- Hi, guys. Welcome back to my channel.
Well, we've had another great summer here in France,
but like all good things, it must come to an end,
and it's time to head back home.
If you're just joining me,
I'll put the playlist in the description below,
and that way you can get caught up.
All right,
so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity
to show you what I think are the 12 best things
to bring home from France,
starting with number one, cookie tins.
So I love these little cookie tins that you can usually
find in the grocery stores here in France.
Usually every supermarket will have their little end caps
of local products,
and that's where you can pick up all types of things
that are produced in the area.
And I love these little tins,
because not only are they cute and decorative
to bring home for a gift for somebody,
but they're small,
they're hard, so they won't get smooshed in your suitcase.
They'll protect the cookies inside.
And in fact, after the cookies run out,
my mother-in-law will use these little tins
to put sugar cubes in.
So anytime I'm at her house and she's serving coffee
I'll be presented with this little tin
and it'll be filled with sugar cubes.
But they also make really great little sewing boxes as well.
I have one at home
and I put all of my needles and threads in it.
It's so great.
So it's the gift that keeps on giving.
Okay, and while you're at the grocery store,
here are a couple of other things you might wanna pick up.
I love these little Rhodia notebooks.
So I have been buying these for probably 20 years
every time I come to France,
because they are just so serviceable and cute.
Like, look at this little one.
I love them because they come in all different formats
and they're really easy to tuck into your purse.
So you have this little pad just for like little ideas.
If I'm thinking of recipes or things I have to do,
I love to have one of these.
This is a really great size for your shopping list.
The large format that actually have hole punch on the side.
I love them just because they're bright orange
so I never lose them.
They're really easy to find
when they're in your book bag or your purse,
and they're just fun.
I don't know, I've just always loved them.
Another thing I love to bring back
from the grocery stores in France is chocolate.
So either for myself or for gifts.
You can get the best chocolate there.
The whole aisle is just filled with selections.
But this is my favorite brand,
and you can really find it in any grocery store in France.
It's called Cote D'or.
It comes in all these delicious flavors
like dark chocolate with caramelized pistachios.
You've got candied almonds with milk chocolate,
hazelnut with praline.
This one's my husband's favorite.
But my favorite, and I always buy two of these,
is the raisin and hazelnut combo.
I just go nuts for it. It's so great.
If you buy these for gifts,
make sure you buy one or two for yourself.
You will be happy you did.
Now if you are a baker
and you're at the grocery store in France,
be sure to head down the baking aisle,
because there you can find all kinds of fun things
to take home that will fit in your suitcase,
things like little tart tins,
like this, with removable bottoms.
The quality is just so great,
and they're pretty inexpensive.
Now granted you can probably
find a lot of this stuff online,
but I don't know, if you're looking for a souvenir,
why not get an actual tart pan that you found in France?
That's more fun than a bottle of perfume, right?
(chuckles) Depends who you are, I guess.
For me it would be.
Little madeleine tins,
and these are the kinds that are my favorite,
these metal, non-stick tins.
I think they work the best.
And in fact, if you haven't seen my madeleine recipe,
I'll leave you the link in the description,
and it'll show you how to make a foolproof madeleine.
And then I'm bringing this back with me this year.
This is the baguette tin.
So I showed you how to make baguettes a few episodes ago,
and this was the tin that I used.
Love this thing. Definitely bringing this back.
Another thing that I found this year
that I'm really excited to try
are these little eclair forms.
So here in France, I probably would not make an eclair.
I would go buy them,
because they are just so delicious and so well made,
but back in the states,
it can be really hard to find a well-made eclair,
so that's where I do make them.
It's a silicone form that allows you
to pipe your pate a choux right in this form
so that they are all the same size.
Normally, the way that I do it at home
is I just take parchment paper with a ruler, draw a line,
and then use that as my form to pipe.
But this just looks so much easier and so much better.
And that way they're all gonna be the same size,
which will help them all bake at the same rate.
So I'm excited about these.
