Bringing France Home

What is it that makes daily life in France so delightful? And how can you create this charm in your own home? Author Cheryl MacLachlan spent years living, dining and conversing with families throughout France, where she uncovered the many small details that lend warmth, style and personality to the French home. In Bringing It Home--France, she explores the seemingly minor but so important elements that go into composing the French lifestyle: how a bed is made, for example, how dinner is served, how a sense of family warmth is achieved in the living room. She further explains how these elements can enrich any home anywhere, using simple techniques and easily available resources. Bringing It Home--France leads the reader room by room through the house, then on to the garden and the marketplace to cover the full range of life and style in la belle France. Learn the French approach to interior decoration; discover invaluable tips for everything from entertaining to housekeeping; and enjoy brief, witty guides to the best of French furniture, crafts, foods and wines. More than 200 gorgeous full-color photographs by Ivan Terestchenko bring you right into a number of remarkable homes, in both France and the United States. For all those who appreciate the houses, the food, the style, the savoir faire of life in France--here's a thoroughly inviting guide to bringing it all home. Discover the real secrets of French style as Cheryl MacLachlan reveals how to add the warmth and beauty of France to your own home, using simple techniques and readily available resources. With more than 200 beautiful color photographs and countless creative tips, Bringing It Home--France captures the charmsof decorating, entertaining and living with the feeling of France--anywhere in the world.

DIVA study of the meaning of culture in contemporary France with an emphasis on anti-globalization and post-colonial regionalism./div

Cook Your Way Through France with Simple, Delicious Recipes Real French home cooking is easier than you think! Leave haute cuisine to fussy restaurants, and dive into these uncomplicated classics from Audrey Le Goff, founder of the blog Pardon Your French. Drawing inspiration from her childhood in the north of France, Audrey shares simple fare, full of the rich, complex flavors French cuisine is known for. From quiche to crêpes, these homey dishes are anything but humble. Explore France’s distinct regions and delve into the culture behind each recipe. Hearty cold-weather favorites from the north, like Alsatian Pork and Sauerkraut Stew and the supremely flakey Thin-Crusted Onion, Bacon and Cream Tart are quick and comforting. Provençal Vegetable and Pistou Soup, from the sunny south of France, is packed with bright herbs and ripe produce, and Basque Braised Chicken with Peppers is sure to please with a burst of spice. The essential One-Pot French Onion Soup provides a taste of France any night of the week, and the beloved, buttery Kouign-Amann is surprisingly easy to master. With friendly instructions and easy-to-find ingredients, you’ll soon feel right at home with French cooking.

For anyone thinking of buying a home in another country, here is essential information to help them with their purchase. Foreign buyers can often get caught in a sea of red tape, but author David Hampshire takes the worry out of dealing with the bureaucracy with clear-cut instructions on how to seek, buy and develop property. Each book deals with mortgages, taxes and where to get financing and insurance. Vital information is also included on how to select a real estate agent and how to deal with utility companies. Whether buyers are seeking a mansion, villa, farmhouse, townhouse or apartment, a vacation or permanent home, the "Buying A Home Series" will help make their dreams come true.

At the close of the twentieth century, even as globalization spurred the growth of megacities worldwide, inhabiting the French countryside had become an internationally-shared fantasy and practice. Accounts of moving into old farmhouses were bestsellers, and houses and barns built by peasants had been renovated as second homes throughout the rural hinterland. Such developments, Sarah Farmer argues, did not simply stem from nostalgia for a rural past or a desire to invest in real estate. Rather, they defined new versions of the rural that emerge in post-agrarian societies. In post-World War II France, cutting-edge technological modernization and explosive economic growth uprooted rural populations and eroded the village traditions of a largely peasant nation. And yet, this book argues, rural France did not vanish in the sweeping transformations of the 1950s and 1960s. The French responded to the collapse of peasant society and threats to cherished landscapes by devising new ways of inhabiting the countryside, making them the sites of change and adaptation. In addition to the rise of restored peasant houses as second residences, Rural Inventions explores the utopian experiments in rural communes and in "going back to the land"; environmentalism; the extraordinary success of peasant autobiographies; photography; and other representations through which the French revalorized rural life and landscapes. The peasantry as a social class may have died out, but the countryside persisted, valued as a site not only for agriculture but increasingly for sport and leisure, tourism, social and political engagement, and a natural environment worth protecting. The postwar French state and the nation's rural and urban inhabitants, Sarah Farmer eloquently shows, remade the French countryside in relation to the city and to the world at large, not only invoking traditional France but also creating a vibrant and evolving part of the France yet to come.