MyFrenchLife™ – MaVieFrançaise®

b) The Room that Holds Everyone
by Judy MacMahon

Why the French bistro was never really only about food — and what disappears when it closes.

“The bistro isn’t a relic. It’s a practice. And like all practices, it survives only if enough people choose to keep it.”

A century ago, France had half a million bistros. Today, fewer than 40,000 remain.”
That number stopped me when I read it. Not because it’s surprising, exactly, but because of what it means to lose something at that scale without anyone quite deciding to let it go. No law was passed. No policy failed spectacularly. The bistro simply became, incrementally, harder to sustain and easier to replace with something that looks similar but carries none of the weight.”
I’ve often wondered what that weight actually is…” I wrote…

Read the full article →

c) 20 Streets of Paris #5: Discover Rue du Temple
by Pierre Guernier

You can almost feel the ghosts of knights when you walk down Rue du Temple. Once the stronghold of the Templars, it’s now a place of cafés and boutiques, but the air still hums with secrecy. Look up at the street sign and imagine chainmail and whispers — for beneath the shopfronts, the Middle Ages still murmur.
Rue du Temple is named for one of the most fascinating lost landmarks of Paris…” wites Pierre Guernier.

Read the full article →

d) THE WRITERS’ ROOM: Shining the spotlight on MyFrenchLife Contributors — a new home

The Writers’ Room is where the storytellers become the story.

Our talented Contributor team now spans nearly 40 writers, photographers, and creatives living across France — and in this special series, we go beyond the byline to discover the little-known stories readers don’t usually hear.

The unexpected turns. The private passions. The little-known stories. The moments that shaped a life in France. Each week, one Contributor shares their story, then hands the conversation to another Contributor — creating a growing chain of voices and connection.

There is now a dedicated place to find these, as I’ve now given The Writers’ Room a dedicated home of its own so that you can find it at any time, 24/7.

Until now, these conversations lived only inside the PAID edition of le Bulletin, but with nearly 40 Contributors across France, and a growing archive of fascinating personal stories, it felt time to create one place where Annual subscribers and Mighty Supporters can easily explore them all.

→Find the Writers’ Room — Exclusively for Annual subscribers and Mighty Supporters.

3. Merci mille fois

“Thank you for subscribing to ‘le Bulletin’, the newsletter of MyFrenchLife™ Magazine.”
Judy MacMahon

Merci mille fois d’être ici, mes ami(e)s. Thanks for being here.

Sometimes, France has a way of arriving sideways.

A former business owner from Seattle steps into the wrong dressing room in Bordeaux and finds the story she didn’t know she was looking for. A Paris street named for knights who vanished centuries ago still hums with something you can’t quite name. A number — 40,000 — sits quietly at the end of a long decline nobody chose.

That’s this week’s FRANCE AS IT HAPPENS.

À bientôt,
Judy
judy@myfrenchlife.org

Thanks for reading ‘le Bulletin’! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

‘le Bulletin’ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support us, I personally ask you to consider becoming a free or annual subscriber.

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🎁 Perhaps you’d like to SHARE THE INSPIRATION:
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💡 And don’t forget… you can always EXPLORE THE ARCHIVES:
Discover even more inspiring stories in our complete newsletter archive. Perfect for satisfying your Francophile cravings whenever suits you, wherever you live.

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Copyright © MaVieFrancaise®- MyFrenchLife™️. All Rights Reserved. -
le Bulletin is the Newsletter of MyFrenchLife.org

MyFrenchLife.org - Come with us to experience France beyond the cliché.
*Photo in the le Bulletin banner at the top of each newsletter © Annewill Stroo

Grandmère’s Table — How French Families Weave Three Generations Together Through Sunday Lunch

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Fri, 22 May 2026 09:39:48 GMT

The smell hits you first. You know that aroma, don’t you?

Daube that’s been simmering since dawn, wine-dark and dense. Then the sound—the apartment door opening to chaos, voices layering over voices, the dog losing its mind, a child shrieking with delight, someone’s coat hitting the floor. Grandmère calls from the kitchen, something about the table, but nobody’s listening because everyone’s talking and hugging and home. Just like always…

Daube de Boeuf

It’s 12:30 on a Sunday in France. This scene is playing out in thousands of homes right now. Stone cottages in Normandy. Tiny Paris apartments. Sprawling houses in Provence. The details shift, but the architecture holds: three generations, one table, three hours minimum.

No phones. That’s not a request.

What You’re Really Watching

Here’s what a French Sunday lunch looks like from the outside: bread on the tablecloth (never the plate), wine poured for anyone over twelve, four courses unfolding like acts in a play. Entrée, plat principal, fromage, dessert. The grandmother is explaining to her grandson why you never cut the tip off the Brie. The teenager is asking her grandfather about the war, actually listening. Conversation moving in currents and eddies, easy and endless, nobody rushing anywhere because there’s nowhere else to be.

According to a 2023 survey, 67% of French people consider Sunday lunch a family tradition. More striking: 43% share it with three generations. Every single week.

Think about what that means. Not Christmas. Not birthdays. Every week. The same table, the same faces, the same rhythm. Week after week after week, for years, for decades, until it becomes the scaffolding everything else hangs on.

This is how you build intimacy—through relentless, boring repetition. Through showing up.

The full essay — why France protects Sunday so fiercely, what gets passed down around that table, and what modern life may have quietly destroyed — continues here.

→ Upgrade to read: The Table That Holds France Together

I Went to Buy a Dress in Bordeaux

A French Table 1 — Thu, 21 May 2026 23:09:46 GMT

Galeries Lafayette (Bordeaux, France)

THE DRESSING ROOM INCIDENT

The zipper stops halfway up my back, and I immediately blame France.

Not the country. The lighting.

The dressing room at Galeries Lafayette is aggressively bright, the kind of brightness that makes you aware of cartilage. The curtain refuses to close all the way, which is how I end up stepping backward into Cabin 8 and discovering a man in gray boxer briefs holding a pale blue shirt like we’ve both been assigned the wrong scene.

We freeze.

The mirrors multiply us into an exhibit called Poor Timing.

He says something calm. I say “pardon” three times in escalating pitches. I had entered the cabin with two options: a responsible navy sheath and a sequined suggestion of poor judgment.

The curtain jerks but does not close, stretching the silence long enough for something wildly inappropriate to assemble in my brain. I consider asking him if he’s single. Not casually. Not jokingly. I mean, genuinely like this might be the meet-cute no one ordered, which is not a reasonable direction for my thinking while half-zipped in sequins under chandelier surveillance. And yet there it is, partially dressed and ready. Like, Bordeaux has decided this is my arc. Not dignity. Not growth. Romance under surveillance lighting. I briefly calculate whether this is how people meet their second husbands, and if so, whether I look like a woman who owns matching towels. In Cabin 8. Fluorescent. Half-zipped. Emotionally pre-approved for nothing.

I do not ask.

But I do think about it longer than is structurally sound.

Somewhere outside the curtain, someone laughs, and I briefly wonder if the entire floor has access to this angle.

The zipper is still stuck.

This is what happens when your daughter announces an engagement party in New York City, and you decide Galeries Lafayette in Bordeaux is where transformation will occur.

I am still half-formed.

The chandelier is thriving. I am not.

I wrench the curtain closed, abandon the navy dress like it betrayed me, gather the sequins before they defect entirely, and step directly onto the escalator because horizontal mistakes now require vertical solutions.

ASCENT

I step onto the escalator as if I planned this sequence, one hand lightly resting on the rail, as though I have not just been multiplied in boxer-adjacent lighting. The sequins tick against the rubber edge, and I pretend not to hear it, because hearing it would imply awareness, and awareness at this stage feels dangerous. Halfway up, I notice I am still holding a hanger that does not belong to me, white plastic and deeply confident in its innocence, and instead of turning around like a rational adult, I adjust my grip and stare forward as if this has always been part of the ensemble.

The escalator rises with bureaucratic indifference, having processed far worse women with better posture. I rise with it.

Shoes will correct this.

Shoes always look corrective. This has never once been true.

GRAVITY TEST

The shoe department looks calm. Which should have been my first warning. I sit in the curved chair and immediately discover angles in my knees I did not authorise, then slide into a black heel that implies structural integrity I have not demonstrated today.

It fits.

Which feels like a setup.

When I stand, I see the dip in the carpet. I fully acknowledge the dip. I decide the dip is decorative.

My ankle shifts half a degree, and I reach for stability, landing on the central pole of a rotating tower of sunglasses arranged like a black plastic galaxy. The tower responds by turning, gently at first, as though we are collaborating, and I turn with it because letting go would signal defeat, and I am not prepared to concede.

For one long second I believe this is recoverable. I even commit to the face of someone recovering.

The base tilts. The heel sinks. The galaxy lowers itself to the floor in a controlled collapse, as though it has been waiting for me specifically. Sunglasses spreading outward in glossy arcs while the escalator continues humming like it has not just witnessed my audition for gravity. A child claps once. I do not look to confirm. I have chosen denial.

I remain holding the pole longer than necessary, which is how pretending works.

“Perfect,” I say, because if you narrate confidently enough, events sometimes reconsider.

They do not reconsider.

COINGATE

By the time I reach the restroom, I am still carrying the hanger, which has begun to feel symbolic, and the entrance is guarded by a waist-high metal gate with a coin slot that suggests fairness but radiates indifference.

I insert one euro.

Nothing happens.

I insert another.

Still nothing.

Behind me, a heel taps once, slow and judicial, and I consider whether this is how revolutions begin. Not with ideology. With bladder urgency and a one-euro coin that refuses diplomacy. I have never felt more European, which is impressive considering I am arguing with plumbing.

Here I am, standing in Galeries Lafayette negotiating bodily access with machinery while holding plastic I do not own.

Coingate is underway.

I contemplate climbing it. Fully. With intent.

Instead, I stand very still, as though patience is a language I speak fluently, and the gate releases with a mechanical cough that feels less like permission and more like resignation.

I step through quickly before it changes its mind.

Inside, the faucet launches water at my sleeve, and I blot it carefully while staring at my reflection, which appears unbothered and faintly smug.

