Merci Vero!
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Our French friends are very conservative eaters. We have been on holiday to Spain with them and they scoured the supermarket shelves for French food. In restaurants they are nervous about trying new food, and often then say it is “ spéciale”, like a child saying they really like it but don’t want any more.
I made a meal for some French friends, they wanted to sample some Scottish traditional food so I gave them mince, tatties and dumplings, a clootie dumpling and haggis, neeps and tatties, the look on their faces was priceless 
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The pic’s are in different order, like the look of the first one, my kind of food on a winter’s evening.
Deleted from other tread to make better sense.
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Haggis is the best 
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I’ve not had dumplings since I was a kid… I kinda want some now
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Can’t get suet here unless you get the real stuff from a butcher and don’t fancy that to be honest. I used vegetable suet mostly.
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I use Atora beef suet, either when I put in an order from British corner shop or from Amazon Fr.
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I was about to say Atora - my local magasin anglais usually has it.
3pm is on the late side, that’s not a typical time for eating in the UK. I find the French (at least outside of the city), drop tools and are straight at the table for midday. Dinners are later in the evening than I’m used to.
I’ve had a good lecturing on the correct way to cut cheese, apparently we English haven’t got a clue how to cut it correctly! 
I’d never had artichoke and didn’t know how to eat that until I arrived.
The first meal I had at my parent-in-laws, I was called ‘gourmand’ by my mother-in-law, and I wasn’t sure whether I was being greedy and eating too much, or if it was an observation of me enjoying my food! By the time we got to desert there were tears of laughter at my attempted pronunciation of ‘yoghurt’.
I like the French way of eating, but sometimes I prefer to finish the meal sooner when I have things to do.
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Wao, Gareth, I did not know there was a way of cutting cheese either😁 and there are lots of English words that sound the same to me like colour and collar or ball and bowl and I have problems saying them correctly, so I feel your pain at your first meal with your in-laws😁 as for the artichokes, I like them but as a French comedian used to say, it is the only dish where when you finished eating them, there is more on your plate than when you started.
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But there isn’t just one way. Each cheese type has a different way……
I have had my cheese cutting skills laughed at on many occasions , also a lecture on returning to the cheese board for another slice, and using the cow cheese knife for the goat cheese.
But we do live in a very artisan cheese area. In cities where cheese comes from supermarket perhaps not so fussy.
I have some that was brought over for us.
I fancy making a Sussex Pond pudding.
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So delicious! 
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But isn’t the cheese cutting fairly obvious? OK the Tomme sliced on the board like that I would have got caught on. I’d have just sliced it sideways and not diagonally.
If you work to the principle that everyone gets a bit of the centre and the outside then each cheese’s cut is clear.
What I do at home when no one’s watching and it’s my own cheese is of course different! And I have no idea who always grabs the heart of Parmesan which is always there somewhere in the box, if you buy the prepacked lumps in Lidl in Italy
It is for civilised people who aren’t hogs but alas many are hogs 
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You might not say that if you had seen people gaily helping themselves to the ‘nose’ of brie at a buffet table 
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My cheese comes pre-cut…
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