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Welcome back for the final addition to this blog! We are going to cover the French elections are to take place on April 23, 2017. Incumbent François Holland of the Socialist Party was eligible to run for re-election, but he declined on December 1, 2016. The Republicans nominated former prime minister François Fillon and the far-right National Front nominated Marine Le Pen. We will analyze these two candidates briefly and then talk about the effects of the United States’ 2016 election of France.

François Fillon

According to CNN, Fillon has been nicknamed “French Thatcher”, after Britsh prime minister Margaret Thatcher, because of his willingness to go after the unions. He won the nomination in a second-round run-off vote in late November. His policy stances include ending the 35-hour work week, cutting public spending, abolishing the wealth tax, reducing immigration, and investing 12 billion euros in defense, justice, and security. He has also pledged to cut over 500,000 civil service jobs. Similar to Donald J. Trump, he has been praising the Russian government. Fillon is also against same-sex marriage and for the burkini ban. Some believe has a clear shot at being the next president due to his similar volatile beliefs as Trump had during the American election.

Marine Le Pen

Before Fillon’s nomination, Le Pen said the Trump win showed promising signs for he candidacy. She said that the election “shows that people are taking their future back,” and she thinks the French people are ready to do the same. Le Pen vows to return the country to its former glory, similar to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. She is the daughter of the founder of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and she eventually expelled him from the party because he said the Holocaust was a “detail of history.” When she was 8, her house was bombed by enemies of her father. She campaigned for her father at a very young age and later became a lawyer, often representing illegal immigrants. While trying to distance the party from its anti-Semitic past, she still remains anti- illegal immigration, EU, and Islam.

François Hollande

As was mentioned earlier, the election of Donald Trump has ignited the hope of more radical and outsider candidates and politicians all across Europe. Hollande, however, was very cautious during his statements about the president-elect saying things about being wary and staying united. The biggest fear is of the abolition of NATO and a decrease in military protection by the United States across the world. If other elections see the same results as the U.S., Muslim immigration bans and anti-gay marriage legislation might become the norm and countries will be set against each other. Time will only tell.

Thank you for taking this journey with me! French history is fascinating and filled with many wonderful stories that sometimes contradict each other. It is very difficult to condense such a rich history and culture into such a short period of time. Please explore more on your own, especially with the upcoming elections possibly having a direct impact on our politics.

Hey everyone! We are going to take a break from the gloom and doom and talk about some typical French dishes. I will try and find links to recipes for each dish and give a brief description of the dish and its origin and history.

We will begin with bûche de Noël. The traditional Christmas dessert is made from a genoise, an Italian sponge cake, that is baked in a shallow Swiss roll pan. The cake is then iced typically with chocolate buttercream icing, and then rolled. The outside is then iced again. One of the cake’s ends is sliced off and then placed on top off the cake to resemble a chopped of branch and a fork is dragged through the icing to give a bark like texture. Some will add powdered sugar for snow, real tree branches, berries or mushrooms made of meringue and marzipan. Bûche de Noël was the term used for the actual yule log until the practice fell out of use, but the dessert still carries the legacy forward. You will find the dish in many francophone countries and regions, including France, Belgium, Lebanon, Quebec. The following is a link to a recipe if you would like to try and make it: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/17345/buche-de-noel/

L’Escargot, Greek Street London. February 2014

Next, we move to one of the most commonly known French dishes: l’escargot or snails. These cooked land snails are often served as starters in Portugal, Spain, and France. Because of the dish’s popularity, some species of land snail used in the dish are called escargot even while living. Snail shells have been found in archaeological sites in the Mediterranean, indicating that snails may have been a common food since prehistoric times. The French will remove the snail from its shell, kill it, and then cook it in garlic butter, chicken soup or wine. The snail is then placed back into its shell to be served. Special tongs and a small fork are normally provided for picking up the shell and removing the meat respectively and there are special trays with six to twelve indents for the placement of the shells. Here is a recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/escargots-a-la-bourguignonne-233523

We will end our food tour with foie gras. According to French law, foie gras is duck or goose liver specially fattened by force-feeding the bird corn with a feeding a tube. The process is also know as gavage. The ducks are force fed about twice a day for 12.5 days and geese three times a day for seventeen days. They are slaughtered at 100 days and 112 days respectively. Foie gras is considered a delicacy in French culture and is sold whole, or as mousse, parfait or pâté. The process of gavaging is incredibly controversial due to the threat to the birds’ well-being. It is illegal in some countries and regions and some retailers in legal regions will not stock the product.

Looking ahead: Our last post together will be about the current political climate in France as their elections approach in early 2017, as well as the impact of our elections here in the United States on the French and Europe.