Day 2518 (Tuesday) 30th April 2024

It was a lot warmer today but it was still cloudy. We decided to go to Nice this morning because the forecast isn’t good this afternoon. We went in search of Indian shoes for the party but it looks like the Indian shop has gone so we headed to the flower market instead.

Nice is such a beautiful town with all sorts of lovely small shops.

The tourists are arriving and the atmosphere is

great.

Every time I see a patisserie I can’t resist taking photos of the wonderful cakes.

The flower market (cours saleya) was as lovely as ever and there were a few stalls selling fleur de lys ready for May 1st (more on that tomorrow).

The town hall in Nice was flying Israeli flags

 

We bought a kebab from our favourite kebab shop and ate it in the park and we even took our jackets off. As soon as we got home Badger was straight into the flowers.

While we were in the Old Town of Nice we saw our first pizza machine.

6 unusual vending machines in France to discover 

Did you know that you can get pizza, cheese and even oysters from French vending machines?

Picture the scene: it’s a bank holiday, or a Sunday, or 3am on a Thursday morning, and you’ve got an insatiable craving for a freshly-baked baguette. The boulangerie’s closed, so where do you go? Fortunately, vending machines dispensing everything from bread to short stories have sprung up across France to cater for your every whim.

Pizza

A piping-hot pizza topped with deliciously melting cheese and a host of your favourite toppings – at any time of day. Sounds too good to be true, right? Not any more. Pizza vending machines are a staple of rural France and serve up tasty treats in a matter of minutes. There’s even an annual competition in Paris to find the nation’s best vending machine pizza!

Bread

Freshly-baked bread is an essential part of the French way of life, so being able to purchase it whenever, wherever you like is the dream for residents and holidaymakers alike. The machines are often installed beside bakeries, so out-of-hours visitors won’t be disappointed. Paris got its first 24-hour machine in 2011 and its arrival was greeted with mixed feelings by residents.

Oysters

France’s first oyster vending machine was installed in the French seaside resort of Ars-en-Ré in oyster capital Charente-Maritime. Beside the L’Huîtrière de Ré oyster shop, the owners installed the convenient machine which is restocked every morning. The oysters are sold closed and start at a very reasonable €6.90 for 12. Now there are oyster vending machines elsewhere in France, including Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue in Normandy.

Meat

Whether it’s steak or sausages you fancy for dinner, France’s meat vending machines have it all to combat the country’s insatiable desire for the stuff. Raw meat may not seem like the most likely product to keep in a vending machine but the products are usually vacuum-packed for ultimate freshness.

Short stories 

Since 2011, stories distributed by literary vending machines have been a fun way to distract yourself on a commute or lunch break. The brainchild of Grenoble start-up Short Édition, the machines allow users to choose a one, three or five-minute story depending on how long they have to read. They were first installed at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, but now you can find them in public places across France.

Cheese

As another French staple, it’s hardly a surprise that if a baguette vending machine exists, so does one for cheese. The Coopérative de Doubs was one of the first shops to have one outside, and on offer is everything from comté to morbier for the perfect last-minute cheeseboard.

And another food story…

French baker starts 'crookie' craze by adding cookie dough to sacred croissant

This photograph taken on April 2, 2024 shows Crookies, a traditional French croissant mixed with a cookie dough, in the pastry shop of French pastry chef Stephane Louvard in Paris. (Photo by Thomas SAMSON / AFP)

A bemused Paris bakery owner has been besieged by smartphone-wielding youngsters over the past year, keen to snap themselves with the latest pastry craze: the crookie a blend of croissant and cookie.

A croissant filled with cookie dough might sound like a fistful of heart attack, but everyone knows it's going to be tasty, even when all they've seen is a viral TikTok video.

The crookie was invented by Parisian pastry chef Stephane Louvard in 2022.

It was "just something for regulars", he said, until a video by Instagram account "The Ultimate Guide", which specialises in Paris restaurants, drove sales up to 150-200 per day.

Then in early 2023, TikTok influencer Johan Papz filmed himself taking a satisfying bite into one of Louvard's crookies, and things went crazy.

"We had hundreds of people coming, most of them young women between 18- and 25-years-old, smartphones in hand to take photos with them," Louvard told AFP in his kitchen as workers rushed to spread cookie dough into croissants.

In the weeks that followed, the queue never seemed to diminish in front of the bakery. Production is now between 1,000 and 1,600 crookies per day and Louvard has had to hire two extra workers.

He is pleased, but somewhat bemused, over the craze.

"I mean, it's a bit insane," he said.

"At some point you have to stop. It's just some cookie in a croissant, it's not some revolutionary invention."

Thanks to TikTok, Maison Louvard now has imitators around the world, with crookies spotted in Brussels, New York, Tel Aviv and Singapore.

Louvard has no interest in filing a patent, however.

"What for? To find myself in court with half the planet?" he said.

It is not the first pastry craze to tickle the world's taste buds.

In 2013, New Yorkers slept on the pavement outside Dominique Ansel's bakery after he invented the cronut -- half-croissant, half-donut.

In 2022, the New York Roll, a mixture of croissant and bombolone (an Italian pastry) turned into a frenzy, with videos featuring the cake accumulating hundreds of millions of views on TikTok, driving a hunt for more baked crazes.