The zipper remains in negotiations.

PAINT

The cosmetics counter glows from beneath like an aquarium for the emotionally unstable. Brushes stand upright in glass cylinders like a jury.

A woman approaches without asking what happened to my sunglasses orbit and lifts my chin as if I have requested supervision.

She twists open a tube labelled Audace.

Bold.

Of course it is.

She paints carefully, professionally, as though my mouth is the only part of this situation requiring discipline.

When she hands me the mirror, the woman looking back appears fractionally more deliberate than the one who entered Cabin 8. Coral mouth steady. Hanger still in hand like a prop in a play no one rehearsed.

I nod once.

I do not buy a dress.

I buy Audace. Bold, apparently, costs extra.

ALARM THEORY

I wander briefly through Bridal, where a measuring tape appears at my waist without invitation, and I say “Mother” with such clarity that it retracts instantly, which feels like a small victory in a day of structural negotiations.

I head toward the exit holding coral and the hanger.

The security pedestals erupt in alarm.

Not a polite beep.

A declaration.

Heads turn. The escalator continues delivering civilians upward as if nothing has occurred. A guard approaches with a small device and snaps something invisible free with a crisp magnetic click.

It is attached to the hanger.

For half a second, I consider running. Not from guilt. From narrative consistency.

Instead, I nod gravely, as if this was expected, and step outside into Bordeaux air holding nothing but coral and a plastic lesson.

The coral stays. It did not collapse under pressure, which is more than I can say for the sunglasses.

It cost eighty-five euros, which feels aggressive for something the size of a thumb, but I have already tipped a galaxy of sunglasses and negotiated with coin-operated infrastructure, so perspective is relative.

I hold the hanger for a moment longer than necessary before placing it back, briefly considering returning tomorrow just to see what else might collapse.

I do not.

But the thought occurs.

BLACK

I drive home.

I open my closet.

There they are.

They are not new. They do not sparkle. They do not require negotiation; each one is perfectly capable of attending an engagement party in New York without rotation, coin insertion, or structural collapse.

It occurs to me that I did not need a new dress. I needed an incident.

New York will get black.

Bordeaux got the rehearsal. Cabin 8 remains undefeated.

Have you ever gone shopping in France and come home with something entirely different from what you intended — and felt oddly satisfied about it? Tell me in the comments.

Introducing Contributor Jenny Becker

Visit her Contributor Page — Explore more of Jenny’s work→

Thanks for reading MyFrenchLife™ – MaVieFrançaise®! This fabulous article by Jenny Becker is public, and we encourage you to share it.

MyFrenchLife™ – MaVieFrançaise® is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

20 Streets of Paris #5: Rue du Temple

Pierre Guernier — Wed, 20 May 2026 11:25:37 GMT

Welcome to the 20 Streets of Paris Series - Episode #5

You can almost feel the ghosts of knights when you walk down Rue du Temple. Once the stronghold of the Templars, it’s now a place of cafés and boutiques, but the air still hums with secrecy. Look up at the street sign and imagine chainmail and whispers — for beneath the shopfronts, the Middle Ages still murmur.

Rue du Temple is named for one of the most fascinating lost landmarks of Paris: the fortress of the Knights Templar. In the twelfth century, the Templars built an enormous walled compound here — the Enclos du Temple — a city within the city, complete with towers, markets, and privileges that infuriated the crown. Long after the order’s dissolution, its memory lingered: during the Revolution, Louis XVI and his family were imprisoned in the Temple’s great keep.

Although the fortress has vanished, its spirit haunts the street. Stretching from the Hôtel de Ville to Place de la République, Rue du Temple winds through the Marais, where aristocratic mansions and bustling shops tell the story of centuries of change.

Strolling down Rue du Temple, you move through layers of history: medieval knights, imprisoned kings, merchants, artisans, and now the lively pulse of a fashionable Parisian quarter. The stones may have changed, but the name still whispers of secrecy, power, and legend.

How well do you know Rue du Temple? Do you think about it differently now? Do you have anything to add?

Consider upgrading your subscription

Introducing Contributor, Pierre Guernier:

Visit his Contributor Page — Explore more of Pierre’s work

THE WRITERS' ROOM: Shining the spotlight on MyFrenchLife Contributors

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Wed, 20 May 2026 03:19:30 GMT

The Writers’ Room is where the storytellers become the story.

The unexpected turns. The private passions. The little-known stories. The moments that shaped a life in France.

Each week, one Contributor shares their story, then hands the conversation to another Contributor — creating a growing chain of voices and connection.

→Exclusively for Annual subscribers and Mighty Supporters.

À bientôt

Judy

Consider upgrading

The Room that Holds Everyone

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Mon, 18 May 2026 18:52:48 GMT

Paris via https://www.instagram.com/karography

A century ago, France had half a million bistros. Today, fewer than 40,000 remain.

That number stopped me when I read it. Not because it’s surprising, exactly, but because of what it means to lose something at that scale without anyone quite deciding to let it go. No law was passed. No policy failed spectacularly. The bistro simply became, incrementally, harder to sustain and easier to replace with something that looks similar but carries none of the weight.

I've often wondered what that weight actually is.

This piece is part of the French Culture Deep-Dive Collection — available to Annual and Mighty Supporter subscribers. If you’re reading on a free subscription and you’d like to come inside and join the salon, I’d love to have you. You’ll find the link here.

16.19.a - The Clothes Know. So Does the Calendar

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Sat, 16 May 2026 10:59:32 GMT

Today at a Glance: Your PAID weekly newsletter

Bonjour, my dear friends and subscribers, both new and long-time.

Un grand merci (a big thank you) for being part of this wonderful global family of Francophiles. Your support enables me to continue growing and improving MyFrenchLife™ Magazine and the le Bulletin newsletter, offering more to this growing global community.

Here’s what you’ll find today:

This week “16.19.a - The Clothes Know. So Does the Calendar
The Writers’ Room returns next week - [MyFrenchLife Magazine Contributor Profiles, where you’ll learn more about our contributors than others know!]
This week’s ‘What’s happening in ‘MyFrenchLife™ Magazine’ - a selection of new contributors and fresh articles.
You can also find the free newsletter ‘‘16.19- France Gets Into Everything. Even the School Run→here during the weekend.

Warm regards
Judy - 16.5.2026

16.19 - France Gets Into Everything. Even the School Run.

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Fri, 15 May 2026 20:01:48 GMT

Today at a Glance: Your FREE weekly newsletter

Bonjour mes ami(e)s !

It’s wonderful to have you back here with me today. Bienvenue !

A New Chapter for MyFrenchLife™ Magazine Contributors
In this newsletter, you’ll find these wonderful fresh articles taking you to France beyond the cliché,
Don’t miss the PAID subscriber edition of le Bulletin in your inbox: “16.19a - The Clothes Know. So Does the Calendar - It’s not too late to upgrade & read it←
À bientôt !
Warmly,
Judy - 16.5.2026

1. A New Chapter for MyFrenchLife™ Magazine Contributors - check out these new profiles

Profile #4 - Betty Carlson

To Find THE LIST of MyFrenchLife™ Magazine CONTRIBUTORS:
[https://myfrenchlife.org/p/contributors-myfrenchlife-zine ]
TO FIND BETTY CARLSON’S WORK:
[https://www.myfrenchlife.org/t/betty-carlson ]

Betty in MyFrenchLife™ Magazine: Can be found here
CONNECT WITH BETTY CARLSON - France in Between→

2. MyFrenchLife™ Magazine: new articles

Our list of valued Contributors →

Introducing New Contributor, Kamille Longstreet

I’m an American writer who traded a tiny Los Angeles apartment for a three-hundred-year-old French château - a decision that continues to surprise me.
I live in rural France with my husband Sean and our two young children, and I document the whole chaotic, beautiful project on my Substack, Once Upon a Castle: the château restoration, the village, the seasons, what it’s actually like to raise an American family in rural France, and the ongoing negotiation between the life we imagined and the one we’re actually living.”

Below you’ll find Kamille’s first article published in our magazine. Please help me welcome Kamille.

a) What No One Tells You About Putting Your Kids in Full French Immersion.
by Kamille Longstreet

When we moved to France, we made a very brave - some might say questionable - decision. We enrolled our young children in the local village school. Not an international school, not a bilingual program, just a normal French public school where not a single soul spoke English. Total immersion.”
The logic was sound. Everyone - books, blogs, actual French people - said it was the best way for kids to learn the language and the culture. Also, the nearest international school was forty minutes away, and we didn’t move to the French countryside just to spend three hours a day in a commuting loop. So we did it. We dropped our kids into a completely foreign environment with nothing but love and hopeful stares.”
And it was hard. For them. For us. For our poor, tear-streaked steering wheel…”

b) On Time
by Pamela Clapp

Time isn’t a personality trait in France.
It isn’t languid DNA. The French get anxious, too. They get flustered, they rush, they mutter at traffic lights, they curse at steering wheels when the city pushes back. My French husband thinks I drive like someone trying to annotate the street rather than beat it. « Sois plus agressive ! » he says, hand braced on the passenger handle. Paris time lingers, but it honks. Just not on the same minutes Americans honk on…”

c) How to Find Your French Family (or, where are you, camille?)...
by Laura L Barkat (LL)

Start by knowing very little.
Commence par en savoir très peu.
That your mother always told you, “We’re French and Indian.”
That she said your grandmother swore in French. But on the day, as a four-year-old, you swore at a car, in English in a parking lot—little black-patent-leather shoes and pretty dress notwithstanding—it was because, so your grandmother admitted, she had sworn in front of you while driving. (You have no memory of ever riding with your grandmother)…” writes Laura.

d) Same Building. Two Floors. Ninety Years Apart
by Judy MacMahon

What a bartender’s white jacket, Hugo Matha’s silk neckerchiefs, and George Orwell scrubbing pots in a Parisian cellar taught me about the most French idea I know.
I was supposed to be working. Instead, I was reading a magazine about bartenders’ jackets. Bartenders’ clothing in Paris, does that count as ‘work’?”
It was the Financial Times weekend supplement, How To Spend It, glossy and full of things I admire from a respectful distance. The piece was about the white dinner jacket: why it has never really gone away, what it means when a bartender wears one, and how different bars around the world are reimagining it. London, Tokyo, New York, Copenhagen. Details I adored: one Mayfair bartender sourced a fabric so washable he soaked it in coffee and grenadine for three days to be sure the claim was true. Another bar permits any tie, except green. Red is also out. Don’t ask why.” Judy MacMahon

3. Merci mille fois

“Thank you for subscribing to ‘le Bulletin’, the newsletter of MyFrenchLife™ Magazine.”
Judy MacMahon

Merci mille fois d’être ici, mes ami(e)s. Thanks for being here.