I'm gonna give these a try. I'll let you know.
Now another great place to go shopping
for things to bring home in France is the pharmacy.
I know that sounds like a strange place to go shopping,
but the quality of the products are great,
and you find all kinds of things in them
that are hard to find in the states.
Number one is really beautiful, high-quality sunscreen.
So these are some of my favorites that I discovered here.
What I love about them
is that they don't have that sort of chemically,
strong, stinging type component to them.
They're really soft and smooth. They smell great.
Here, I'll put some on.
And they just rub right in.
They're not like those caky, sticky sunscreens,
oops, that we get in the states that just, I don't know,
make you feel like you've got a ton of chemicals
on your body.
Mm, they smell so good. They just smell like summer.
And sometimes if you buy it during the summertime
on the end caps, they'll have little promotions,
and they'll sell the after-sun cream with them.
Like, I bought these two together,
and this is delicious too.
This is this delicious-smelling after-sun cream.
And after you've been, you can see what it is,
after you've been at the beach all day
and you just feel all dried up and salty,
this is what you want on your skin.
Oh, they're so delicious.
I wish you could smell it.
You just feel like a million bucks
lathering this on your body.
So because we live in L.A. where it's sunny all the time,
I am bringing all of these home with me.
I love this stuff, Biafine.
I use it for two things. One is sunburns.
If your kids get sunburned,
you just put it on their shoulders or their face
and they wake up the next day
and they feel so much better.
The other thing it's great for are burns in the kitchen.
So if you're cooking and you burn yourself
on the cooktop or on the oven,
you put a little bit of this on the burn, rapid healing.
It's so great.
Another thing I discovered this year in France are these.
Menthol tissues.
This is an idea whose time has come.
I mean, these are fantastic.
Basically what it is are little tissues
that have some kind of menthol product in them,
so when you go to blow your nose,
you get this delicious vapor of menthol,
which then helps to kind of clear your nasal passages.
I know this might not be
the most pleasant conversation to have,
but I'm telling you, when you get sick
and you reach for your little menthol tissues,
you will thank me.
(chuckles) They're so great.
And then also these cough drops.
So we have Ricola back in the states,
but we don't have these flavors.
I mean, look how gourmet.
You've got cassis and cranberry.
This is one of the things that I think is really fun
when you travel to a foreign country
is you may buy ice cream, you may buy cough drops,
lollipops, whatever it is,
you usually find that the flavors are different
from culture to culture.
So back in the states we'll get Ricola,
but we'll get like lemon or honey,
but I've never seen cassis or cranberry.
So if you get sick throughout the year,
you can turn to these items
and I think you'll just feel pampered
with your gourmet cough drops
and your really fabulous tissues.
And it'll remind you of your trip to France. (chuckles)
All right, now for some clothing products.
Here in this part of France,
it's really popular to see these little sailor shirts.
They come in all different styles.
This one, I got last year when I was shopping the market.
So if you saw that video,
you probably remember that I bought this.
I'd leave this shirt here,
because it's something that I probably only would wear here.
I don't know that I'd be wearing this in L.A.
We just don't have that type of weather all the time
that's gonna really warrant this, but here you do.
They make great gifts because they're just not something
that you see everywhere.
They feel really, I don't know, uniquely French,
and I just think that they are a fun thing to have.
I did learn this year why these shirts are striped.
So historically the French sailors
have always worn striped shirts,
and I just wanted to kind of know why,
and someone was telling me it was because
if they fell overboard,
it's a lot easier to see somebody floating in the water
with a striped shirt than a solid blue shirt.
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
Another great thing to bring home,
especially from this part of France,
because it rains a lot, are raincoats.
Raincoats can be hard to find in L.A.,
especially good quality raincoats,
so I find if you go someplace that rains a lot, chances are
they're gonna make a pretty good quality raincoat.
This is another thing that is fun to bring home.
So my husband loves this thing.
Again, along the line of a sort of sailing outer garment.
You find them a lot, especially in this part of France,
because it's so windy.
