hungry in the world. This is self-righteous codswallop! What is immoral is that a billion people do not have enough to eat and that we do not do anything about it, not the fact that people who enjoy food refuse to feel guilty about enjoying it. What is shameful is that so many are reduced to survival conditions in a world of plenty. In a desperate way, they also live to eat...

We work to earn money, to have our own home and all the other comforts, including food in adequate amounts. Once you have satisfied basic needs though, you then need to find more to give life meaning. Cooking is surely one of the most creative activities to feed not just the body but also the imagination?

Our world is overflowing with flavors; it is up to you to discover them! In France we have elevated food to a form of art, it is even our "raison d'être"! Why do so many tourists come here? To share our culture, which is essentially all about sharing the best food and wine in an idyllic setting...

Is it not wrong to say we eat just in order not to die? Are we animals ingurgitating foodstuff? No! Enjoying food is, like laughter, what makes us human. So, eat, drink and be merry, because life is too short!

Chocolates as fresh as snow! Recipe by Agathe

It's the festive season and chocolates are always a welcome treat!
When you forget to buy chocolates to celebrate, there is still this easy recipe to make your own... They taste delicious!

For 21 candies, you'll need :

100 grams of black chocolate
100 grams of pralinoise chocolate
20 grams of butter
6 gavottes (kind of crepes)
a flexipan plate for small cakes

To begin with, break the crepes into little pieces in a plastic bag.
Then, melt the two types chocolates at medium heat and add the butter.
When all is melted, blend the mixture and add the pieces of crepes.
After that, put the mixture on the cake pan.
Put the flexipan plate on an other plate and put it in the fridge for at least 4 hours.
To finish, turn out the chocolates and eat them!
To keep them fresh, cover them in cellophane.

Enjoy!

A new vegetable: pizza! By Adam

Read the Guardian article! 

This article was written by Lizz Winstead for The Guardian, on the 18th November 2011. It deals with the American Congress's vote which allows pizza to be considered as a vegetable in school dinners... Is the health of America's children in danger ?

In my opinion, American politicians voted for this law under pressure from the frozen food industry's lobby. I think this attitude is unbelievable. Law-makers put children's health in danger. In fact, it is the lobbies that make the Law in that country !

But, are our school dinners any better ? Our pizza is still called pizza, but do French teenagers have a balanced meal at lunch times for all that ?

An apple a day keeps the doctor away... By Julie

Fruity!

My mother uses this English expression about once a day, to encourage me and my father to eat fruit and vegetables, because she knows that her "wondeurfool" English accent is the best way to make vegetables "fun" and easier to eat ! 

In 2008 there was 1.5 billion overweight people in the world, and this number has not stopped increasing... At least in France the health campaign manger bouger is doing wonders to (some) people's diet...