Table of Contents for this Episode
Category: French Food & Wine
590 Parisian Desserts and Other Delights with Aleksandra Crapanzano (March 22)
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Welcome to Episode 590
Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 590, cinq cent quatre-vingt-dix.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: Aleksandra Crapanzano
Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Aleksandra Crapanzano about her love of French food, from her childhood in Paris to her books… from her childhood in Paris to her books on French cakes and chocolates, we discuss the simplicity of French home cooking, her favorite spots in Paris, and the impact of climate change on vineyards in France.
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If you’d like to support the podcast and skip the ads, you’ll find the link in the show notes, and all my tours and services are at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Magazine segment
Annie Sargent: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Aleksandra today, I’ll discuss farm-to-table in France, and will cell phones be banned from schools in France?
You can keep exploring France with me by browsing all previous episodes of, at joinusinfrance.com/episodes.
And don’t forget to grab your free weekly recap of the best stories, tips, and hidden gems. Sign up at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
Bonjour, Aleksandra Crap- Crapanzano, and welcome to Join in… Hold on. Let me try this again.
[00:02:00]
Paris Roots and Food Memories
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Aleksandra Crapanzano, and welcome to Join Us in France.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Hi, Annie. Thanks for having me.
Annie Sargent: Wonderful to talk to you about French food today. We love French food! And you grew up partly in Paris, right?
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I did. You know, I, I spent a lot of summers there, and then when I was 10 years old, uh, my family moved there, and I, I went to middle school there. So,
And my parents actually ended up staying off and on for 16 years. Um, By that point, I was, you know, in college and beyond.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes, yes.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I would go back, I would go back for Thanksgiving and Christmas and and, uh, all the, you know, Easter, summer, worked there. It was second home.
Annie Sargent: Wonderful, wonderful.
Cheese and Bakery Rituals
Annie Sargent: So, i-i- are there some favorite French foods that you just, that, that you just love, things that you go to every time you come back to France?
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Absolutely. You know, the first thing I do when I get to France is I, I go directly from Charles de Gaulle. I go straight to my favorite cheese shop, Berthillon, which opens very, very early. It is on the corner of the uh, Rue du Grenelle and Boulevard Raspail, and it is, it is this perfect jewel of a cheese shop. And, um, by the way, I have to interrupt you for one second. Um, yeah. Can you… Everybody should come the other way. Are you going… Are- You are editing, am I correct?
Annie Sargent: Yes.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Okay, phew, because, um, okay.
Annie Sargent: We might have some interruptions.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: We might… Yes. That w- there’s, there has work been going on. Anyway, I was going to say, so I will start over with that. Uh, The first thing I do when I get to Paris is I go straight from Charles de Gaulle to my favorite cheese shop uh, Barthélémy, which happens to open early in the morning, so it is, it’s the perfect first stop.
And just [00:03:00] walking into that cheese shop and smelling all of those cheeses is, is like an… it’s instant Paris to me. It’s instant. I used to go there with my father twice a week. We would bring the dog. We would all go in and, and just smell before we even started buying cheeses.
Annie Sargent: Yes, and where is this wonderful shop?
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Barthélémy is on the corner of the uh, Rue du Grenelle and Boulevard Raspail.
Annie Sargent: Very good.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: It’s, It is right in, kind of right in the seventh. Um, Absolutely incredible. Same family. Um, All these years later, I still go in there and, and know everybody there. It’s, It’s an incredible place.
And then once I have my cheese, you know, then this is before everybody else is awake, so this is always my first stop. I go to um, Poilane, the bakery on, on Rue Cherche Midi, which is the street I grew up on. And, um, They also open early. So, I get my, I get my bread, I get my miche, and I get a, a little tarte aux pommes. And I’ve got my cheese, and I’ve got my bread, and I’ve got my tarte aux pommes, and I get some of the punition, the little cookies they have. And, And that is my, my [00:04:00] crazy breakfast of the things that I’ve been craving.
Annie Sargent: That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful.
Writing Gateaux in Lockdown
Annie Sargent: So you’re the author of a couple of books. One is called Chocolat, and another one called Gateau. Tell us a little bit about these two books.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: So I had… I had written two books previously about, um, one called The London Cookbook, another one called Eat, Cook, LA, about culinary change in cities, and I was fascinated by that. And, and I, And I had thought I might do s- do something else on French cooking, and then the pandemic happened, and I found myself trapped in Connecticut. Um, I mean, I was lucky to be there. We were all. But, um,
But I missed Paris, I missed France, I missed my friends, I missed the food, I missed the language, I missed the taste. I missed everything during the pandemic. And as somebody who’s always had kind of one foot in each country, there was something, there was a, an almost primal upset that I couldn’t get to France. You know, the borders were all closed. Nobody could get anywhere. And, um, and I, And I missed my friends.
And, I decided it’s [00:05:00] going to be a short pandemic. I am going to- …It’s like the other pandemic, right?
Annie Sargent: You decided that, eh?
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I thought, you know what? You know, we’re talking two or three weeks. I thought, “I’m going to bake a cake, French cake, every single day,” and, and basically do one of those small little books on French cakes that you buy at the front of Barnes & Noble and, you know, just something, a kind of small, beautiful book. And, um, And somehow by, you know, day 25 of 250 of the pandemic, I had 250 cakes, and, and I had a big book. But,
Everyday French Home Baking
Aleksandra Crapanzano: But what happened over that time was, I realized that, you know, the thing that Americans didn’t know about French baking, because there’s so many books on patiss- patisserie, there’s so many, you know, Instagram images on patisserie. There’s s- There’s so much lore and legend about it, um, and we all love it.
But the reality, having spent so much of my childhood there, was that the French do bake at home, and they bake very, very simply. They will bake yogurt cakes. [00:06:00] They’ll bake, you know, a, a, their version of a pound cake, you know, a, a four fourths. They will, They will bake, cake salé sa- savory cakes. They will
Annie Sargent: Crepe.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: They will… Of course, exactly. But they will, they will as- th- that there is the French, as you know, be- I mean, the, there’s, uh, People believe in eating well every day, and there is also another side, which is that there’s a sense of frugality, a sense of, you know, of, of time-honored recipes, of uh, you know, not always going for the trend, which I think is a very American phenomenon. But- But recipes that date back hundreds of years, um, and are still beloved.
