How to make French Macarons for Beginners.

After returning from our holidays in Italy, we found that a package had arrived that we've been patiently waiting for many months. Essential to complete our chateau kitchen makeover. Before installing it, I want to get rid of all the tools that we don't need anymore. So much light. I'm probably overexposed. Do you prefer me overexposed or underexposed? As you can see, I cleaned the kitchen island and that's because I'm going to do something very exciting. Installing the taps. Here they are. They are brass and they are very shiny. And like every other of our brass fittings, they will age very quickly. They're nice, aren't they? So how does it work? Victor, come with instructions. I don't need instructions to fit a tap. Other people do. What's the cold and what's the warm? Oh, it's written here hot. You know, since I turned 38 last year, I do this. You know, when you read something, I do this. I think it's a sign of wisdom. Right hand cold, left hand hot. I hope that's right. Oh, they look beautiful. Correctly installed and with sensible care, it will give many years of trouble-free service. Now I disappear under the counter because I need to screw these in. I love them. I want this. I don't like these gray plastic-y pipes. I prefer my nice French pipes. But I need to get this here. Oh, more pictures. Not what I was looking for. This looks good, but at the same time, it doesn't. Too short. Maybe like this. I came to the conclusion that this is the right thing to do. Like this. What's that? It says maximum. There's no word about this in the instructions. It doesn't work to screw in anything. This helps you to screw in the overflow. This is here. I need to cut it here. And now I'm going to use eye protection. It's on my sunglasses. I couldn't find anything else. I look cool with these glasses. Well, I look cool with everything. What an unpleasant noise. It's funny. It gets really hot. I have this burning pain in my finger and it smells like burnt flesh. I'm sure in a couple of days I can use my fingers again. Now watch this. Can you see what I'm doing? I don't think so. The problem is now if I look, if I screwed it in, the little overflow thing at the back falls back. But I can't really reach inside. I would need something small that could reach inside behind the sink. If I press here, there's a little plastic thing and it folds back and I don't have any, you know, force to screw it. So what I need you to do is to climb in here, use your thin hand and press that plastic thing against the sink. Good. Good. That's perfect. What are you doing? Is it difficult? I know I make renovating look so easy and I'm not surprised that so many people, writers, asking for tips for their own projects. And one question that comes very often is, I want to do what you do, but I don't speak French. What should I do? And my answer is very surprisingly, learn it. I know not so long time ago, learning a language was complicated. You needed to go to a language school, pay a lot of money, read books. But today there's no more excuse. We all have phones. And with a couple of clicks, we can download a language app like Babbel, who uses scientifically proven methods to get you speaking a foreign language in just three weeks. And also happens to be this week's ad. We've recently been in Italy for holidays and Anna wanted to be able to join in the conversations. Babbel teaches you real world practical conversations. It even has a speech recognition built in, which helps you improve your pronunciation and accent. Just think about all the new experiences you can have when you start mastering a new language, when traveling to connect with long lost relatives, or hunting for a property in France without feeling lost in translation. I think it's the perfect season to give it a try. If you click on the link down below, you'll get a 65% off your subscription. I see you're almost finished Anna. Yeah. How many layers? How many layers? How many layers in total? Yes. Primer, tinted, primer, and then four layers. And this is number four? Yeah. That's it? Yeah. Then we're good for many years. Another 200 years maybe. Amazing. I'm done with painting. I think I need a little bit of a break before I start any more painting projects. Have you done all the windows now? Yeah. Yes. Well, I've been busy working whilst you were out sailing. Somebody has to do some work. You don't realize, but sailing can be hard work. Yeah, Anna's right. I had to do some urgent jobs at the local sailing club. Jobs like hoisting the mainsail, launching the spinnaker. But now I am focused on the kitchen again. And I have a second tab to show you. Even more beautiful than the first one. Wait. Now if you like this one, you will love this one. This is a big boy. Check this. Anna. Yeah. There are good news and there are bad news with this tab. Good news is the holes that we had drilled. Yeah. And that I measured are absolutely in the right position. Yeah. The not so good news is that it is a little high. And I don't understand because I clearly measured the distance in between here and here. So either I made a wrong measurement, which I think is highly unlikely. Or. Which is probably the most likely. Or do you remember with Benoit, we had these a bit higher up to start with. And we decided that's too high and we lowered them. Yeah. And maybe we didn't double check. So it's Benoit's fault. It is basically Benoit's fault. So what are we going to do? We ask the company if they have this little bit here. But it's smaller. But you're going to install it anyway. Yeah, it's not a problem. You know, it's just visually it looks a bit. Yeah, it's a bit cramped. It looks like somebody made a mistake. And it's not all of this. Look, there's also this. I love that. Yeah. You know what that is? It's a shower. I knew. Good. OK. What are you doing? I made a leakage test. Oh, and how did the leakage test go? Apart from having water everywhere. Well, really well. I think I found the problem. I think it's just they didn't screw this siphoning good enough. OK. Hard enough. Tight enough. Ziggy, what do you think? Oh, dear. Do you want to see it live? Should we do it live? Yes. Without editing. Ready? OK. And then you have to go. Oh, still water. What is that coming out? OK. It's annoying. Ziggy attacked me. Oh, no. Ziggy, that's my wife. You just needed some love. Yeah. You just needed a cuddle. Less than two hours later and the problem is solved. I changed the seal. I found a way to make that water tap. So is that a working tap? There's no water yet because I