Some of the best writing about France starts not with monuments or explanations, but with small moments that don’t quite behave the way you expect — a school gate, a passing remark, a different sense of time.

That’s this week’s France as it happens.

À bientôt,
Judy
judy@myfrenchlife.org

Thanks for reading ‘le Bulletin’! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

‘le Bulletin’ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support us, I personally ask you to consider becoming a free or annual subscriber.

Here’s how you can stay in touch & personalise your le Bulletin experience, and deepen your French connection.

🔓 Here you can UNLOCK EXCLUSIVE FRENCH STORIES:
Become an annual member and save! Enjoy exclusive, intimate glimpses into France and French lives delivered straight to your inbox.

Add us to your address book: info@MyFrenchLife.org -
Copyright © MaVieFrancaise®- MyFrenchLife™️. All Rights Reserved. -
le Bulletin is the Newsletter of MyFrenchLife.org

MyFrenchLife.org - Come with us to experience France beyond the cliché.
*Photo in the le Bulletin banner at the top of each newsletter © Annewill Stroo

What No One Tells You About Putting Your Kids in Full French Immersion.

Kamille Longstreet — Thu, 14 May 2026 20:44:45 GMT

When we moved to France, we made a very brave - some might say questionable - decision. We enrolled our young children in the local village school. Not an international school, not a bilingual program, just a normal French public school where not a single soul spoke English. Total immersion.

The logic was sound. Everyone - books, blogs, actual French people - said it was the best way for kids to learn the language and the culture. Also, the nearest international school was forty minutes away, and we didn’t move to the French countryside just to spend three hours a day in a commuting loop. So we did it. We dropped our kids into a completely foreign environment with nothing but love and hopeful stares.

And it was hard. For them. For us. For our poor, tear-streaked steering wheel.

Our kids were very young when they started - the age when most people say it’s easiest to adapt to a new language. Maybe that’s true on paper. In practice, it was like asking them to build friendships and follow rules and self-advocate and sing songs and go to gym class, all while being dunked underwater and told to just breathe normally. They didn’t understand a word.

I remember my daughter looking up at me one night and saying, very quietly, “No one understands me.” She wasn’t being dramatic or anything. She was telling the truth. Every day for months she and her brother were surrounded by a language they couldn’t speak, couldn’t decode, and had no experience with. There was no foundation - no French preschool, no bilingual babysitter, no parent casually dropping phrases over breakfast. Just a full plunge into the deep end.

There were meltdowns. Refusals to get dressed for school. Cries of “Why do we have to live in France?” And on one very memorable morning, an actual attempt to hide behind the couch so we couldn’t find them when it was time to leave. We understood completely. The effort of surviving eight hours a day in a language you can’t speak is exhausting even for adults, and for children, it wasn’t just hard - it was lonely.

There was also a stretch of time when they rejected anything remotely French. A cartoon in French: rage. A request to translate a phrase they’d already learned: flat refusal. I don’t blame them. Their nervous systems were overwhelmed. It wasn’t France they were angry at - it was the loss of control, the silent hours at recess, the confusion of not knowing whether someone was inviting you to play or telling you to go away.

We lay awake worrying, of course. Had we done the right thing? Were we damaging their sense of security? Would they start to hate school forever? Were we chasing an ideal at their expense? These are not small questions and we did not have good answers to them at the time.

Then, slowly, things began to change. They started recognizing words, then understanding full sentences, then saying full sentences. They began correcting our French, whispering the proper pronunciation like tiny linguistic professors. They started watching shows in French without resistance. And then they did what all bilingual kids eventually do - they started translating for us at restaurants, teasing us for our accents, saying things like “Maman, that’s not how you say it here” with the mild exasperation of people who have clearly moved on.

And best of all: they made real friends. The kind that makes you run toward school in the morning instead of away from it. The kind that makes language a bridge instead of a wall.

Total immersion sounds romantic, and in the end, it can be beautiful. But it’s not easy, it’s not instant, and it’s definitely not painless. There were months of resistance, tears, tantrums, tiny acts of defiance against this big, beautiful country they didn’t ask to move to. Despite all the stories of children picking up French in three weeks flat, the truth is that it can take months, sometimes years. You’ll feel like nothing is being absorbed. You’ll quiz them on a phrase from two weeks ago and they’ll look at you like you’ve asked them to solve a physics equation. You’ll wonder if it’s working at all.

And then - bam - it’s there.

One day, our son had a friend from school over to play. We watched as he spoke fluent, rapid French for over an hour, barely pausing to breathe between sentences. My husband and I just stared at each other. It was like watching him reveal a secret life. And of course it made sense - he hadn’t been practicing French at home. He’d been living it at school, with his teachers, with his friends. We just hadn’t been there to witness the progress.

I’m proud of them in ways I can’t always articulate. And I’m proud of us too - we did the hard thing, we stuck it out, we stood at the school gate with fake confidence and real fear, and we kept showing up. It’s not the kind of story that ends with a cinematic montage of fluency in four weeks. But it is the kind of story that ends with a little girl whispering to her maman, “You said that wrong,” and giggling as she fixes your grammar.

That’s the kind of happy ending I’ll take.

Kamille

Did you put your children through full immersion — or live through it yourself? Tell me what it was really like in the comments.

Introducing Contributor Kamille Longstreet

Visit her Contributor Page — Explore more of Kamille’s work→

Thanks for reading MyFrenchLife™ – MaVieFrançaise®! This fabulous article by Kamille Longstreet is public, and we encourage you to share it.

MyFrenchLife™ – MaVieFrançaise® is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Art of Not Working: France’s Most Elegant Paradox

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Thu, 14 May 2026 18:20:31 GMT

A friend texted from Paris last week.

“Pick a day,” she wrote. “We’ll have lunch outside. It seems many of my clients are away.”

It’s May. Of course, they’re away.

This year, the French calendar delivered something close to perfection. Five public holidays in 25 days. Both the 1st and the 8th fall on Fridays. Ascension landed on a Thursday. The travel division of Carrefour (Carrefour, the supermarket chain) publishes a guide each spring advising customers exactly which days to book off to build the longest possible bridge. This year, played correctly, you could string together 17 consecutive days without touching a single annual leave day!*

The French call it faire le pont. Making the bridge. And they have raised it to something approaching a national art form.

From the outside, you might read this as extravagance. Indulgence. A wealthy country that has never quite committed to the project of work. I understand that reading. I just don’t think it’s right.

Because France has made an argument, it has done so for centuries. And May is where that argument becomes visible.

This piece is part of the MyFrenchLife™ French Culture Deep-Dive Collection, exclusively for Annual Subscribers and Mighty Supporters. The France worth knowing about takes a little longer to tell.

What follows is the full story: the man who wrote a pamphlet in prison that France is still arguing about 145 years later, the productivity number nobody mentions, the flower that accidentally became a symbol of labour, and the prime minister who tried to take May away and lost everything. It’s worth the read.

How to Find Your French Family

LL — Thu, 14 May 2026 08:02:47 GMT

Start by knowing very little.

Commence par en savoir très peu.

That your mother always told you, “We’re French and Indian.”

That she said your grandmother swore in French. But on the day, as a four-year-old, you swore at a car, in English in a parking lot—little black-patent-leather shoes and pretty dress notwithstanding—it was because, so your grandmother admitted, she had sworn in front of you while driving. (You have no memory of ever riding with your grandmother.)

Question why (pourquoi) you don’t remember your grandmother ever speaking French.

But perhaps she did?

Your mother says she sang in French, too, which you also don’t recall.

Remember the stories you only just heard in the past few years: that one of your French great-grandmothers had the voice of an angel (un ange) and would have sung for the USO, but her husband forbade it. That your grandmother walked the cargo railroad tracks bridge (très dangereux!) to cut the time it took her to get to school: all French, no English speaking allowed.

Question again: pourquoi (why) did you never hear your grandmother speak French?

Turn the question into yet another question: why have you always inexplicably loved French? Even though it never started coming to you, until now?

Wait.

(Attends.)

Sudden memory: a black and white photograph of your grandmother in the Stickley rocker that is now in your bedroom. On each knee, a baby. One is you.

Did she sing to you?

Fast forward, decade upon decade.

Be amused, in that special way we are sometimes amused by our past selves—for whom we feel tenderness and the wisdom of having grown far beyond that time. Because you found among all the things your mother saved from your childhood… your very first term paper. The title? C’est Moi.

Realize that now that your mother is freshly gone from this world, so are the many, many stories she held that might have connected you to your French heritage. Perhaps your mother had names of French family members, even contact information. Maybe she could have helped you find Camille.

Find it also oddly (and a little sadly) amusing: why did you not think of all this earlier? Why did you not consider that Camille’s name was French?

Remember, in hazy tones, a lone driveway, with lilacs bordering. How Camille would pick the lilac clusters and harvest the petals from them into… was it baskets? You were too small, you don’t recall. But you do know how lavish it felt when Camille said you and your sister were brides, and she scattered the petals in your path and over your hair and in the air as you walked down the drive…and smiled…and smiled…and smiled.

To this day, you still love lilacs and you wept when the neighbor cut down the flourishing bushes to the side of your tiny Tudor. Then you replanted a lacy barely-lavender variety in the back yard, near the looking-glass ball your mother gave you. The looking-glass catches the lacy blooms in its azure-rainbow face in spring. It brings back memories. It makes you think, maybe you can still find your French family if you try.