And I do, I, I do believe, and I share this now, but I do believe that, you know, that the French place extraordinary, how can I say this, importance and love on, on the recipes that have stood the test of time, that then become back pocket recipes that are, you know, you learn how to make a yogurt cake in maternelle. You, You know how to make a basic French cake. You know how to make um, a little lemon glaze or lemon syrup for a cake. You know how to do these things from a very early age, and once you have that basic [00:07:00] repertoire of kind of tried and true classics, then it’s about improvisation.
And so I discovered that really there, there wasn’t, I did a lot of research, and there really wasn’t a book on, on the cakes that, that the French do make at home.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, your everyday stuff.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Fi- If you don’t see it in madeleine, because those are actually cake batters, they look like cookies or pastries, but they are. And,
And so that, that suddenly became a mission, so that what started as a very small book suddenly morphed into a sense of, wait a second, like, I do want to include nonnette, which go back to the 13th century. I do want to include, you know, these extraordinary things that have, that have stood the test of time, that are still blueprint recipes for pretty much everything today. So, So the book, you know, and I love research, But what it,
What it also was for me personally during the pandemic is it was a way to, um, to read all of these French books about culinary history, to read all of these French cookbooks, to immerse myself in, in a world that was far away, but, but very intimate to me.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes.
Demystifying Patisserie Pros
Annie Sargent: It’s true that French people cook [00:08:00] in very different ways than what is portrayed uh, even through some wonderful American TV show programs about cooking.
We just don’t have the time. We don’t, you know… Like, French women never make croissant at home. I mean, I shouldn’t say never, but why would you?
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Exactly.
Annie Sargent: It- They take hours to make, and you can buy them anywhere you go outside. Like, there are people that get paid to make very good croissant and chocolatine and, and all the rest of these things that take for hours to rise and to, and to be prepared, you know?
We don’t make our own bread at home very much. I mean, there are… I have a cousin who uses her bread machine every day. Um, But she’s the exception. And I have a bread machine. I use it perhaps three times a year.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: If that. I mean, you know, people, people in France do think, do think Americans are crazy when we start, you know, carrying sourdough around and things like that. But I think that was the other side is I [00:09:00] really wanted to, um, to demystify this idea that the French are either born knowing how to make a mille-feuille…
Annie Sargent: No, we’re not!!!
Aleksandra Crapanzano: … You know, or-
Annie Sargent: Or come h-
Aleksandra Crapanzano: No, or come home after, you know, a, a, a work day, maybe a shorter work day given the rules than ours, but, but a, but a real work day.
And, and, And whip up a, you know, whip up a very complicated pastry.
And so I think the, you know, the, the French really do leave certain things to the professionals, right? To the to the pe- patissier who have started a stage at 13 and have worked their way up in a small bakery somewhere else and, and, you know, maybe they get to Paris and maybe then they work for many years there. Then eventually when they’re in their, you know, middle age, they open up uh, their own place. If they’re lucky, that’s rare.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: But it’s years of training and years of specialty. And, And I think that the reason why so many Americans are, are intimidated by elements of French cooking is that the assumption is that all the cooking is the professional cooking. And as you and I know, that’s, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
[00:10:00] So I wanted, I really wanted a book that was accessible, and I think, um, you know, that also fit with the pandemic because we were all kind of craving that. We were… Nobody was going out. The ingredient supply was less.
It wasn’t my, you know… I talked about the choice of illustrating the book or photographing it, and you know, this, the reason I chose illustrations was originally partly because of the pandemic and, and, you know, knowing that we might not be able to shoot. But, But I realized we could if we needed to.
It really was that I wanted a book too that, that didn’t have photographs that were so perfectly styled and photographed and you know, made by, you know, even if they were supposed to be simple, they were made by a pro and decorated by a food stylist.
I wanted illustrations because I felt like that would free up the readers to, to not feel like they had to compete with a, a perfect image.
I hate… I, that’s the one thing. I love looking at cookbooks with photographs, but I don’t like the idea that people feel they need to compete, because having done that, I know how much, you know…
you know, For the, [00:11:00] my LA cookbook, we had you know, five people doing you know, food styling and things like that, it was, you know, and photographing, and it’s a production. It’s not just comes out of a home kitchen.
Annie Sargent: Right. W- When I wrote my own pandemic cookbook, and um, my idea was very much like yours. It, But it was um, general French food. You know, it’s, um, It’s called Join Us at the Table, and it’s like Join us in France, Join us at the table, okay?
And, and then, uh, It’s about everyday French foods that anybody can make at home. I,
You know, I’m not in the Julia Child camp with people who spend six hours making a one dish. Uh, I’m sure sh- she, she was brilliant, uh, and I’m sure she had a lot of good ideas, but, you know, when you’re a mom in France, you don’t have six hours to make dinner. You have an hour maybe. So, and then you have to feed your family.
And it’s true that French people eat at home a lot. We cook at home a lot, a lot more than [00:12:00] your average uh, French family, but we don’t spend hours and hours and hours. It’s, uh… You can take a lot of shortcuts in baking as in cooking.
One recipe that we didn’t mention that’s classic French uh, dessert is the clafoutis because if… you know, I have a fig tree, so it’s… Typically, the clafoutis would be with apricots, but I have a fig tree. So I ju- I just… It, it happens that I have lots and lots and lots of figs. So I put them in a clafoutis. You know?
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Exactly. And, and I do… And actually for my new book, I… for Chocolat, I do a chocolate clafoutis, which is absolutely divine. Totally, uh, j- just rich and wonderful and incredible and, and y- So sometimes I’ll do it with raspberries. Sometimes I’ll do it with pears, which I love. I love the combination of pear and chocolate. The,
The memory, it took me a long time to really fall in love with clafoutis again because my school in Paris always had clafoutis in the cafeteria, and it was so horrible. It was like a, a rubbery block of- … of refrigerated mass with cherries, and I still, I still cannot… Am to- totally traumatized by that. I cannot eat a [00:13:00] clafoutis with cherries, so I always make it with apricots, perfect; figs, divine. Um, but I, but I really… I, I worked very hard to, uh, on the clafoutis recipe. So kind of finding, finding the magic of that, and now I’m completely hooked.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. It, it… You have to, You have to let it cool, but you shouldn’t keep it in the fridge. Like, so It has to be eaten that night essentially is, is the trick, or that day.
