A Day in the French Countryside

If you remember back in 2012, I posted about a trip to visit Sharon Santoni, the author of My French Country Home, an antiques dealer, and the "Martha Stewart of Normandie" (my nickname for her!).

Back then, we spent a weekend in the country for an antiques buying trip and a visit to the gorgeous gardens of Giverny.
I always have a link on my sidebar to her guest cottage.

Over the years, we stayed in touch via email and telephone, so on this trip, we took the train from Paris to Normandy to have lunch with Sharon and her husband at their beautiful home in the French countryside.

Sharon's beautiful new book My Stylish French Girlfriends came out in August and is going into its 3rd printing!

It is a gorgeous book showing the lives of real French women who are entrepreneurs and artists and how they live. They are all close friends of Sharon.
It is certainly not the way I live in New Jersey, but there is still hope. :)

I am amazed at how such a busy woman, can prepare such a gorgeous meal in so little time.

Setting the table w/ flowers from her garden; picking us up at the train just in time to take her cake out of the oven; serve us a delicious 3 course lunch; clean up and do the dishes; then whiz us back to the train to Paris in time to pick up her intern, and do it so effortlessly!

Super woman.

We started lunch with a pumpkin soup made with a pumpkin from her garden.......and drank a beautiful cidre, a low alcohol non sweet apple cider from the Normandy region, that I wish I could find in the States.

Then a beautiful salad and a gorgeous quiche w/ chorizo and ham (she knows what I like).

Then the piece de resistance was Sharon's warm apple and blackberry crumble (click on link for her recipe) with creme Anglaise, and of course a platter of figs pour moi.

Really?

Yes.

Normandy is famous for their apples, and right now her trees are flourishing w/ apples and pears. The cake was made with apples and berries from her glorious garden.

Sharon loves dahlias and has quite the dahlia collection.

We loved being amongst the beautiful flowers, fresh Normandy air and blue skies.
Surrounded by good food, good friends and cute doggies besides our feet.

What could be better.