(translation: as always, L.L. :)

P.S. If you want tips on how to explore your family heritage, French or not, check out this great advice from Glynn Young, author of Brookhaven: Seven Tips for Researching Family Heritage.

P.S.S. There is nothing vintage in these pictures. Unless you count the unseen windows of my 1932 Tudor that are letting in such beautiful morning light over the piano. The poetry collection is by Andrea Potos. Cheery lemon teapot by ForLife. My beloved knife, with which I love to do so much cooking, by Henckels.

P.S.S.S. Oh, wait! The Stickley and Brandt has to be from sometime between 1891 & 1917. But that still means there is nothing vintage here, because anything 100 years or older is considered antique.

below ↓ look what happens when we shoot into the light. how the light even makes it possible to see flowers through other flowers. light is magic. n’est-ce pas? (isn’t it so?)

Introducing Contributor, L.L.Barkat:

Visit her Contributor Page — Explore more of Laura’s work

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On Time

Pamela Clapp — Wed, 13 May 2026 06:02:51 GMT

Time isn’t a personality trait in France.

It isn’t languid DNA. The French get anxious, too. They get flustered, they rush, they mutter at traffic lights, they curse at steering wheels when the city pushes back. My French husband thinks I drive like someone trying to annotate the street rather than beat it. « Sois plus agressive ! » he says, hand braced on the passenger handle. Paris time lingers, but it honks. Just not on the same minutes Americans honk on.

I learned time through a different clock — the American one.

In my twenties, I opened Starbucks in Waikiki at 4 a.m. local time. The alarm was set for 2:45. Every minute was accounted for — the 7-minute drive, the 2 minutes to walk from parking to locked doors. The streets smelled like ocean salt, delivery trucks, nightlife regret. Surfers arrived before sunrise had found its posture. Tourists ordered coffee with a side of emails. Productivity began early because early looked admirable.

Then I moved back to Paris and realized my clock had jetlag. Philosophical jetlag.

In America, busy looks glamorous. Packed calendars look like worth. A morning conquered before 7 a.m. looks like discipline. Meditation apps count streaks, rings vibrate reminders to “find time to pause,” sleep is optimized and celebrated like efficiency hardware.

In France, you leave the hour unscored so thinking has somewhere to land.

Paris time is not slow. It is long. Confident long.

There’s a glamour in the unplanned hour here. A walk through Paris is not measured by where it leads, but by what it suggests back. A restaurant chosen by wandering isn’t a failure to plan. It’s a different kind of plan: one that expects time to participate.

Time in America is compressed for output.

Time in France is expanded for imagination.

In America, you schedule reflection like a meeting with yourself.

In Paris, reflection happens because the hour had room to host it.

In America, a delayed meeting is inefficiency.

In Paris, a delayed meeting is Tuesday, absorbed without audit.

Americans apologize for being offline.

The French apologize for rushing into the hour, not through it.

Both want meaning. Only one fears the minute.

An hour in New York can feel scored before it begins.

An hour in Paris is scored only after you’ve sprinted through it.

The contrast shows itself in what you didn’t plan to notice.

One January, an American friend visited me in Paris. We set out at 7 a.m., assuming the city would hand her caffeine on arrival. We crossed Boulevard Saint-Germain in the cold, coats buttoned to the chin, scarves wound like protective parentheses. The city looked at us blankly. No café door opened back. She laughed nervously. “Do you think anything is open?” she asked, already checking her phone like the street might not answer unless prompted.

The street answered anyway, later, when we stopped interrogating the minute.

Planning trips for American friends taught me this too: they want the timestamp, the route, the confirmation, the reassurance that the day will produce something. The French plan where to go, but they always leave the when porous enough for life to write itself back in.

Time here bends around life, not proof of life.

My favorite clock in Paris, Musée d’Orsay. Photo from Pexels.

The last few weeks have made the American clock feel louder in its reminders of fleetingness — alerts, headlines, year-end pushes. In France, fleetingness is felt too, but time is still treated like a landscape, not a stopwatch.

What I’ve learned is that time is not precious because it is productive.

Time is precious because it leaves without asking if we were ready.

And maybe that’s the irony that unites both sides of the ocean:

Americans perform busyness to prove they’re not losing time.

The French refuse to perform anything for time, except living inside it long enough to feel it imprint.

I’ve absorbed this instinctively. Not ideologically. Physically.

I plan fewer minutes now. I plan more unscheduled hours — hours to wander, think, or simply let the street answer back.

This year, I want to resist the American urge to time block, to color-code, and to treat time as something to master. I want to treat it as something to notice passing through me, culture to culture, ocean to ocean, decade to decade.

If this year has one gentle intention worth setting, it might be this:

Noticing that the best moments are the ones not rushed through, the ones that were long enough to imprint, not to prove.

Thank you for reading.

À très vite,

Pamela

Consider upgrading your subscription

NOTE: Personal thoughts enriched by Jane Bertch’s beautiful piece on time, which I encourage you to read next.

Introducing Contributor, Pamela Clapp

Immerse yourself in all of Pamela’s articles on her Contributor page.

Same Building. Two Floors. Ninety Years Apart.

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Tue, 12 May 2026 23:20:29 GMT

I was supposed to be working. Instead, I was reading a magazine about bartenders’ jackets. Bartenders’ clothing in Paris, does that count as ‘work’?

It was the Financial Times weekend supplement, How To Spend It, glossy and full of things I admire from a respectful distance. The piece was about the white dinner jacket: why it has never really gone away, what it means when a bartender wears one, and how different bars around the world are reimagining it. London, Tokyo, New York, Copenhagen. Details I adored: one Mayfair bartender sourced a fabric so washable he soaked it in coffee and grenadine for three days to be sure the claim was true. Another bar permits any tie, except green. Red is also out. Don’t ask why.

And then, briefly, Paris. L’Hôtel de Crillon. One of my favourite places in Paris.

A bar. A designer named Hugo Matha. The staff in double-breasted waistcoats cut from a textured honeycomb fabric, with natural horn buttons chosen for the variation in their depth, wearing silk neckerchiefs instead of ties, the colour of the scarf telling you, if you knew how to read it, exactly what role that person played in the room.

I put the magazine down with a calm, silent exhale. I opened my laptop. What followed was several hours of joyful disappearing, into the history of a building, a designer’s unlikely commission, a very French philosophy, and one English writer who scrubbed pots in a cellar so grim he could barely bring himself to describe it. Another fabulous rabbit hole! I was in pig heaven.

What I found at the bottom was not just a story about clothes. (Remember, one of my careers was in that space.) It was a story about how France thinks about the people who serve, and what it means to take that act of service seriously enough to dress it beautifully.

What follows is for MyFrenchLife™ Annual subscribers and Mighty Supporters: the full story of how a young designer from the Aveyron, a 1758 royal palace, and George Orwell's most wretched winter in Paris all connect to one quietly revolutionary idea about beauty, service, and what France refuses to let go of.
If you are not yet an Annual subscriber or a Mighty Supporter
→this would be a very good moment to become one

16.18.a - They Found Us. And France Has Never Been More Inexhaustible.

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Sat, 09 May 2026 10:59:25 GMT

Today at a Glance: Your PAID weekly newsletter

Bonjour, my dear friends and subscribers, both new and long-time.

Here’s what you’ll find today:

This week “16.18.a - They Found Us. And France Has Never Been More Inexhaustible.
The Writers’ Room returns next week - [MyFrenchLife Magazine Contributor Profiles, where you’ll learn more about our contributors than others know!]
This week’s ‘What’s happening in ‘MyFrenchLife™ Magazine’ - a selection of new contributors and fresh articles.
You can also find the free newsletter ‘‘16.18 - France Gets Under Your Skin. These Writers Show You How→here, on Saturday.

Warm regards
Judy - 9.5.2026

16.18 - France Gets Under Your Skin. These Writers Show You How

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Fri, 08 May 2026 20:00:40 GMT

Today at a Glance: Your FREE weekly newsletter

Bonjour mes ami(e)s !

It’s wonderful to have you back here with me today. Bienvenue !

A New Chapter for MyFrenchLife™ Magazine Contributors
In this newsletter, you’ll find these wonderful fresh articles taking you to France beyond the cliché,
Don’t miss the PAID subscriber edition of le Bulletin in your inbox: “16.18.a - They Found Us. And France Has Never Been More Inexhaustible.. It’s not too late to upgrade & read it←
À bientôt !
Warmly,
Judy - 9.5.2026

1. A New Chapter for MyFrenchLife™ Magazine Contributors - check out these new profiles

Profile #3 - Shelby Chambers

To Find THE LIST of MyFrenchLife™ Magazine CONTRIBUTORS:
[https://myfrenchlife.org/p/contributors-myfrenchlife-zine ]
TO FIND SHELBY CHAMBERS’ WORK:
[https://www.myfrenchlife.org/t/shelby-chambers ]

2. MyFrenchLife™ Magazine: new articles

Our list of valued Contributors →

→Introducing New Contributor Elizabeth Joubert

I’m a Californian who was a marine biologist before moving to France and trading my wetsuit for pen and paper. “
After three years in Limoges, we made the Paris area home. We have two daughters, who speak perfect Franglais. Thanks to frequent school holidays, I’m an expert at entertaining kids in Paris.”
I love the ballet, opera, and museums; my carte blanche for the Musée d’Orsay is a treasured possession. My writing, which focuses on culture and identity, has appeared in Newsweek, Zibby Mag, The Haven, and my Substack, This Week in France. “
A nature lover, I like to explore the parks and green spaces around Paris where I live with my husband and two daughters. I spend several weeks a year hiking and skiing in the Alps.”
In the land of bread and cheese, I am both gluten- and dairy-free, curse the heavens,” said Elizabeth Joubert.