So you make it, you let it cool for an hour, an hour and a half, and then you eat it. By the end, By the time the meal is done, it’s ready to eat. If you put it in the fridge and all that, it’s, it’s going to be… n- not the same.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: No, it’s a li- hor- horrendous.
Annie Sargent: It is. In that way, it’s, it’s like sushi. Sushi, once you have refrigerated it, it’s not the same.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Not the same at all.
Annie Sargent: Right.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: No. Exactly. So, so there is… I am very proud of the clafoutis recipes in, in both, in both Gâteau and Chocolat.
Annie Sargent: Very good.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: And I don’t know how I got a clafoutis into Gâteau because it’s not a cake, except I think I made a, I made a couple exceptions in that book. For, for things that, you know, were-
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it, it, it’s, It’s totally fine to… You know, it’s whatever French people make all the time.
And I [00:14:00] must admit, with the images, I do like photographs in cookbooks, but e- for my own cookbook, I’m… I did all the photography myself. I, I am a… I enjoy photography. I, I’ve done some challenging photography in my, uh, in my life. And so to me, taking food photos was going to be fairly easy. Um, But I realized that styling it is not so easy. And so if you look at the photos in my cookbook, I spent as much time waiting for the light to be just right, setting, you know, setting the… Because I did everything outside. I didn’t have a, a, a, you know, lighting or anything like that. All my photography is outside. And so I just put everything outside. I had the flowers just right. And anyway, it was a lot of work getting the photos to look as nice as they do, and for everyday life in France, even when I have family over, I don’t go through all that trouble, no.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Of course not, no, and I actually went to graduate school in film, so I mean, I’ve [00:15:00] shot, I’ve shot movies. So, I… The, like, to me, the, the process of, of, of lighting is, is, is known, and I also know how complicated it is and expensive and hard.
But even, even just doing Instagram, you know, one always runs out of, you know, a new, a new designed plate or a new this. I mean, there’s… You really do need somebody to to come in and help at that respect. But, um, but I did want to… I will say, going back to, to this, it is a series.
Why Paris Loves Chocolate
Aleksandra Crapanzano: The first one is Gâteau, and I, I knew immediately that I, you know, as… Not immediately, but I knew very early in writing Gâteau that I, I would do Chocolat next because to me, there’s a particularly Parisian… The Parisian love of chocolate runs so deep.
I mean, and it was one of the things in my childhood that, you know, because I am a chocolate lover, just blew me away from day one, was, was this idea that I would… I would take my dog out. I had a incredible uh, Bouvier. I’ve always had the same breed of dogs. Um, He was from Normandy. He was 125 pounds.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, big guys.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Big guy. He knew his way around Paris, so even at the age of 10, my parents could, [00:16:00] you know, let me go off with Romeo. I think I was about 90 pounds, so he was bigger. I mean, a extraordinary, extraordinary dog, and, and we would just, we would explore the city together, and, and there was a chocolate, an incredible chocolate shop every two minutes, and I would just look in the windows and smell and go inside and get a truffle or whatever it was. And, and,
And I really, I would watch people shop in Paris. I would watch people go in and look at the chocolates before they were going to, to choose what they wanted, and the at- and, and the attention and the exquisiteness of, of what was being sold, and, and this extraordinary belief that, that you can eat something stunningly beautiful, really beautifully crafted over… with, with care and detail. As an everyday pleasure. You don’t, You don’t gorge, you don’t have 20 of them, but you- but the idea of a little, a little something chocolate every day, um, obviously struck home for me.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: and, you know, and the at- The way that every single chocolate maker… Because, you know, I did grow up in the 6th, and the 6th has, you [00:17:00] know, I mean, Coup Bon Apétit, I mean, they’re incredible chocolate shops.
Annie Sargent: Today still. Yeah.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Today still. Thank God, yes. And, um, And so I had, I had… I, I knew the differences between all of these different places and, and I really wanted to write something about that, that love of really good dark chocolate. And, um,
And again, going back to the simplicity of, you know, chocolate is incredibly easy to work with. It’s, you know, a, A great chocolate cake is four or five ingredients. Um, you know, There are nine chocolate mousse recipes in the book because some of them are eggy, and some of them are creamy, and some of them are so light that they just have egg whites. That, that there’s a, you know, that you, You start out wanting, learning one mousse, but then you quickly realize that you can kind of segue into another one and a different kind.
Easy Truffles and Flavor Twists
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Um, but, uh, but I did, I did want to… I did n- I did know I wanted to focus on chocolate because, again, I, I, I think there are things like chocolate truffles, people go and spend a fortune on chocolate truffles. They’re the easiest thing in the world to make.
Annie Sargent: They’re really easy to make, yes.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I mean, it’s ganache. If you know how to make a really good ganache, just, which is, you know, cream and chocolate, you know how to make a, a truffle.
Annie Sargent: Well, you [00:18:00] have to roll it in, in-
Aleksandra Crapanzano: You have to roll it. You can use a little melon baller and then roll it in your hand, and then you can just roll it in a little bit of cocoa powder or a little bit of, of, if you want to go crazy, a little bit of edible gold dust or a little bit of sparkling sugar, if you feel like. Just powdered sugar or nothing at all, you know, just something so that your hands…
Annie Sargent: Or coconut flakes.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Or coconut flakes, or some, some praliné nuts, which is one of my favorite.
Annie Sargent: Mm. No, that would be good. That would be good.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: That’d be good, right? In which case, then you add a little bit of Frangelico to the, to the ganache and kind of… Really, I, I think my mission is to kind of teach people, you know, here is, here is what you can do to start with, and then feel free. Add some crème de cassis if you want to. Add some raspberries if you want to.
