In Rouffach, we celebrate the festival of… witches every year.
It must be said that this commune of Haut-Rhin, in Alsace, has a long history with witches.
The witch's sauerkraut is not like the others.
Gourmet friends, lovers of smoked bacon, knacks (Strasbourg sausages) and thick shanks, if you have a vigorous fork and an appetite as wide as the imagination, get ready to commit this sin of good food which consists of coming and guzzling at the Haxakessel ("the witch's cauldron"), a pretty table in the center of Rouffach, where the walls are decorated with hooked-nosed dolls flying on broomsticks...
The mistress of the house will serve you her famous haxasurkrut: the witch's sauerkraut.
At the table next door, regulars will explain to you that this specialty combining fermented cabbage, charcuterie and spaetzel (Alsatian noodles) actually comes from the depths of time: in all the family pots, we have always decorated this way what is called "the sauerkraut of the next day", these inevitable leftovers from the day before which remind us that in Alsace we often have eyes bigger than our stomachs.
Canada owes its name to the French navigator Jacques Cartier (1491-1557), the first European to explore the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the surrounding lands.
In 1534, he left Saint-Malo, where he was born, landed in Gaspé, a city located in the very east of Canada, and took possession of it in the name of the King of France, François 1er.
A year later, Cartier asked directions from two Iroquoians, who then pointed him in the direction of “Kanata”.
In reality, they allude to the village of Stadacona, the current location of Quebec City.
For lack of another name, Cartier then uses the term “Canada” to designate this city and the surrounding territory.
Tomato, potato, squash, bean, corn, peanut, pepper, cocoa, vanilla, pineapple... turkey, all these products were unknown in Europe, Asia and Africa before the discovery of America in 1492, by Christopher Colombus.
Our food memory is very short.
It is often limited to flavors and products discovered in childhood.
If we make an effort, we go back to a "very distant past", that is to say only to the childhood memories of our grandparents.
This is why the cuisine of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century seems to us to be a cuisine that has always existed, the one that our ancestors have always eaten since "the dawn of time".
Most of us are then very surprised to learn that our famous local products are sometimes a recent invention on a historical scale.
Can you imagine Mediterranean cuisine without tomatoes or zucchini? Savoyard cuisine without potatoes? Indian cuisine without chilli? African cuisine without cassava?
This monumental sculpture is one of the greatest symbols of the United States.
Proudly erected on Liberty Island in New York, it is known throughout the world.
But did you know that it had been offered to the Americans by the French people, as a token of friendship?
The iconic statue was built in France for 9 years before being unveiled to the public on October 28, 1886 to mark the centenary of the declaration of independence of the United States.
It was classified as a national monument in 1924 and has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1984.
Its official name is "Liberty Enlightening the World", or in French "La Liberté illuminant le monde".
The cemetery town of Colma has more dead than alive.
Located in the suburbs of San Francisco, the city of Colma is nicknamed "City of the Dead", "City of Souls" or "City of the Silent".
With chilling names like these, some explanation is in order, isn't it?
At the end of the 19th century, the gold rush rapidly increased the number of inhabitants of San Francisco and the population greatly feared the spread of contagious diseases, such as cholera.
The city's board of supervisors, concerned about lack of space and public health, voted to ban burials within city limits in the early 1900s.
Ten years later, the decision to exhume the corpses and transport them elsewhere was taken.
Therefore, the small municipality of Colma was officially created in 1924 to serve as a necropolis.
Today, there are 17 cemeteries in the small town where the number of buried bodies is a thousand times higher than the number of inhabitants.
No wonder the city's slogan is "It's great to be alive in Colma"!
When it appeared in the United States, probably at the end of the 18th century, it referred to a peculiarity of the continental climate of North America.
This peculiarity occurs in Canada and the United States, between the beginning of October and mid-November.
The Indian summer corresponds to a period of surprisingly mild weather for the season and which arrives after an initial period of frost.
If the nights remain cool and the mornings misty, the daytime weather is then mild, sunny and dry.
Temperatures are at least 5°C higher than normal for the season and can exceed, sometimes briskly, 25°C.
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