It’s now my pleasure to ask you to join me in welcoming Elizabeth and learning more about her and her life through her beautiful first article with us: “Finding Nature in the Heart of Paris.”

a) Finding Nature in the Heart of Paris
by Elizabeth Joubert

I’m fanatical about our abundant parks and green spaces, which were an unexpected gift of our move to Greater Paris. When we came to the city from the rural outskirts of Limoges, we knew we’d have more access to culture, but were delighted to realize we’d increased our access to nature, too.”
My French husband and I started our lives together in California, but I had the bright idea to move to France when we had our first baby, so we could all be bilingual (it worked out in the long run, but boy, was that a transition). We’d hoped to go to Paris, but ended up in an agricultural community that was the definition of bucolic. I worked to appreciate the local character, which included lots of farm animals…” wrote Elizabeth.

b) Everything You Always Wanted to Know About French Herb & Spice Blends
by Laura Washburn Hutton

There were two choices: fill in the forms for my French taxes or clean the spice cabinet. No prizes for guessing what happened.”
There were the usual duplicate spice jars and a few out-of-date items for keeping, because you never know. And, a surprising number of blends, given that I’m not a huge fan of spice blends.”
Surprisingly, also, hardly any are French.”
There are always exceptions…” wrote Laura Washburn Hutton

c) Little French Joys That Keep Me Going
by Shelby Chambers

…I’m not sure if it’s due to age, motherhood, or desperate times, but I’m on a corny and earnest mission of late to try to appreciate the little things in life. “
Maybe some appreciation will make this year a tad more bearable until the midterm elections, until work picks up, until the sun comes out again, both figuratively and literally…” writes Shelby Chambers.

d) Four Notes and a Nation
by Judy MacMahon

The man at the centre of the story is Michaël Boumendil, founder of a Paris-based sound branding agency called Sixième Son. In 2004, the SNCF came to him with a problem. The SNCF had always used a jingle, but it was the old one, the Do-Me-Sol of the 1990s, and it had gone stale. The company was going through a full rebrand, new logo and all, and the sonic identity needed to keep pace. Boumendil’s brief was simple: give France’s national railway a sound that people would actually feel something about.”
Before a single note was composed, Sixième Son did something quite unusual…”

3. Merci mille fois

“Thank you for subscribing to ‘le Bulletin’, the newsletter of MyFrenchLife™ Magazine.”
Judy MacMahon

Merci mille fois d’être ici, mes ami(e)s. Thanks for being here.

This week feels like a proper gathering.

Elizabeth Joubert joins our community as a new contributor, bringing nature, Paris, and a perspective that’s entirely her own.

Laura Washburn Hutton turns a spice cabinet into a rabbit hole — as they tend to do. Shelby Chambers gives small joys the attention they deserve.

And in Four Notes and a Nation, I was digging deep. I went looking for the story behind the most heard sound in France. I loved writing that piece. Sound is such an intimate thing, and this story took me somewhere unexpected. I hope it does the same for you.

Merci à toutes. To Elizabeth, Laura, and Shelby — thank you for taking our readers deeper into France, beyond the cliché, exactly where we love to be.

À bientôt.
Judy
judy@myfrenchlife.org

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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About French Herb & Spice Blends

Laura Washburn Hutton — Thu, 07 May 2026 22:51:49 GMT

There were two choices: fill in the forms for my French taxes or clean the spice cabinet.

No prizes for guessing what happened.

There were the usual duplicate spice jars and a few out-of-date items for keeping, because you never know. And, a surprising number of blends, given that I’m not a huge fan of spice blends.

Surprisingly, also, that hardly any are French.

There are always exceptions.

Épices Rabelais, a spontaneous supermarket purchase, was on the shelf. I had no idea what it was, I bought it purely because the box is so fabulous.

The Essential French Herb & Spice Blends

Herbes de Provence
Fines Herbes
Quatres Épices
Bouquet garni

None of these are in my possession. Blends, for almost any cuisine, rely on someone else to decide the exact balance of flavours. Plus, recipes vary between manufacturers and they can sometimes contain fillers, like cornstarch. The quality of the ingredients is also questionable. I have no faith that what ends up in a blend is the same quality as buying a single herb or spice from a reputable source.

Herbes de Provence

Do you have one of those ceramic jars of Herbes de Provence lurking in your pantry? ¹

If you do, does it say what goes into the blend and in what amounts?

The genuine article will have a Label Rouge from France.² This is a government decree to identify and certify food products that are deemed to be of superior quality. It does not have to be organic, it does not even have to be from France. It just has to conform to what has been identified as the good stuff. Confusingly, this may or may not include conforming to a standard preparation.

Since the Label Rouge can be applied to many things, what quality means varies across the certification, but it is meant to be an indication of above-par, according to someone. This is not to be confused with other more rigorous French certifications such as AOP, AOC, IGP, AB: all topics for another day.

For Herbes de Provence, a Label Rouge is also said to guarantee the percentages of each ingredient, thus a precise blend.

The Label Rouge percentages for Herbes de Provence are 19 % thyme and 27 % each of rosemary, winter savory and oregano. These proportions are based, as far as I can tell, on an age-old provençal recipe.

A non-certified Herbes de Provence blend may also include marjoram, bay leaf, fennel seed, lavender, sage, basil… If you have a jar in your spice cabinet, have a look and let me know what it says.

An online search for a Label Rouge Herbes de Provence in your country may reveal a place to buy some. At the time of going to press, I could not find an online source in the USA. The closest I came was from this supplier³ HOWEVER, their blend has 26% (not the genuine 27%) of each of the three main herbs and an extra 3% basil. Yet it has the Label Rouge! There is so much wrong in the world and now we also need to worry about the authenticity of authentification?

What irks me most is they have chosen to adulterate the traditional blend with basil. Of all things! Dried basil is an aberration. Use it fresh or do not bother. Adding it because this is supposed to be provençal is beyond acceptable.

Fines Herbes

In English, this translates as fines herbes.

So, what exactly does it mean.

The most consistent explanation is that fines herbes are all the herbs that grow in kitchen gardens, or potagers. This seems plausible, but the danger of the internet is we all just repeat the same misinformation.

Wikipedia, the French version, is my source of choice for explaining this culinary term. It says that fines herbes were defined by Auguste Escoffier in the early 1900s, in a recipe for an omelette aux fines herbes, and the herbs were mainly parsley and chives, with a little bit of chervil and tarragon.⁴ Julia Child has a recipe for this too.

No proportions are given but that mixture is about as French as they get. The other thing to notice is these are all soft-leaved herbs; herb blends are always dried and these herbs in particular do not dry well. There is no reference to a dried herb blend, so my assumption is Wikipedia is referring to fresh herbs.

Not all herbs take well to drying. Thyme, rosemary, sage, oregano—for example—are herbs that dry well. The soft-leaved kind, all of the plants mentioned for fines herbes, rarely survive this process with their flavour intact. Tarragon, at a stretch, otherwise these herbs should be used fresh or not at all, because the taste of dried is so inferior.

In conclusion, fines herbes refers to what you have growing on your windowsill or near the garden door, soft-leaved plants for the most part. Best to include at least parsley and chives and prefer fresh to dried.

Quatres Épices

The spice blend, Quatres Épices, is a French ingredient and it is most often a combination of pepper, clove, nutmeg and ginger. Sometimes cinnamon is used to replace the ginger but there are no hard and fast rules about the mixture. It is meant to mimic ground allspice.

The allspice berry is native to the French West Indies, so you will find it, or the quatres épices spice blend, used in dishes from these islands. In traditional French cuisine, it is used in recipes for pâtés, terrines, charcuteries and game dishes, in general.

I found one US source⁵, offering a good selection of products, which says the blend is born out of the 17th-century French colonization of North Africa and that the French use quatres épices to season the North African speciality of couscous. I am simply the messenger and this needs to be backed up with more evidence. I will start asking around.

To make things more confusing, there is also a French spice blend called Cinq Épices, which is Chinese Five Spice in English.

Bouquet Garni

An outlier in this category, because whole herbs and whole sprigs of the plant are used, this is technically a blend because the purpose of it in French cooking is to use these herbs in combination and not add them as separate ingredients.

Another distinction is that a bouquet garni can be either fresh or dried, or both at the same time, which is why I have no bouquet garni jars in the cupboard. If one is needed, I make it, and it will always have fresh parsley stems in it. Furthermore, I may wrap the whole thing in a leek green or two before tying it together. Bouquet garni means different things to different people.

The point of using a bouquet garni is that you want the flavour to seep out from the aromatics during cooking but you do not want bits to remain in the dish. By tying together in a tidy parcel, it is easier to fish the bundle out at the end. Think bay leaf; you add one and remove it before serving. If you do this with a few thyme sprigs, good luck fishing them out at the end. I speak from experience. Thus, the genius of the bouquet garni.

There is a version of bouquet garni which consists of dried herbs enclosed in a little muslin parcel. A useless purchase, at the risk of repeating myself, because this will be a random mix of varying quality, as are all bought blends.

Below is a useful short video on how to assemble a bouquet garni. This is the fresh kind, using leek, and string to help you remove it from the pot. He does say to tie it to the handle of the pot if you like. Plus, he adds a nifty bonus bouquet involving garlic cloves and toothpicks. This is in French but easily understood with the visuals. If anything is unclear, ask me what you need to know in the comments.

Épices Rabelais

Back to the tantalizingly packaged mystery spice blend.

Legend, and the company website, have it that this spice blend was created in Marseille in 1880 by Raynaud de Mazan, a man of curious disposition and culinary skill, who had the idea to bring together spices from North Africa with herbs from the Provençal hillsides.

The premise—of combining flavours from the cuisine of southern France with that of North Africa—makes perfect sense since they face one another on opposing shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Naturally, the exact recipe for this blend is a highly guarded secret, even to this day. The composition is described thus:

« Rosemary, Coriander, Bay Leaf, Marjoram, Fennel, Aniseed, Herb Blend, Cloves, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Spice Blend… and a few mystery ingredients »

Is it legal, in this era of rampant food allergies, to say that ‘spice blend’ and ‘herb blend’ and ‘mystery ingredients’ are used? Surely they are simply amping up the intrigue by repeating these magical words. The whole thing is a spice and herb blend, so that bit is factual.

Upon opening the box, the ingredients are not in a plastic packet but encased in a charming and eco-friendly white paper bag, folded over not even sealed. Cute on the inside too, but the overwhelming aroma was of cloves. It’s a good thing the box is so decorative and the brand storytelling is so convincing, otherwise, I’m not sure I would have persisted.

