I’m not sure I entirely comfortable with the concept of improper lamb. But if you want to enjoy New Zealand lamb you can. Just find your nearest branch of Picard, the wonderful French frozen food chain - the Waitrose of frozen food, if you like. They sell NZ leg of lamb and reasonably priced too. There are branches in large towns. Certainly in Montauban, Agen, Toulouse and Bordeaux. And if any of those are far away, you can always stock up and buy several. They’re usually on special offer in April.
I agree it’s a pity that ‘commercial’ breakfast cereals in supermarkets are mostly crammed with sugar, even the mueslis. The reason is that cereals don’t form part of the traditional French breakfast, so in the supermarket shelves they are essentially provided for kids - and sadly full of choco chips and dried fruit and sugar.
Fortunately the bio shops are mostly very good and supply healthy alternatives.
That is the problem with the heritage breeds, there is a reason that they have gone out of use.
Normally too small for today’s market or too fatty.
You can’t beat Herdwick mutton though.
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I personally think those packet cereals are an abomination, but I wouldn’t eat breakfast cereals of any sort, or indeed anything for breakfast, and my children eat tartines, grillées or not, and occasionally porridge which is petits flocons d’avoine from the bio with either milk or water and that’s it. But we are franco-scottish and very rude about packet food.
When I was growing up my breakfast in France was thé au citron or chicorée/biscottes chez mamie, chocolat chaud /tartines grillées chez ma tante, and café au lait at home.
In Scotland we had a cooked breakfast every morning so I had a bit of culture shock to deal with when I went there.
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The culture shock work with me too. My first time living with family in France I will always remember the first breakfast. Large table with all the family sitting. On the stove 2 saucepans 1 large with milk the other smaller with water, & on another the table in the corner was the coffee percolator, everyone at the place settings had large, what I’d call soup bowls. All fine up till then, Ok we’re having cereal for breakfast. Was then asked would I prefer coffee or tea, I said tea (wrong move) as the Madam of the house filled my bowl (1/2 pint-sized) with water & gave me a teabag on a string to dunk into the hot water in the bowl after a few mins I put another tea bag in, then another & I think after the 5th it started to look brown. The others had 1/2 pint size bowls of milk, which some put a bit of coffee into, some others put some powered chocolate & the rest put a teabag. Whilst I was topping up with tea bags I noticed the au-pair had put camembert, jam, butter and baguettes on the table, fine I thought food. What I witnessed after, I recall calling it in a Bristol to my parents “was like having a breakfast party with Chimpanises”! Everyone either buttered up their baguettes or cut & smeared the jam or camembert or both on them. Then came the real shock. Monsieur Bussard (old chap that was invited for breakfast to meet l’anglais) took out his teeth placed them in a handkerchief on the table proceeded to dunk his ladened baguette into his bowl of café au lait, the rest of them though they had real teeth did too. There wasn’t a baguette not dunked to the full until finished (except mine) I’d never seen this before! What got to me the most was watching them all finish their bowls with relish, I still can not imagine myself swirling & scoffing down milk coffee, milk chocolate or tea with bits of bread, fat lakes of melted butter, bits of cheese & jam to finish the bowl.
After my letters to family & friends, I received many parcels though the post with marmalade, marmite, real tea, crumpets, biscuits & a really good friend sent me a rather nice bottle of whiskey to help me through hard times! I shared the bottle with my what became a friend is now gone, Old Monsieur Bussard.
Many years later I find myself dunking butter & jam ladened croissants in my coffee. Hey Ho!
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I can remember when packets of cereal were as rare as hens’ teeth in French supermarkets. The ones they have now have been brought in by outside influences and are not, in my opinion, progress.
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One of my husbands French habits - he hates cheese so luckily I dont’ have to watch the camembert - unfortunately not the case with MIL 
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Please do not buy NZ lamb. It is 100% Halal slaughtered because most of it is sold to the middle east.
Hi Rachel, would you post your source please.
Thanks.
Izzy x
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@Rachel889
Halal slaughter isn’t necessarily any worse than the usual slaughterhouse procedure, from what I have seen first-hand.
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It was in The Telegraph last year, and I also asked the manager at our local Waitrose. You can Google it for more info. I was horrified as I had no idea. We were lucky as we live in Dorset and had beautiful lamb readily available. Last night we had some delicious lamb bought from the butcher in Intermarche in Percy, Manche. He was cutting it when we went in. It looked really good, and it was. We were very surprised to get such quality.
This is the first time I have heard this.
It should be made clear if this is the case.
I don’t know if this is still the case, but it used to be that if there was a surfeit of halal slaughtered meat it went into the general supply without any distinction which is wrong.
People nowadays want to know how their meat is raised and slaughtered too, although many of them just accept that it comes on plastic trays!
Hi Jane, I think this might be for @Rachel889 rather than for me 
The majority (some 90% I believe) of beasts slaughtered in the UK using halal methods are now stunned beforehand. That is allowed by the ritual. So there is really no difference at all between the methods now…
In the EU all animals have to be stunned before slaughter. Halal and kosher too - no exceptions.
I have no idea about NZ. Perhaps if it is true then another reason not to buy meat that has been shipped halfway across the world.
Well, both of you really.
It is a case of knowing what you are buying .
It would appear that NZ does not care what its non Muslim customers think, but I can tell them that they do.
We have just as much right to know how our meat is slaughtered as do Muslims and, quite honestly, I feel really cross that NZ obviously feels that it is more important to sell their meat than to be straight with its non-Muslim customers.
Well it seems that the Telegraph was not necessarily presenting the full story. I didn’t see a link to an article but if it was suggesting that NZ was being cruel then this was wrong. NZ also requires pre-slaughter stunning.
So it is only the UK that allows exceptions.
I believe this link more than the Telegraph
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Coming from UK that is what I had, obviously wrongly, assumed that was the case in the EU and for all imports.
You would have to go a halal butcher in the UK to get meat from one of the specialised abattoirs that don’t pre-stun.
I am getting a bit confused here, because I see meat in French supermarkets which say halal and which I don’t buy.
If all meat is halal and is pre-stunned in the EU, what should the correct labeling be?
Dead meat? 
(That was a sort of joke)
There are various stages in being able to label something Halal. The first is the way the beast is killed, and the second is that the beast must be blessed. So all animals are stunned to render them unconscious and killed one way or another. Some of the beasts will be killed by hand and then blessed - which makes it halal. The rest of the beasts can be machine or hand killed by a stick like thing, are not blessed, and cannot be labelled halal.