can't switch the water off to connect the water to the taps because otherwise our dear guests have no water. A few people have been asking how the no-dig potager is going. So I thought I would take you to have a look. This is the dahlia bed. As you can see, they are slowly coming up. There's only a couple in flower right now. I can't actually remember what exactly I planted. A mix of different colors, basically. And these will be used for the bedrooms, for the guest bedrooms and the breakfast room. So all for the guest rooms. And then over here we have another cut flower bed. This is cosmos. I think I planted two different types of cosmos and also my first ever sweet peas, which are just coming out and they're really pretty. Look how pretty they are. It's so hot in the sun. I've got two vegetable beds. Again, I didn't plant as much as I hoped. Just ran out of time. I literally ran to the DIY shop and went to the garden section and just found whatever they had left. What I'm most excited about this year are my tomatoes. They're green at the moment, but you can see there's a couple of red ripening ones. Seriously, I know I should have washed it, but they are really good. They taste like real tomatoes. And then what else? I have a couple of strawberries. Strawberries don't seem to do very well here. Take a look. I don't know what's the problem with the strawberries, but... Uh-oh, uh-oh. Who's this? Okay, Ziggy loves to come in the vegetable garden and then he likes to try and destroy it. Ziggy, don't eat. Don't you think about eating my tomatoes. All right? They are off limits. Another thing I planted and that always works is salad. So I've got two different types of salad. I don't know what they're called, but they're really good. And as you can see, we've already eaten quite a bit because there's a big hole here. I made this last bed here into half vegetables, half herbs. I've got some chives here. We use this on the eggs for breakfast for the guests. Got some rosemary, some parsley, sage, thyme, basil. Basil doesn't seem to do very well. I don't know what it is. Courgette. Gherkin. Have we got... Oh, look. There's one there. A cucumber. You can see the cucumbers are slowly coming. But in general, I am really happy with the no-dig technique. If you have never tried it, look into it. I would say we have got way less wheat and the beds themselves, they've just got a few small ones and they're really easy to take out. It's very satisfying. I'm nervous and excited at the same time because I'm now going to connect all the light switches and appliances from the kitchen to the main electrics, which are in here. You can't see much, but it's in here. And this is not easy because I have exactly one hour to do this. The guests are now out of the shuttle and exploring the area, but at four o'clock in one hour, the guests are coming back. The first guests are checking in and then I need to switch the electricity on, no matter what. So if I have my finger in there and the guests come back, switching on and I'm dead. I don't want to die. That's why I have to be fast. Big drama. Not here, but here. I just dropped the camera from the tripod. I finished work here. I wanted to move the tripod out of the way and the camera came off and the screen broke. So the only way to use it now is to watch through the viewfinder. Old school. Which means I need to send the camera into repair and then maybe for a month or so or for two weeks, we need to use our old camera. And I really don't like our old camera, but that's how it is. But Philip, it's not the first time somebody would have dropped this camera. No, you dropped it several times. I always told you off, but never anything important broke. And now I dropped it once and big drama. Anyway, let's hope that I did a better job here with the electrics. Everything is plugged in. These switches are here. It's written, I wrote it cuisine, lave-vaisselle, trifasé. And here I wrote, oh, I forgot to write. What is that? What was that? I forgot to write it. Oh yeah, that's the range cooker. Range, I call it. Range? Piano, range. Just call it range. Piano. If there's a French person coming here, they don't know what it is. There's two types of electricity. You don't need to go into it, it's fine. Okay. Mr. Zig. Mr. Zig, are you up to no good? He's a bit sweaty. I think he's been playing in the water. I think so too. I know he's tired. My little Ziggy. He knows that I'm upset about the camera. Are you upset too, Ziggy? Should I do it? Yeah. No explosions so far. And these two. So... What do we... We need to check whether the range cooker works. And the best way to check would be to switch it on here. Are you ready? Yeah. What are we looking for? The little light? The little light, yeah. Can you see it? Yeah. Ooh, it works. High five. Good job. One more exciting thing before we try the lights. The dishwasher. Obviously, there's no water and anything, right? Oh, look. There's light. You see that? And is it turned on? Deutsch. Can we put it into English or French? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No way. It's a German dishwasher. Only speaks German. You do like to buy all of your appliances. Electro appliances from Germany, don't you? I like everything from Germany. Except your wife. I tried, but I couldn't find any. They're all sold. This is a lot of plastic for a light bulb. Yeah, maybe they should become a little bit more sustainable and wrap them in cardboard rather, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, they are very high up, these lights. They're at the right height. What? I have a tinnitus. A tinnitus? A beeping in my ear. Or is it a machine or something? No, what's my ear? It's gone. Must be stress related after eight years of marriage. Or maybe just because you break the camera. Yeah, probably. Yeah. And does the dimmer work as well? Oh, look, that one. We have to still put the light fixture on, but well, anyway. The lights work. So that's exciting because that's the first time in six months that we will have light in here. Yes. That's good. Done. So what's left now to finish? Ziggy? What's going on? I think we need to wash it now. Yeah, he really stinks. And you just picked him up, but your mum just told us that he rolled in deer poop in the field. Yeah, I rolled too in deer poop, to be honest. I can't help it. I see Ziggy doing it and I just want to do the same. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and hit the like button. For exclusive videos and behind the scenes updates, have a look at our Patreon page. Thank you so much for watching.