Once opened, you will need to transfer this to a sealed container to keep it fresh; the paper bag is not ideal.

Do have a look at the website. They have many more products and some fun merch. I am not sure how it works for shipping outside the EU but there are international sources of Épices Rableais, minus the stuff. Other online French food suppliers sell Épices Rabelais too, all the links are at the end.⁶

Recipe:

On the box, there is a recipe for pot-au-feu. I was unsure of what exactly to cook with the stuff so following the box seemed a good idea. It was. Pot-au-feu uses different cuts of beef but I had chicken pieces that needed eating, so a chicken pot-au-feu/braise of sorts was born.

In case you are unfamiliar, pot-au-feu is meat and bones simmered for hours in a vegetable-rich liquid. It is a meal in itself: the broth is served on its own to start, then a platter with the meat is presented, alongside or with, a platter of the vegetables and everyone helps themselves. Marrow bones are included and these can be served on their own with slices of grilled bread for spreading the marrow. Coarse grain mustard and cornichons are de rigeur as accompaniments.

A whole chicken, cut in pieces, would be ideal for my version but I had bone-in thigh and breast portions. Whatever you use, it must have bones. For flavour.

Vegetables can vary but please include leeks, carrots, and onions. I also used rutabaga plus separately cooked small potatoes. Slender branches of celery with leaves were added more as an aromatic than a vegetable, but they are for eating too. Turnips would have been great.

I cooked the potatoes separately and added them about 30 minutes before the end because there was no room in the pan! If you have room, add the potatoes about 1 hour before the end of cooking.

The Épices Rabelais lent a surprisingly good flavour to this otherwise unadorned dish. Cooking softened the the taste of the cloves so it mingled rather than dominated and the finished taste was certainly more all the spices.

Pot-au-feu is a subtle dish and I am highlighting this to manage expectations. No chilli or miso or umami blast of any kind, as is so often the case these days. Just simple fare, simply cooked. A reason why good quality ingredients at the outset are important; good stuff tastes good without the need for lots of flourishes.

This is easy to put together but cooking time takes a few hours so start well in advance or cook a day ahead and refrigerate until needed.

A perfect dish for early spring, when we are ready for warmer days but we do not always have them.

Chicken Pot-au-Feu aux Épices Rabelais

Serves 4 -6

2-3 bone-in chicken breast portions
6 bone-in chicken thighs
Sunflower oil
1-2 TBSP épices Rabelais
Table salt
1 large leek, cut into pieces
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into pieces
1 large onion, thickly sliced
1 rutabaga/swede, peeled and cut into chunks
2 inner celery branches
2-3 large garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
1 bay leaf
Small potatoes, allow 4-6 per person depending, peeled or not as you prefer
Baking parchment
Coarse-grain mustard and cornichons, to serve

Trim excess fat from the chicken pieces.

Put the chicken in a large mixing bowl, add just enough oil to coat lightly and toss well. Season the pieces all over with salt, then add the Épices Rabelais and toss again, using your hands to massage everything in. Let stand at least 30 minutes, covered.

Preheat the oven to 160ºC.

Heat a large ovenproof skillet, it needs to have a lid for later, and when hot, add the chicken pieces, skin-side down, and cook until golden brown. Turn and cook the other side until browned.

Add everything else except the potatoes, season the vegetable layer with some salt and add water to come up about two-thirds of the way.

Bring just to the boil, then lower the heat.

Cut a piece of parchment just larger than your pan, crumple it under some running water and squeeze out the excess; this makes it easier to fit in the pan. Set on top of the veg and tuck in lightly around the edges. Cover with a lid and transfer to the oven.

Cook slowly for about 1 hour, then remove and, using tongs, swap it around so the chicken pieces are on top of the veg. If you have room and are adding raw potatoes do it now and then tuck it all back in under the parchment and lid and return to the oven for another 45 minutes.

Check all is cooked, it may need another 20-30 minutes. And taste the broth before serving, you may need to salt a bit more.

To serve, arrange the chicken pieces on one platter, the vegetables on another and divide the broth between bowls to start. Accompany with coarse-grain mustard and cornichons.

NOTE: If you want to make this but do not want to get any Épices Rabelais, you could try replacing the spices with a good coating of dried thyme at the outset, to which you could add a tsp or 2 or 3 of ground cumin. And a generous grinding of black pepper. Another substitution that might be nice is ras el hanout, the Moroccan spice blend.

Don’t forget to look at your jars of French spice blends and tell me what the ingredients are!

Links and Further Reading

https://thefrenchfarm.com/aux-anysetiers-du-roy-herbs-de-provence-in-ceramic-jar/
https://agriculture.gouv.fr/le-label-rouge-signe-de-qualite-superieure
https://www.economie.gouv.fr/particuliers/produit-label-rouge-quoi-vous-attendre#
https://www.france-export-fv.com/Herbes-de-Provence-Label-Rouge/en
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fines_herbes#:~:text=Le%20terme%20fines%20herbes%20d%C3%A9signe,de%20trois%20ou%20quatre%20herbes.
https://sos-chefs.com/collections/spice-blends/products/quatre-epices
https://www.epices-rabelais.com/
https://lepanierfrancais.com/collections/seasonings

Parisian Parks and Gardens

Introducing Contributor, Laura Washburn Hutton:

Visit her Contributor Page — Explore more of Laura’s work

Finding Nature in the Heart of Paris

Elizabeth Joubert — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:33:51 GMT

I’m fanatical about our abundant parks and green spaces, which were an unexpected gift of our move to Greater Paris. When we came to the city from the rural outskirts of Limoges, we knew we’d have more access to culture, but were delighted to realize we’d increased our access to nature, too.

My French husband and I started our lives together in California, but I had the bright idea to move to France when we had our first baby, so we could all be bilingual (it worked out in the long run, but boy, was that a transition). We’d hoped to go to Paris, but ended up in an agricultural community that was the definition of bucolic. I worked to appreciate the local character, which included lots of farm animals.

Limousine cattle pastured across our narrow street, and I greeted them each morning when I opened our shutters, then listened to the clucking of our neighbors’ chickens and the hissing of their hateful geese. The moos and squawks were not exactly dreamy, early-morning birdsong, but they were, at least, animal sounds. As a landlocked marine biologist, I leaned on what fauna I could.

At first, we were enamored with the lush greenery as we explored Limoges. A bike loop took us past rolling green cattle and sheep pastures, along mossy forest roads, and finally emerged into a golden colombage village built around a thirteenth-century abbey. 1

On my runs, I admired the sheep, the old stone barns, and the gnarled apple trees. In summer, I fueled my runs with blackberries picked from bushes that covered pasture fences, and in autumn, we hiked alongside chestnut foragers.

Over time, we realized our connection to nature was constrained. There were only two hiking trails, and both included sections through neighborhoods and around farms. Cattle pastured in the woods. Farmland encroached. There were no great tracts of wild space. While I initially ran all directions around our house, I eventually learned how dangerous the sinuous roads were for pedestrians. I was left with one route, which I ran every day. We had a lovely yard, as did everyone; nobody went for an evening walk, and few families used the local playground.

One yard, one running path, two hiking trails, one bike route. Desperate for new territory, I started jogging through undeveloped lots, untended fields, and pastures, always running into fences, fences, fences. That’s the deception of rural places: they look green and open, but the land is privately owned.

Cities play the opposite trick. They are made of concrete and their natural areas can feel forced—a tree here, a pocket park there—but cities can also contain wonderful green spaces, created by officials who know their citizens need to stand under the trees. I’ve visited impressive city parks: Vondelpark in Amsterdam, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and the massive Central Park in New York, which I mistakenly thought I could walk around in an afternoon after hoofing it there from lower Manhattan (I made it to the far side of the reservoir before pooping out). My trek in New York exemplifies the freedom of cities: the streets are public, the green spaces are public, the riverbanks and oceanside…you get the idea. In a city, you can start from almost any place and walk as far as you like in any direction. Even if you see only concrete, there is an openness that rural and suburban places tend to lack. And anyway, you won’t see only concrete.

Paris is not the greenest city in the world, but it does contain a reported 500 parks and gardens. 2

Once we’d decided rural living was definitely not for us, we moved to Issy-les-Moulineaux, a city bordered by Paris and the Seine, and, as we’d discover, it is a great place to live outdoors.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

"In the country, I had the experience of an ever-contracting world. 
In the city, my world is ever expanding — the park is the entrance to a forest, which is part of an expanse of nature so vast, a person could get lost out there for days and days."

Over our first weeks here, when my husband came home from work, I’d leave him with the kids and go for a run. It was the end of summer, and the days were long—I’d jog along the tree-lined bords de Seine during the golden hour. One evening, as I came back over the Pont de Billancourt, I slowed to look over the water. The setting sun glinted off the metal bridge, and houseboats rocked on the shore, and the sky fell raspberry and peach with that signature Parisian pale blue above.

The Eiffel Tower was straight ahead, and beyond it, the Basilica de Sacré-Cœur. I knew I could run all the way to Montmartre if I wanted to, and I was overwhelmed by a sense of freedom, like all those pasture fences came tumbling down. It was in that moment that I felt I’d found my French home.

We have lived here for more than ten years now, and I’ve slowly learned about the history of our area as I’ve set out walking and exploring. Since we’re on the axis between the capital and Versailles, our area was once dominated by châteaux. The palaces of Meudon, Saint-Cloud, and Marley have been lost to history, and those of Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye have been transformed into national museums, but their gardens and woods remain and have been opened to us commoners.

My daughter’s gym class walks to the terrace of the Château de Bellevue, the former residence of the Dauphin of Louis XIV, to play ultimate frisbee. Every weekend, my husband runs twenty kilometers through the woods of Saint-Cloud, a former residence of Henri III, Marie Antoinette, and Napoleon I. What’s more, these parks connect. The year I ran the Paris Versailles half-marathon, I was delighted to discover most of the racecourse was through the forest—we started at the Eiffel Tower, went along the Seine and past our house, then headed into the forest of Meudon, and we stayed under the trees until we reached the Château de Versailles.