Annie Sargent: Do what you like with it.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: What you like. Take the basic recipe here, you know yeah… infuse, infuse the cream with some fresh lavender and, and strain it… and-
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Savory Cakes and Family Specialties
Annie Sargent: And I have found with my, with the women around me, so my sister, my sister-in-law, some friends, that they go through [00:19:00] phases. So I’m not much of a baker. I like to cook, but I don’t bake as often. But my sister and my sister-in-law in particular like to bake, and they go through phases. Right now she’s in her phase of the… all the, um, uh, the savory cakes.
So for lunch today, completely happenstance, she just said, “Can I come over? I need to, I need you to…” And she’s looking for a dog. And so she wanted me to talk with her to this breeder of uh, of, uh, little uh, corgis, uh, who’s in the Var. So that’s kind of far away from Toulouse. So, uh,
So we talked to this woman for an hour and a half. And because I know dogs, she was like, “Yeah, yeah, let’s…” But she brought her little uh, savory cake. Uh,
And she, And she’s told me, last week she told me she tried another one, so she tries, like, different ones until she nails the savory cake to end all savory cakes.
And then she’ll tell me- … “That’s how you make it. That’s… Don’t make it any other way.” “That’s how you make it from now on.”
Aleksandra Crapanzano: [00:20:00] Love it. I love it. That’s essentially what I do as a food writer. I mean, it is, you, you kind of, you get a bee in your bonnet, and you, you decide you’re going to master a recipe, and, and then you do it. But I, I d- I w- I will tell you, definitely don’t tell your sister, because she’s on her, she’s on her own roll. But, uh-
Annie Sargent: Yeah
Aleksandra Crapanzano: But one one One of the savory cakes in Gâteau that I absolutely love is, is I decided I would… You know, I love caprese salads from Italy. And I, and I, What I really like doing is I like that last bite where you have a, you have a little bit of bread, and you just run that, you know, heel of bread across your finished plate, and you get, you know, a little bit of the tomato, a little bit of the mozzarella, a little bit of the basil, a little bit of the olive oil, the salt, the pepper. And, And you get the bread, and it’s so, so good. That last bite is always so good. So, I ch- I took that idea, and I made a savory cake that is a, it’s a caprese savory cake where you roast the little cherry tomatoes so they lose some of their moisture and don’t ruin the cake. And you’ve got the mozzarella and the basil, and it’s absolutely divine.
Annie Sargent: Nice.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: [00:21:00] Yeah. So, so that’s, That’s a great summer one. But my husband loved savory cakes, and it, you know, the problem with being married to a food writer is, you know, if your, if your wife was, in my case, you know, if I was doing all of these cakes, if I, you know, my, our son who was playing soccer would come home and want, you know, at some point a s- a steak or a hamburger or something. And I’d be like, “Well, I’ve… Yes, I’ve been cooking all day. I’ve cooked, you know, four different cakes.” But, um, But the savory cakes really did save us during the pandemic too because they, y- you know, instead of sandwiches, which get incredibly tiresome-
Annie Sargent: Yeah
Aleksandra Crapanzano: … you know, a savory cake is essentially all the good things in a sandwich put into the batter and baked.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: So much better, right? So much better.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Canele Crepes and Potluck Traditions
Annie Sargent: One other cake that uh, that, uh, French people love uh, is the canelé, the, the canelé de Bordeaux. Uh, And they take a little bit of practice, which I have not completed. But, But they are [00:22:00] so delicious. And there are a lot of French women, like, uh, y- when, when your kids do sports in France, uh, it’s traditional that some of the moms will bring something for after the game, and one of the moms, we- everybody loved her because she made canelé. And those would disappear so fast, so, so fast, because they were really good. Like, and some of the parents beat the kids out of the way, “Let me have one, too.”
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I’ve always wanted a set of, uh, of copper canelé molds.
Annie Sargent: Yes. Uh, She made hers in silicone.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: She did? And they pop right out.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah. I asked her, um- try that… and it works very well. And then you have the women who specialize in the crepe. They can make a, you know, a mile-high pile of crepe in, in two hours, which I cannot do it. I find it tedious to make crepe. Um,
You have my sister-in-law who makes uh, lemon pies all the time. Like, she just… she can make it in her sleep. So we kind of get to know who does what in a family, and you will just ask, “Oh, there’s a [00:23:00] get-together. Why don’t you bring this?” And, And then we all eat well, because you bring your specialty.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Exactly. It’s so, it’s absolutely true. And I… So I have been bringing everybody chocolate for the last three years.
Annie Sargent: Well, that’s good, because you c- you like to make chocolate. That’s wonderful.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I do, I do. And I think, um, you know, And it’s interesting, because I’ve, I’ve also consulted in the restaurant world a little bit, and, you know, people, people always say in the restaurant world, the one thing you can never take off a menu is the chocolate dessert. The people, particularly here in the States, will get angry if, if they want a chocolate soufflé and it’s not on the menu and you’ve switched to something fantastic. There’s a, There’s an incredible sense of betrayal, because chocolate is such a, you know, it’s a, it’s a passion, it’s a craving, it’s…
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: … it’s something, it’s, It’s something sacred on menus.
Village Chocolatier Showstoppers
Annie Sargent: And even our, uh, the little village where I live n- near Toulouse, we don’t have a lot of businesses in the village, but we have a chocolate maker. And he’s big enough that, uh, at the… when I went to the chocolate La Foire du Chocolat, et [00:24:00] c’était chocolat… Vin et Chocolat et Terroir, I think it was called. He was there. He had a stand there, and I was like, “Oh, Saint Lucas, my village.” And, uh, and, uh, um, eh, he, he… And I recognized it because he makes these beautiful little balls. They look like little globes, but they are beautifully painted. I don’t know how he does this. They look like… like Saturn or like-
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Oh, wow.
Annie Sargent: Gorgeous. They’re really expensive, though. They’re, They’re like three euros a piece, but they are so beautiful, so beautiful. Um, so-
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I wonder what he paints them with. Sometimes it’s a dust, you know, a colored dust.