And what it is, it's a very heavy sail cloth,
almost like a canvas,
and it gets better and softer with age,
so definitely put it through the wash a few times.
And then you can just hang it out to dry.
My husband loves it, because if we're out here entertaining,
and we're barbecuing, and it's cold,
he'll just pop this thing on,
and it keeps him really cozy.
But they're fun to bring back,
especially if you live in a climate that has a lot of wind
or if you live near the seashore.
You can show up to your local beach-friendly outing
in this thing and feel very chic. (chuckles)
Another great thing to look for,
especially in any of the seaside villages
you might be headed to in France, are Foutas.
So a Fouta is not French.
It actually, I think, has its origins in Tunisia.
Sometimes they're also called Turkish towels.
But they're all over here in the shops and the markets,
because they make great beach towels.
The reason is is because they're lightweight,
so they're really great to be able to roll up
and pop in your basket if you're headed to the beach.
They're also great by a pool.
They're terrific if the weather weather is hot,
because they are so lightweight.
They don't feel very heavy like terry cloth does.
They also dry really quickly,
so you can put them out on a lounge chair,
and on a hot day, they'll be dry in minutes.
You can also use them as tablecloths,
because they come in so many different colors
and different sizes.
So while this size might be good for like a bar,
or even to use on a picnic, I buy the large format ones,
I think they're two meters by three meters,
to put them on our outdoor table anytime we're entertaining.
They make for great tablecloths,
especially when entertaining outdoors.
Now, if you saw my video a few weeks back,
"What's in My French Fridge," then you probably remember
that I was showing you all of these great magazines
that I love to buy when I'm in France.
I find if you are trying to learn French
and you wanna increase your vocabulary,
then buy magazines that deal with different things,
because that is just a great visual way
to understand what's happening in the picture
based on the vocabulary that's written below.
For me, I'm always trying to increase my vocabulary
in French for the cooking items,
so I always buy lots of food magazines.
Or another great thing
that really helps with language acquisition
I find when you're learning French are children's books.
So I will go into like the local bookstore
and buy some children's books.
I bought this one for my daughter
just because she is between the ages of 9 and 11,
so I know she'll also read it, but I find it great,
because it's probably my level of French, 9 to 11.
I find that reading, I guess in any language,
really helps with language acquisition,
because if you're in a situation where people are speaking,
it's so fast, where reading is really at your own pace.
You can see the different verbs that are used,
you can see the sentence structure,
so that when you're out and about and you hear it,
you're like, "Oh, yeah, I've seen that."
And I think it's really the combination
of the reading and the listening
that help them with the speaking.
Speaking is actually the last part of language acquisition
as I have learned.
And it makes sense if you think of a baby.
We didn't talk until we were, I don't know,
a year old or so, because we were listening,
and we were retaining it all,
and so you kind of have to do that first
before you then begin the speaking.
If you come here to Saint Gilles Croix de Vie,
then you have to bring home a little tin of sardines.
Last year we ate some fresh sardines,
this year I'm just gonna show you what the tins look like.
So La Perle is one of the biggest producers here in town,
and they make all of these different types of sardines
with different flavors,
so you can get things like peppers, olive oil, ooh, citrus.
This sounds good.
Another thing that they do every year
is commemorative art for the year,
so this is for 2019.
This was the art that they used.
And they actually commissioned artists
to create this artwork.
The other reason why they do this
is because the sardines from year to year
can change in flavor based on so many factors,
whether the tides were going in and out,
what the sardines actually ate that year.
So it's kind of a lot like wine producing
where the weather and the soil
can really affect the final product.
If you're coming here and you want a fun, unique gift idea
that's definitely of the area,
check out the Boutique Le Perle.
There's a few of them in town,
and these are their wonderful sardines that they make.
And once again, thanks for following me
on my French adventures.
It's always so much fun to have you guys along for the ride.
And if you missed any of it,
you can click the annotation here,
and I'll see you over there.
All right, you guys. See you back in L.A.
Until then, bye.