In the country, I had the experience of an ever-contracting world—running routes taken by cars, woods being chopped down for pastures. In the city, my world is ever expanding—the park is the entrance to a forest, which is part of an expanse of nature so vast that a person could get lost out there for days and days. In these now urban forests, I am constantly stumbling upon wild creatures.

In the span of two days last week, my kids and I saw tadpoles swimming in the man-made pond at the Parc de l’Île Saint Germain, and we discovered a blanket of frog eggs covering a mud puddle in the Forest of Meudon. Yesterday, I saw a swan from one of our local mating pairs in the water on his own for the first time this spring, so I suspect his partner is sitting on her eggs.

We know the nesting sites of two pairs of swans, two sets of kingfishers, and a great heron.

During Covid times, when we only had access to a small piece of riverfront, we knew a half-dozen clutches of ducklings by sight and tracked their daily dramas, including watching a lost, if not ugly, duckling try to find his mother among the gathered families.

Each spring, we welcome the appearance of fish fry in the shallows of the Seine, the baby water hens with their skinny toes, and the chirping of baby blue tits in the nest box. We eat wild blackberries in the park in August, and collect chestnuts in the forest in October. Once, a baby hedgehog zipped along the river walk as I followed behind, amazed. Another time, a large turtle cruised down the middle of the Seine. On a recent run in the park, two other women and I stopped to watch a baby fox trot across our paths. All of this, we can reach on our own two feet.

Because everything is proximal in the city, I feel like I experience nature every time I step out of my front door. Yes, the parks and forests can get crowded, but I enjoy that, too. Lots of people go into nature for solitude, but I write from home and have solitude aplenty. I love to be surrounded by other people who are enjoying the outdoors, to exclaim alongside strangers at the sudden appearance of a fox, a kingfisher diving for its dinner. Plus, now that we’ve lived here for more than a decade, I’ll usually see someone I know when I’m out.

I’m in better communication with our local flora and fauna—human neighbors included—here in the “grand couronne” of Paris than I was in rustic Limoges, where I mostly saw farm animals.

What a gift to have had heaped upon me, in addition to the ballet and the opera and the Japanese restaurants we came for.

Meanwhile, the region is only getting better as mayors push for the installation of more green space—pulling up concrete and laying down mulch wherever possible. In Paris and its suburbs, the transformation of many paved spaces into parks and urban forests has been gathering pace for years. Biologists are beginning to wonder if a city can become a nature refuge.3

For me, one already is.

Have you discovered that a city surprised you with its wildness — a fox crossing your path, a kingfisher, something you didn’t expect to find outside your front door? Tell me in the comments.

Elizabeth

Citations:

The Abbaye Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul de Solignac was founded in the early seventh century by Saint Éloi, but the existing structures were built mostly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Curious stories of coexistence

IMAGE CREDITS: all images are copyright, Elizabeth Joubert

Introducing Contributor Elizabeth Joubert

Visit her Contributor Page — Explore more of Elizabeth’s work→

Thanks for reading MyFrenchLife™ – MaVieFrançaise®! This fabulous article by Elizabeth Joubert is public, and we encourage you to share it.

Little French Joys That Keep Me Going

Shelby Chambers — Wed, 06 May 2026 18:14:51 GMT

I’d like to kick this off by saying I feel like a real asshole writing about mundane or silly observations about life in France when my home country is buckling under the weight of its own poor decisions. (Nice way to say that fascism is popping off and it’s horrific.) I’ve been spending too many nights watching videos of violations of due process, the Constitution, and general human decency, and then crying. More recently, I’ve been watching even more videos of my fellow Americans fighting back, protecting their neighbors, chanting “shame” at people who need to hear it, which also makes me cry.

Meanwhile, I’m way over here, 6-9 hours ahead of North America, enjoying a galette de rois, with an option to tune out reality for a while if I so choose. Once again, the guilt of being far away, unable to help except by clicking donation buttons. It’s almost like my penance is to watch the news, stay up to date on every atrocity across multiple frontlines; at least if I’m not there, I won’t close my eyes. But someone, someone who lives in the US, told me to keep living my life and finding reasons to be happy if I’m able, for my own sake and for others. So I guess that’s what I’ll do, even if I might still be an asshole.

I’m not sure if it’s due to age, motherhood, or desperate times, but I’m on a corny and earnest mission of late to try to appreciate the little things in life. Maybe some appreciation will make this year a tad more bearable until the midterm elections, until work picks up, until the sun comes out again, both figuratively and literally. I’m also in the middle of writing about something that is kind of a downer, but I want to sandwich it with upbeat posts so that you don’t associate seeing “Franchement” in your inbox with bummer thoughts (even if that’s kind of the state of the world right now).

These are the types of appreciations I chant to myself to counteract the effects of a rude driver, a cramped metro, or when my child feels the need to point out every morsel of fecal matter we encounter on the street. Yeah, it’s literally shitty here sometimes, but at least the bread is good. As trite as the wisdom might be, appreciating the little things does make me feel better, so maybe I can pass it on and make at least one other person’s day a little brighter. I mean, figuratively brighter, because it’s mid-January in Paris; I can’t make any promises of sun.

Alors, a few of the little joys of French life that keep me going in winter, hard days, transport strikes, or dark times back home.

The joy of doing a boulangerie run entirely in French, not messing up the gender of a type of bread, not having to repeat your order, and getting out of there with your pride intact.
The first galette de rois of the year, and you find the fève.
Walking through any town, village, or neighborhood, no matter the size, on market day.
The fact that my phone plan with Free has been 19.99 for six years, including international data, unlimited internet, etc. Every year, I anticipate an email stating that my monthly rate is going to go up, as it used to back in the US. This has never happened, so I continue to pay in a year what I used to pay in a month for cell service. Bless the phone companies in Europe.
Cheese distributeurs, aka cheese ATMs. Sometimes in cheese-focused regions, you can find cheese ATMs so that you can buy cheese when the cheese shops are closed, which is often, because this is France. These are also great if you don’t feel like interacting with a human. I’ve also bought potatoes, bread, pâté, and shrimp from an ATM here with varying results.
Passing by castles and Medieval villages on road trips.
No billboards on road trips.
My child’s crèche. I freaking love his daycare, and not just because they take my child off my hands for 8 hours a day. I love that he eats better and more balanced lunches than I could make for him, usually three courses like beet salad, fish, and camembert. Last week,I saw a cheese mousse on the menu. He recently went to the opera on a field trip. And while it is not free by any means, it’s fairly priced based on income, and far less than I’d be paying back home.
The Salon International de l’Agriculture (mark your calendars, it begins end of February!)
Frankly, French cows in any setting.
Quiet mornings because North America is asleep, so no one can bother me with emails or calls until after lunch.
Crowded train stations on a Friday afternoon, when the SNCF “Beem, bomp, bomp bomp” sound plays before an announcement
When vendors at the market give my son a little treat like an apple or morsel of cheese or a chouquette, just because he’s little and cute.

Seeing a metro or train full of people reading. Well, yeah, a lot of them are still on their phones, but I’m always happy to see more than a few commuters reading actual paper books every day.
Seeing a metro arrive with barely any people at all. Hell yeah, quiet metro, with our pick of seats.
The Metro.
French rest stops. I love seeing everyone crowded around the tall coffee-drinking tables and espresso machines, the only time you’ll see French folks enjoying a quick, standing coffee. The bathrooms are spacious and generally humane (clean-ish, useful, baby changing stations). You can buy essentials like baguettes and cheese and pâté and Haribos.
A cheese-based meal of raclette or croziflette after a long day of skiing or ski-related activity (like reading next to the slopes from the safety of a bar or cafe).
Walking out of your home to find out there’s a brocante or vide grenier taking place on your block, full of old treasures.
Becoming pals with a butcher or baker or bar owner, knowing I’ve become a regular, enjoying the odd free drink or treat because we’re pals now.
Making friends with other customers because I’m a regular, especially if they’re nothing like me, especially if they tell me my French is good.
When I’m at a French function, and a song comes on or someone references a well-known jingle, and everyone at the function joins in singing because they all know it, and I’m happy for them even though I have no idea what they’re singing or where it’s from, but they all seem so happy, so it’s still a nice moment.
Enjoying oysters and white wine at a market even though it’s not even noon yet, and despite the fact that the last time I had oysters, I became so sick, I thought I saw god.

The prevalence of small book shops. The smell of these book shops (it’s what book stores smelled like in the US before Barnes & Nobel eradicated that model and scent). The way the book shops will wrap your book in beautiful paper, usually for free.
When the waiter leaves you alone.
When the waiter notices you need bread and brings it without you needing to ask.
Manifestations. Yeah, they can be annoying if you need to get to the other side of one. But the right to assemble and disagree with the powers that be is looking mighty fine at the moment.
Pharmacie visits that end without even having to reach for my wallet (well, except for my Carte Vitale, but you know what I mean).
Same for Doctor’s appointments.
Same for giving birth, having surgery, having an emergency.
You know that day that always comes in March, the first day when the sun is out but you can actually feel the heat on your skin? The day when the cold no longer sneaks past your coat and into your heart? Everyone flocks to the terraces and basks in the rays, no matter that the high is only like 62 F. Even if you’re not out at a cafe, if you happen to walk or ride by, the joy is intoxicating and for a few moments, all is right with the world. I freaking live for that day each year. Also, yes, this is a metaphor.

If you take a step back, most of these little moments of joy are all thanks to food and socialism, with a little sunshine tucked in here and there. Could that be the secret to happiness? Food, socialism, and sunshine? One could do much worse. But let’s not think about that right now.

Let me know what I missed. Let’s crowdsource a big list to draw from when we’re feeling down.

Shelby

IMAGE CREDIT: all photos copyright Shelby Chambers

You’ll find our valued Contributor list →

Introducing Contributor, Selby Chambers

Immerse yourself in all of Selby’s articles on his Contributor page.

Four Notes and a Nation

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Mon, 04 May 2026 18:35:49 GMT

You know it the moment you hear it.

Do. Sol. La. Mi.