Annie Sargent: … but it looks really spectacular. If you open a box of that, you would normally get a box of 12, no bigger than that, because they cost too much otherwise. But you put them in a box, and you open the box, and ooh, that’s like, it makes an impression. It’s almost too pretty to eat.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Yes.
Annie Sargent: And, And his other specialty is escargot, so the, the, the chocolate snails, which I happen to love, and he makes them white, milk, dark, [00:25:00] extra dark. He has a, you know, a variety.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: So good.
Freeze Dried Color Powders
Aleksandra Crapanzano: This definitely does not compete with that, but one thing I did start doing is to take um, freeze-dried fruit and put it in the food processor until it’s a very fine powder, and use that as a natural color. So sometimes if I’m doing, say, a lavender truffle, I will, I will blitz uh, freeze-dried blackberries so I get a beautiful purple powder, and then I’ll roll the truffle in that, and that distinguish what’s what. Or raspberries, and you’ve got, you know, you get a beautiful kind of fuchsia pink color, which is lovely, too. Um, So are blueberries. Whatever, whatever blue-
Madeleines for Surprise Guests
Annie Sargent: So let’s imagine you have some, you have three friends that are calling you. They’re saying, “We’re coming this afternoon.” What do you make them?
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Oh, you know, I would… I would make madeleine.
Annie Sargent: Aha.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: If they’re coming this afternoon. You know, madeleine is one of the great secrets, and this is one of my, you know, I- they’re so easy to make, and I do in fact use a silicone mold for madeleine, because I make them so often. Um, and, uh, you know, And I actually, I, sometimes I’ll do a [00:26:00] savory one, too, but, but generally I’ll make a, a classic madeleine or, you know, I’ll, I’ll play with flavors a little bit.
But, you know, the thing about madeleine that I love, and I love this at, also at the end of a dinner party, is you, you make the batter, let’s say, a day in advance or a couple hours in advance. You put it, fill the mold, stick it in the fridge, and all you need to do is turn on the oven, you know, preheat the oven quickly, and pop them in the oven for 10 to 14 minutes, depending on size, and you get, you get a fresh madeleine, which, as you know, is the only way to have a madeleine, is just out of the oven.
And I just find people, when you… And it’s such a simple pleasure, it’s so simple to make, but people are s- they’re so exquisite, madeleine. You know, you, you kind of, you close your eyes. You don’t speak while you’re eating a madeleine. You really do- … a moment of transcendence, right? So, so if, uh, That’s what I would probably do for an afternoon tea, or I would do financier. I also love financier.
Quick Treats for Kids
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I also love, nonnettes. You know, if I, If I had friends with kids coming over, I might do those little um, rose sablé that are… that are cornflakes [00:27:00] with chocolate. Do you know about those?
Annie Sargent: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Rose des sables, yeah.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Exactly, exactly. I was trying to translate it into English, but that’s much… I don’t think there is.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: That doesn’t work. But, um, It’s just basically melted chocolate with a little, you know, honey cream and, and you pour it over, room temperature, pour it over cornflakes, toss it, and just do little dollops on a piece of parchment. It sets and it’s, it’s, it takes two seconds.
Annie Sargent: It’s very good, yeah, and kids love those.
Yogurt Cake Glow Ups
Aleksandra Crapanzano: And then, you know, I do, um, I will do a chocolate yogurt cake, uh, you know, at the drop of a hat. I mean, it’s, it is essentially as easy as a normal yogurt cake. It’s got chocolate in it. But what I love to do to dress that up if I, if I ever suddenly w- want to turn it in to, say, uh, something after dinner, is I’ll do a quick, a quick syrup or glaze with a little bit of rum, a little bit of espresso, little bit of simple sugar, and and just give it a couple pricks on the top with a fork or a knife and, and drizzle that on. And suddenly you get the simplest, easiest chocolate cake, but, but infused with a beautiful kind of coffee rum flavor.
Annie Sargent: Absolutely delicious. And I do the same, but [00:28:00] with lemon. So I just, I just do lemon zest inside of my ca- cake batter, and then I, I press the lemons, add some um, v- very fine sugar, and just poke some holes, drizzle it over and… But you have to do it when the cake is still warm, coming out of the oven warm. Then you poke it, and then you put your stuff, your extra on top, and you let it cool just on… A lot of this has to do with timing, really.
Yogurt Cake Basics
Annie Sargent: It’s, you know, it, it, uh… The next day, the, the yogurt cake… We should maybe explain. A yogurt cake is called this because you start your recipe with a pot of yogurt. Whatever size yogurt, it’s your measuring cup, is what it is. So you’re going to do one of yogurt, two of sugar, two of flour, one of butter or oil, pretty much, and then a little packet of um, levure chimique. So that would be what? Levure chimique.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Uh, it’s like It’s a little baking powder, kind [00:29:00] of. It’s, yeah, it actually, The French one has a slight bit of baking soda in it, too.
Annie Sargent: And, And a bit of salt, and you mix all that by hand, and you bake it for 40 minutes, 45 minutes, depending on…
Oh, but you h- you have to do your, your pan en chemise, is how we call this. So you start with butter, lots of butter, and then you add flour. You run flours all over your buttered pan, and then you put your, um, your cake, and then it will come out beautifully. And y- when it’s cooling off, you add whatever little bit of extra you want, um, a glaze of some sort, or even without the glaze, it’s very good without.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: It’s so good. It’s so good. Oh, sugar. Yeah, I think you forgot sugar.
But yes, and you know what I do instead of, instead of en chemise, is I, I actually just use parchment paper.
Annie Sargent: Oh, we could do that, too.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Then you don’t, you have no cleanup. You know, you just, you just line the parchment paper. Uh, or, and, you know, And one of the… one of the things I think all my French friends do, nobody does here really is… is silicon. Again, it’s, you know, is, is their silicon, you know, nine by five, eight by four little baking tin.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: But basically I use [00:30:00] parchment. Um, So easy. And, and you could… But what I love, too, about these yogurt cakes is you can, you can, if you have some raspberries, you can add those. If you want to add, you can just, You can add pretty much anything you, any fruit that you want and, you know, as long as it’s not too wet, and chop it up and…
Annie Sargent: Exactly!
