French-Food
Tartiflette Recipe
By Conery Hoffman Food is always on the top of my list when traveling and some of my favorite memories include what was on the menu. During college, I spent a weekend in Manigod, a commune located in eastern France. While speaking with a friend about visiting this area, memories from long ago came flooding back of a rather simple, hearty dish made of potatoes, reblochon cheese, lardons and onions that is eaten - and celebrated - in the Alps. It turned out my friend is from this area of France and is also quite the tartiflette master. You can imagine what happened next. I asked him to make it.
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8 French-language comics that helped me learn French
By Matthew Jackson, AF staff Much like Barbie once said of math class, French is tough! I took class after class in a long trajectory from middle school to college and wasn’t confident enough to read a full novel until somewhere around my second college-level course. But during that period where I was still trying to sort out my passé composés from my imparfaits, and when the subjonctif was still the dreaded word du jour, I found myself reading a lot of French comics. Why comics? Well, they’re reliably understandable, for starters. The visual aspect helped me follow the narrative even when I didn’t pick up on every piece of dialogue or description. Picking up an issue of Tintin was also far less intimidating than diving into a Camus or a Collette - which is not to imply that comics are trivial, just that there’s a lower barrier to entry. When Stendahl felt out of reach, Hergé did not. I still maintain that delving into the world of comics is one of the best ways for easing yourself into a new language, and given that France has a huge market for the medium, there’s all manner of things to choose from without limiting yourself to superheroes and spectacle. A whole slew of genres, styles, and stories live under the label of bande dessiné and it’s a world worth venturing into if you’re curious about putting your French skills to the test. Here are some of the comics and graphic novels that helped me practice my French - without feeling like homework!
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Indulge in some French comfort food
Comfort food is an almost universally known concept. You have a hard day, you come home and you eat a gallon of mac and cheese and maybe you just feel a little bit better. Or maybe you had something a little more interesting to sate your hunger. If you identify with this, maybe it’s time you learned a little bit more about French comfort food!
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