Four notes. Less than three seconds. And yet, if you have ever stood on a platform in a French train station, waiting for an announcement about your train, your delayed train, your train that has inexplicably decided to go somewhere else entirely, those four notes are already inside you. They are the sound of France in transit. The sound of attends (wait). The sound of something about to happen.

I was listening to a BBC4 programme recently about the man who made them, and I have been thinking about it ever since. Because the story of those four notes turns out to be one of the more extraordinary tales in French cultural life. It involves a sound designer, a railway company willing to back him, two anonymous female singers who have kept their secret for twenty years, a rock legend holding his iPhone up to a train station speaker, a houseboat studio on the Thames, and eventually, inevitably, a lawsuit in Paris. Not bad for three seconds of audio.

The brief: give France’s railway a sound people will feel something about

Michaël Boumendil – creator of extraordinary railway station chimes (amongst other things). By Sixième Son (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The man at the centre of the story is Michaël Boumendil, founder of a Paris-based sound branding agency called Sixième Son. In 2004, the SNCF came to him with a problem. The SNCF had always used a jingle, but it was the old one, the Do-Me-Sol of the 1990s, and it had gone stale. The company was going through a full rebrand, new logo and all, and the sonic identity needed to keep pace. Boumendil’s brief was simple: give France’s national railway a sound that people would actually feel something about.

Before a single note was composed, Sixième Son did something quite unusual. According to The Beauty of Transport, the agency put SNCF’s own officials through a kind of mental retraining, pushing them to think about ‘identity’ rather than music. What does this company stand for? What should it feel like to travel with us? Only once those questions had been answered did the composition begin.

Boumendil later told Canal+ that what he wanted was simplicity: “four notes, with a rather feminine voice, would make a strong impression.” He was reportedly inspired by a Calogero song, “En apesanteur,” which means weightlessness, and has a floating, suspended quality to it. You can hear that in the final result, if you listen for it. There is something unresolved about those four notes, something that leans forward, that makes you pay attention. Which is, of course, exactly the point.

The notes were recorded using two female voices. To this day, nobody knows who those women are. They chose anonymity from the start, and in twenty years neither has ever come forward. Which, if you think about it, is its own kind of discipline.

The new jingle launched on 15 March 2005. France simply took it in, without fanfare, without fuss. It became, very quickly, part of the furniture of daily life.

Listen via video below:

“One of the successes of this sound DNA is, without a doubt, the power of what we created together with Sixieme Son. Today, everybody recognises those 4 little notes and knows automatically that we are speaking about SNCF. It says who we are and what we stand for.” Patrick Ropert MD Gare & Connections, SNCF

One decision, no focus groups, and a man willing to carry the can

What most people don’t know is how close it came to never happening. The man who brought Boumendil in was Bernard Emsellem, SNCF’s director of communications, and the decision of what to do with Boumendil’s proposal rested entirely with him. He realised that something this innovative would almost certainly be killed by a focus group. The rail industry is conservative by nature, and asking a room full of people whether they’d like to replace a familiar chime with a human voice singing four notes in a minor key was unlikely to produce a standing ovation.

So Emsellem simply decided. No user testing, no research on acceptability, no committee. Just a single person putting himself out on a limb, knowing that if it went wrong, he would be carrying the can entirely alone. As The Beauty of Transport puts it, sometimes you have to lead opinion, not follow it.

It did not go wrong.

The almost absurd numbers

Here is what twenty years of four notes will do for you. According to Sixième Son’s own research, 98% of French people recognise the SNCF jingle. Ninety-four per cent associate it correctly with the brand. Eighty-one per cent say they feel genuinely ‘attached’ to it. Attached. To a train station sound logo.

It plays between 100,000 and 150,000 times a day, roughly 2.3 times per second, somewhere in France, right now as you read this. Do. Sol. La. Mi. It has been updated three times (in 2005, 2009 and 2013), each time modernising the production while leaving those four notes completely intact. It has won more sonic branding awards than any other sound identity in the world. It is, by any measure, the most recognised piece of French audio that isn’t the Marseillaise.

The numbers are just the beginning.
Behind the paywall: the Pink Floyd guitarist who heard those four notes at a provincial train station and held his iPhone up to the speaker, the lawsuit that followed across three French courts over six years, the woman who has been the voice of the SNCF since 1981 and once quietly rewrote an announcement because it made no grammatical sense, and what those four notes are actually doing, musically, that makes them so distinctly and irreducibly French.
This is part of the MyFrenchLife™ French Culture Deep-Dive Collection,
exclusively available to Annual subscribers and Mighty Supporters.

16.17 - Paris Has Its Reasons

Judy MacMahon—Fondatrice — Sat, 02 May 2026 08:01:39 GMT

Today at a Glance: Your FREE weekly newsletter

Bonjour mes ami(e)s !

It’s wonderful to have you back here with me today. Bienvenue !

In this newsletter, you’ll find these wonderful fresh articles taking you to France beyond the cliché
Don’t miss our new Contributor focus feature - Victor Coutard this week.
Don’t miss the PAID subscriber edition of le Bulletin in your inbox: “16.17.a - The Long Way to Paris“ It’s not too late to upgrade & read it←
À bientôt !
Warmly,
Judy - 2.5.2026

1. This week’s Contributor: Victor Coutard

We’re adding Contributor profiles to the list of the Contributor Page on MyFrenchLife.org — one by one.

Profile #3 - Victor Coutard

Victor Coutard — bilingual writer, Paris-born, but Loire Valley at heart, and the voice behind How to Read France, a Substack devoted to the France that exists beyond the showcase.

Ready to find his work? Come with me…

Head to MyFrenchLife.org and select Zine from the menu.
Click “READ THIS FIRST” and find our full list of contributors.
Scroll to Victor. Click Explore.

You’ll find his full profile there — and everything he’s written for us.

Bonne lecture,
Judy

PS: Any difficulty navigating? DM me or leave a comment below.

Victor’s Substack is: How to Get Lost→

2. MyFrenchLife™ Magazine: new articles

a) Interview: Tilar Mazzeo — Part One
by Judy MacMahon

This interview was conducted face-to-face and is now being republished due to reader request.

Tilar Mazzeo is a cultural historian who has thrown her heart and expertise into uncovering the stories of French luxury brands and the people behind them.”
Her first book,
-The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It, made the New York Times best-selling list.
- She has also written The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume and is working on
- The Ritz at War: Luxury in Occupied Paris…”

EDITOR NOTE: Since this interview, Tilar has written several very popular and award-winning books. The list is contained in Part One of this interview.

Tilar researches the historical period, the brand, its industry, and its technology and science, and weaves this information effortlessly into a narrative. Her elegant writing helps bring the characters alive and evokes a true sense of time and place.
Tilar has also written guidebooks on California wine country and is an associate professor of English at Colby College, Maine…”

b) Interview: Tilar Mazzeo — Part Two
by Judy MacMahon

Part Two - the continuation of my interview with Tilar:

How did you start writing The Secret of Number 5 and The Ritz?
It’s funny how one thing leads to another as a writer. So I had just written The Widow Clicquot and two guidebooks: one on the back lane wineries of California, one on Napa. I was thinking about what my next project would be.
For the Napa book, I spent three months wine tasting every day, and your nose is something that gets trained with such regular use. At the end of that period, I happened to be at a friend’s house who was an amateur collector of vintage perfumes. He started pulling out really interesting, older, rare perfumes…”

c) 20 Streets of Paris #4: Boulevard de Sébastopol
by Pierre Guernier

Image credits appear in the article: Pierre Guernier

A journey of discovery through Parisian history, one street sign at a time - Let’s go!”
Stand at Place du Châtelet and look north: a long, straight boulevard cuts through Paris like a knife.
This is Boulevard de Sébastopol, one of Baron Haussmann’s grand creations of the mid-nineteenth century. Its name honours the capture of Sevastopol in 1855 during the Crimean War, a victory inscribed not in marble but into the very geography of the city.”

d) Ce n’est pas une Librairie, Part Two
by Judy MacMahon

Dynasties are one answer (see Part One - last week). But Paris isn’t only about dynasties. There’s another kind of bookshop story happening right now, and it’s just as radical.”
It starts with a law. The law nobody talks about.”
Here is the thing about France that the rest of the world tends to miss, partly because France itself doesn’t shout about it. In 1981, the Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, pushed through a piece of legislation so quietly audacious that its consequences are still reverberating forty-odd years later…”

e) The Hidden Chapel of Cluny
by Patricia Russo

Most people walk right past it - or don’t even know it exists.”
Even inside the Musée de Cluny, with its soaring Lady and the Unicorn tapestries and the ancient Roman baths, this little chamber sits tucked away like a secret - a quiet pause, a pocket of stillness and breath.”
I found it several years ago as Paris continued to reveal herself to me - or it found me. The air changed when I stepped inside. The room was small, quiet, almost shy. And yet the space felt full, as if the stones themselves remembered every prayer ever whispered into them. Oh my goodness, do I love discovering spaces that feel like this.”
This is the hidden chapel of Cluny…” wrote Patricia Russo

3. Merci mille fois

“Thank you so much for supporting my work and reading ‘le Bulletin’.

Merci mille fois d’être ici, mes ami(e)s. Thanks for being here.

This week I’ve been thinking about my republished interview with Tilar Mazzeo — a cultural historian who researches French luxury the way a detective works a case, following the scent until the whole story opens up. Both parts are here today, and worth a slow read with a good coffee.

Then there’s Pierre Guernier on Boulevard de Sébastopol — one street, one Crimean victory pressed into the geography of Paris forever. And Patricia Russo, who found a tiny medieval chapel tucked inside the Musée de Cluny — a room so quiet, she says the stones themselves remember every prayer. I love that Patricia finds these places and brings them to us.

Victor Coutard is this week’s contributor focus — Paris-born, Loire Valley at heart, writing the France that exists beyond the showcase. If you don’t know his work yet, I think you’ll be glad you found it.

And if you’re curious about the 1981 law that quietly saved the French bookshop — that piece, along with a great deal more, is waiting for you in the paid edition. Whenever you’re ready.

À bientôt,
Judy x
judy@myfrenchlife.org

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