Aleksandra Crapanzano: … And any kind of zest you want. I love, I love what you do. I love the lemon one also.
Annie Sargent: The lemon or orange zest or some… My favorites are the, the lemony ones. The, that’s what I always… And, um, yeah, the, the lemon yogurt cake is my-
Citrus Twists and Yuzu
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Recently I started using a lot of yuzu, and I get, I get a concentrated yuzu juice.
Annie Sargent: Oh, yuzu, the citrus?!
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Yes.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes, yes.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Slight floral undertone, which I think is really beautiful. It’s, you know…
Annie Sargent: Yeah
Aleksandra Crapanzano: And right now in the States, suddenly we’re starting to, there’s much more interest in, in citrus, so we’re starting to get bergamots and, you know… And I love mandarins, too, obviously, and you know, clementines. But you can, but that’s the thing. It’s so fun, because you can just, you, you know how to make a yogurt cake from, from the age of, you know, five from, you know, say. And, and then, Then you just add literally whatever you want. You can add, you can even add, you know, whatever [00:31:00] spices you want, too.
Annie Sargent: You could. You can make it into a spice cake if you wanted to. I have never tried, but it’s worth a try. It should, you know, just a little bit of cinnamon. Don’t, Don’t go too, too heavy, but a little bit would be nice.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And you’re right.
Cooking with Kids in France
Annie Sargent: Growing up in France, you do this, like, with your grandparents. Uh, They will often, you’re coming over for the afternoon, you will make either crêpe or a yogurt cake typically. You know? That’s how it was in my family. And so you just make that with grandma and, or, or grandpa. In my case, it was always grandma, but it could be grandpa as well. And it, it’s not hard. Like, it’s, it, It’s not a lot of cleanup, it’s, It’s about spending time in the kitchen, really.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Mm-hmm. And, And also I think what’s just really important is for kids to learn early that they have agency, that they can make things, and, and to understand how things are made, right? And I think part of the horrendous kind of fast food world that we have in the, you know, in so much of the US is because making food seems like a mystery to so [00:32:00] many people also.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. It’s, it’s a m- It’s just a puzzling thing to me that a lot of people that I run into in the US, they have beautiful kitchens. They really have gorgeous kitchens, and they never cook.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I know. It’s true.
Annie Sargent: And then you have French people who have the tiniest little kitchens that don’t look like anything, you know, IKEA k- kitchens from 20 years ago, which is pretty much what I have. And, you know-And We cook all the time. So-
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Exactly, exactly.
You Only Need an Oven
Aleksandra Crapanzano: You don’t need anything.
Annie Sargent: You just need a good oven. I, I, I… You know, for me, you need a good oven that… Mine can do steam, and I really like that. That’s, that… Sometimes y- y- it’s good if you can do that. But there’s only a few recipes where really you need the steam. Otherwise, you can just throw a little water in, in the oven. you open the ga- the door and throw a little water in there and you’re good to go.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: And you got steam. I mean, I, I just put a… I’ll put a wide kind of pasta dish, you know, with water at the bottom.
Annie Sargent: You can do that, too. Yeah, you can do that, too.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Which is the same, same thing.
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Favorite France Beyond Paris
Annie Sargent: For the last few minutes of the conversation, I’d like to ask you if you have a [00:33:00] favorite part of France outside of Paris.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I do. Oh my gosh, I do, I do. So, uh, So many different places. Um, you know, When I was a kid, we, um, we rented a country house in Normandy, and I was a horseback rider throughout my life, so I would, I would ride in the weekends there. And, And the smell of, of, of apples and the apple orchards there, combined with, you know, having the most incredible dairy, I still remember just getting… You know, going to, to get fresh, fresh cream, fresh crème fraîche made and, and just the beauty of that.
I love the landscape there. Um, I love that you have sea air, but you’re also kind of in… You can be in woods in the country. Um, You know, recently I spent um, some time outside of… In Lyon and outside of Lyon. So I was doing some… I was in Hermitage, in Tain l’Hermitage, which was fascinating.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: And, um, and I, I do recommend that because I… It’s a, it’s an area that is slightly under touristic, I would say, for especially the vineyards there. Um, so you’re not, You’re not getting the same masses of people. Um, And Lyon has incredible food.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: It is such an [00:34:00] international city in its own, in its own right. Um, not, Not far outside of Lyon, there’s a, there’s a wonderful truffle hunter who, many generations, he and his son and daughter and wife, uh, have an incredible, incredible little operation, and tremendous truffle dogs. I… You can tell, I, have… I will go where the dogs are. Um, and, uh- And…
But I was… I was very struck in Lyon because I… It, it has become an incredibly international city. And, you know, And with the, the Paul Bocuse legend and the focus… I mean, the ingredients are obviously spectacular there, but so many different people from all over the world have come there to learn about food and have stayed. And so, you know, I found an incredible Mexican restaurant there.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I found… There was, you know… And obviously for chocolate, some of the very great chocolate makers are there, and certainly for my book, I wanted to go see the Valrhona factory and, and museum there, which was incredibly fun. Um, and, uh,
And last summer I also spent some time uh, in Champagne, which was an… Again, I, my mother’s, one of my mother’s best friend was, uh, was in Burgundy, and we used to go to Burgundy all the time, and that is [00:35:00] incredibly dear to my heart. It was a… It’s a place I, I know, and I would go there in a heartbeat. But I had not spent time in, in Champagne, and I… and it is so close to Paris, it’s such an easy trip, and it is spectacularly beautiful. And, um, And the tastings are obviously wonderful.
Vineyards and Climate Urgency
Aleksandra Crapanzano: But there was, there is something right now I think with climate change that makes seeing these vineyards v- very poignant to me because they, you know, they are struggling, and they are having to, to rethink, vintners are having to rethink how wine is grown, what grapes are grown. Um, the, The anguish now about weather is, is so palpable. There’s… It, It feels to me like there’s an urgency in seeing some of these places now. A similar, Similar to seeing certain places, say in in, in Africa before there’s, before the wildlife is lost. There’s a sense, I, I feel, um, and I also feel that very much wine regions in France right now need support.
