No French chocolate in the French Alps

A week in the great outdoors. Well, the great, manufactured outdoors. As we were skiing in France I didn’t take any chocolate with me, assuming that, being France, good chocolate would be easily accessible everywhere. Bizarrely, whilst all of the supermarkets had a slightly different selection, the majority of the chocolate was Swiss. Having said that, the closest airport is Geneva so I expect this is not so bizarre as I first thought. Fortunately the Lindt Caramel Creation got me through the week! This isn’t a bar I’ve seen in the UK and although it has the tell-tale ever-so-slightly overroasted taste to the chocolate, the thin caramel and mousse layers that this chocolate enshrouds more than make up for this lacking. Towards the end of the week I found a patisserie that had a selection of bon bons (small, filled chocolates) that were made in house (according to the sign, at least). My French and the assistant’s English could not get me to a point of understanding what couverture they used but the passionfruit filling in one of the chocolates was scrumptious, nonetheless. (If you go to Val Thorens it is in the little shopping centre where the pharmacy is, but, again, it's only the fillings that are good, rather than the chocolate.)



We had two days of lovely weather when we first arrived, while I slowly tried to remember what to do with these things strapped to my feet, and then the weather turned sour on Sunday night I had to wonder on Monday as I traversed the grey slopes in the biting cold, what the appeal of this skiing thing was. The miserable weather continued through until Wednesday, the nightly snowfall making the slopes too powdery to appeal to a pretty ordinary skier like me, especially as the winds revealed icy patches by the afternoons. But when the sun came out again Thursday and gave us three days of continuously cloudless sky it was easy to forget that I had vowed never to bother coming skiing again. I love it! Ah, so fickle.

So, today, I am going to bake something with Willie's chocolate whilst the washing machine churns through load after load. Part 3 airs tonight. I keep getting contacted by people who say they have seen me on TV, but I've not seen the trailer myself. I kind of forgot the cameras were there.