You know, people are drinking less wine. Between that and climate change, um, it’s the m- the… It is… they’re going [00:36:00] through a tough time, and it is extremely beautiful, and because they are going through a tough time, they really, really do love it when people come to visit and taste and, and discover what they do.
And I find the process of talking to people who make food or, or make wine absolutely fantastic. Because, Because I’m hearing what it is that they do, what it is they care about, how they describe wine, what that process is. But I’m also, I feel in talking to them, it’s, it’s reciprocal, right? You’re, You’re also reigniting their love and pride for what they do.
Annie Sargent: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: And that matter, That matters a lot right now.
Annie Sargent: One of the things that’s making it difficult for agriculture in general in France is that the weather seems to be getting more predic… unpredictable. So you will have like, uh , We had a extremely warm few days in the middle of November, and then all of a sudden it dropped like a lot, immediately. And it will do that in the spring as well. So you have trees, So you have t- t- trees and vine gra- grape vines and things like… They think it’s spring, and they start burgeoning, [00:37:00] and then it, they get hit with a sudden cold or… And it’s, it’s hard.
And I think it’s not, it’s not necessarily that the, the temperatures are rising, which they are, but also we have a lot more unpredic- unpredictability in the weather. It’s, you know, the-The f- The spring and the fall are both, like, they go from too warm to too cold very quickly, and nature has a hard time adjusting to these fast uh, changes. Anyway.
Hail and Farm Protection
Aleksandra Crapanzano: And it’s also it’s also hail. I mean, hail is the great enemy, and, and hail is one of the things… So I, I’ve been doing a little movie on climate change and wine, and one of the things is that hail is very hard to predict. I mean, you can… Weather forecasters are very good at, at understanding certain weather cycles, but hail can just come out of the blue and destroy a vineyard immediately. And the vintners I’ve spoken to have said, you know, it used to be that, you know, you maybe would have one terrible storm every 50 years, and then it was 25 years, and then it was, you know, on and on and on.
Annie Sargent: Now it’s twice a year.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Right. And so you, So depending on when that hail storm [00:38:00] suddenly comes, you, you know, you, you freeze.
Annie Sargent: Well, and, and wine growers have a problem, is that they don’t have what it takes to protect their crops, whereas fruit growers, at least in the Southwest, all, almost all the apple and peach, and and, um, pears and all that, and we have lots of them around Montauban, they all have the stuff in place to just deploy and… Because, essentially, they use the same things to protect their crops from birds. It’s, It’s a netting system, you know…
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: … that they can just deploy or not, depending on what’s happening in nature, and wine growers don’t do that. And uh, perhaps the more expensive wines will start doing that at some point because it’s unpredictable and, and we get hailed. I mean, I have two cars. My last two cars have gotten hailed on uh, very severely. And when that happens, all the cars in the village or in a certain area are destroyed. Like, all of them are destroyed, and then you have to… Everybody has to get their car debumped [00:39:00] and repainted and all of that, and so it takes months to all get through that process. Anyway, and it’s even worse for the, f- f- for the crop, you know, all sorts of crops.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Yeah. it’s, but it does, it’s, it, it makes it a, It makes it incredibly, to me, an important time to visit, to visit vineyards, you know, to, to offer that support.
Annie Sargent: Wonderful.
Wrapping the Interview
Annie Sargent: Well, Aleksandra, you’ve been fun to talk to. You’ve inspired, I’m sure, a lot of people to go out and make something, bake something, have some chocolate. Try and make some chocolate at home. It’s not as hard. You know, if you have good instructions and a good cookbook, uh, I think you can do it. Just try it. You’ll, You’ll like it.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Thank you so much. Was that, uh, was that enough for you?
Annie Sargent: Oh, yeah. It’s, it’s plenty. It’s wonderful.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: I don’t… Um, sometimes yours are an hour, sometimes-
Annie Sargent: No, no. This, mine is about, uh, 50 minutes, so… And, and we’ll, we’ll cut it down. We’ll, like, cut silences. We’ll-
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Yeah, of course
Annie Sargent: … uh, edit out some little things, so yeah, it’s perfect.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Yes, okay, because I realize I could have gone on about Normandy and Provence and Champagne, but I, I, uh, short, short on, uh, yes, didn’t, didn’t know how much time I had.
Annie Sargent: No problem. Merci beaucoup, Aleksandra.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Keep me, uh, keep me in the loop on, um, it sounds like po- possibly April, yeah?
Annie Sargent: Yes. I will let… I will send you a, uh, um, an email when I, when I’ve put it on the schedule, and I, I will have an idea very soon when it might be, and then it might move a bit up or down, but, um, but yes, it should be March or April, yes.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Wonderful. And I have to go back and listen, because you must have done, uh, quite a few podcasts on Toulouse then over time.
Annie Sargent: Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. It’s beautiful place. Some good food.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Great food. No, no, no, I love it. I, I, you know, I told you before my, you know, my husband’s family had a place not far, so.
Annie Sargent: Right, the Lot.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: In the Lot. In the Lot. Which is… But anyway, thank you so much, and thank you for, for, uh, delaying for me.
Annie Sargent: Merci beaucoup, Aleksandra. Au revoir.
Aleksandra Crapanzano: Au revoir. Bye-bye.
Thank you Patrons!
Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at [00:40:00] patreon.com/joinus.
I have no new Join Us in France champions this week because I’m traveling in Valbonne and the Alpes-Maritimes, so I pre-recorded and scheduled this episode, so you still get a new show every Sunday while I stay away from the computer and enjoy exploring this beautiful part of France.
If you want to skip the ads, join our live Zooms, or even get a f- a consult about your move to France with me, check out all the fun perks at joinusinfrance. check out all the fun perks at patreon.com/joinus, starting at just three bucks a month. Merci for keeping the adventure alive.
And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
This week, I published uh, my Zoom with patrons, and I had my Zoom with patrons, and then I published the re- the, the recording, before I took off on my adventures. It’s always a good time to talk to patrons, and I’m grateful for them, of course.
Self-guided walking tours
Annie Sargent: If you’re planning a trip to [00:41:00] Paris, check out my self-guided walking tours on the Voice Map app.
I’ve created tours that you can take at your own pace right from your phone. I got– I guide you through historic neighborhoods, share stories you won’t find on most tours, and help you notice the details that make Paris so wonderful.
Just download the VoiceMap app, search for Annie Sargent, and pick up the tour that interests you.
You can listen whenever you want, even offline, and pause anytime for a coffee or a croissant or a glass of wine. Knowing you, it’s probably a glass of wine, isn’t it? It’s like having me in your pocket while you explore Paris. You can buy these tours directly from the Voice Map app, but podcast listeners…
You can buy these tours directly from the Voice Map app, but podcast listeners get an exclusive discount when they buy these tours directly from my website. And to do that, go to joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
If you’re planning a trip to France and would like some expert help, you can hire me as your itinerary consultant, if you and again, that’s at [00:42:00] joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Why Farmers Protest
Annie Sargent: All right, so you’ve probably heard about farmer protests in France, tractors blocking highways, manure dumped in front of government buildings, big demonstrations about income and regulations, this story c- This story helps explain why that– I want to explain why that keeps happening.
In the Seine-et-Marne, a dairy farmer named Yves de Fromentel decided he couldn’t survive the traditional system anymore. For years, he sold his milk to cooperatives. He was paid forty-five cents, euro cents obviously, uh, per liter, but it cost him between fifty and fifty-five cents to produce it. In other words, he was losing money on every liter.
So in 2017, he made the big change. Instead of just selling raw milk, he built a small processing facility right on his farm. And now he tr- he turns… And now he turns his milk into yogurt and cheese and sells it [00:43:00] directly in his farm shop through, um, through associations, to cafes, and even to school cafeterias.
That shift has made all the difference. By transforming his own milk, he can now earn about seventy cents per liter. That’s the difference between shutting down and staying in business.
But there’s a catch. He now employs ten people, runs production, sales, and farming at the same time.
He says they work like crazy. It’s better financially, but it’s a huge workload. His dairy herd includes about eighty cows, and he farms a hundred and seventy acre– and he farms a hundred and seventy hectare, all organic and largely self-sufficient in feed. The demand for his products is growing, but he’s planning– The demand for his products is growing, and he’s planning to expand the creamery.
He hopes to pass the farm on to his son next year.
So when you hear about French farmers protesting, remember, many of them are stuck selling at prices below their production costs. Some innovative people, Some innovate and [00:44:00] survive. Others cannot. That tension is at the heart of the crisis, and because this is France, we’re not going to let them go bankrupt, and I’m very happy uh, buying locally milk products.
Wouldn’t you?
Phones Banned in Schools
Annie Sargent: Another question that has been on the news quite a bit lately is should mobile phones or cell phones be banned from schools in France? This is a debate that has uh, been very hot in the last few weeks. After banning phones in middle schools, President Macron now wants to extend the rule to high schools starting in the fall of 2026.
And as you might imagine, students and teachers don’t see this issue in quite the same way.
France has already been experimenting with this in about a hundred high schools, including the Lycée Rodin in Paris, where phones have been banned everywhere on campus since September 2025. Not just in [00:45:00] class, in the courtyard, in the hallways, even in the library and study rooms.
Students m- must put their phones away the moment they walk through the school gates. And the students interviewed for this piece And the students interviewed about this are not fans of the rule. One seventeen-year-old explained that by this age, they feel old enough to manage their own phone use. Others say banning phones outside of class is pointless.
They use their phones for things like checking assignments, their schedules, or the school app. Of course they do. Of course they do. And for those quieter moments, like a free period, they feel the rule actually gets in the way of their work. Okay.
But on the teacher side, I might be on the teacher side to tell you the truth, uh, some argue the benefits are real.
One longtime teacher at Lycée Rodin says he’s been s– One long-term teacher, One longtime teacher at Lycée Rodin says he’s seen students being more social, talking to each other like it’s 1975 or [00:46:00] something, uh, instead of staying glued to their screens. He also notices fewer attempts to use AI tools during assignments and overall better concentration.
From his perspective, the ban has made school’s life– From his perspective, the ban has made school life more human and more focused.
Administrators, however, raise practical concerns. If the government wants a total ban, even outside class time, that means managing thousands of phones every day. Some schools have tried cell phone boxes in classrooms, but implementing secure lockers for every student would be a logistical nightmare.
One principal uh, interviewed puts it bluntly, “With fifteen hundred students coming and going twice a day, organizing phone drop-off and retrieval for every entry and exit would require staff we simply don’t have.”
Meanwhile, the Île-de-France region has already launched its own initiative called Zéro [00:47:00] Portable, equipping a thousand classrooms with phone boxes so students can drop their phones during class only.
Those running the program say keeping the phones out of the classroom is realistic, but banning them completely throughout the school day might be much harder to enforce and less acceptable to teenagers who already feel very, very grown up.
So the debates continues. On one side, the desire to improve focus, reduce distraction, and encourage real social connections.
On the other, the practical challenges and the very real fact that smartphones are now deeply woven into how students navigate their school life.
It’s a fascinating conversation about education, technology, and where we draw the line between guidance and micromanagement, and it’s far from settled. Um,
We keep hearing about this uh, in French news.
Of course, it depends on what other things are in the news. Sometimes there are more [00:48:00] urgent things to discuss, but I’ve heard about this plenty, and I think parents are giving it a, a good think. My daughter is an adult now, so I don’t have to worry about these things anymore.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.
Next Week and Goodbye
Annie Sargent: And next week on the podcast, I talked with Juliana and Craig Linssen, a couple based in California’s Bay Area, who are planning on a move to France.
They share their search for a home in the Var and the Luberon. That’s where I’m exploring right now, and what surprised them about French real estate and why they fell in love with Provence.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released a, It is released under a [00:49:00] Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[00:50:00]
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Episode PageCategory: French Food & Wine