Penn ar Box

If you’re a Francophile like me and love French artisan food and drink, Penn ar Box will be an amazing treat for you to have delivered to your door every month. They source all of their products locally from Brittany, France so you’re getting the real deal and incredible French quality in each and every box.

Penn ar Box offers two different monthly subscription boxes; ‘La Plij Box’ aka The Box Of Pleasure, and ‘La Buhez Box’ aka The Box Of Life. La Plij Box is composed of 5-6 products from Brittany’s artisans and aims to give you new surprising flavours and discoveries every month, whilst La Buhez Box will deliver a bigger box of 10 traditional and representative products from Brittany to help you establish a link to this beautiful part of France, regardless of where you are living in the world.

I have this month’s La Plij Box from Penn ar Box to share with you all today to give you an idea of the products that you can expect to receive from them.

The box that arrived was made of thick and sturdy cardboard with lots of paper cushioning inside to protect the products. Everything arrived in perfect condition! Inside, I found Penn ar Box’s monthly Ar Gazetenn booklet/magazine on the top of the contents. The magazine is written in French so it gave me a good opportunity to brush up on my language skills as I studied French to A Level standard and really want to learn it properly at some point! Ar Gazetenn features interviews with the artisan producers, information about the products inside the box and recipe ideas / serving suggestions for how you can use them.

June’s La Plij Box from Penn ar Box contains 6 products:-

The first product that I picked up was this 50ml bottle of Océanik TechSeaLab Olive Oil. This cute little bottle would be perfect for popping into your picnic hamper and drizzling over fresh salads on a hot summer’s day. It has a lovely clean, fresh taste to it and is something that I would happily repurchase again if I saw it in a French deli over here.

Second product was a large 200g bag of Jean-Pierre Cloteau Graines De Chanvre Torréfiées which are Toasted Hemp Seeds. These ones are organic and utterly delicious! An ideal healthy snack alternative as they are packed full of protein, vitamins, minerals and healthy fats, you can also use them in lots of ways such as sprinkled on porridge and salads. Yum!

Speaking of yummy products, I got very excited when I saw there was a bag of Carrés Ronds gluten-free Chocolate and Coconut Cookies included in this month’s box. I’m sad to say that these didn’t last long at all because they were so moreish that I couldn’t help but have a handful with a cup of tea. Very buttery, rich and crumbly with a subtle hint of coconut and chocolate pieces – amazing!

Fourth product was a 90g jar of Emietté de Maquereaux au Kombu Royal which are Mackerel Flakes mixed with Kombu Royal seaweed in a Yuzu (Japanese Citrus) marinade. I’m a vegetarian so I passed this onto my sister who is a big fan of seafood and she loved this. She ate it on toast and said that it had ‘the perfect combination of salty and slightly sweet with all the different flavours complimenting each other’.

Like many, I enjoy a good quality glass of chilled wine with my evening meal, so I was pleased to see a 350ml bottle of Domaine des Quatre Routes Muscadet Sevre & Maine sur Lie 2014. This exceptional, award-winning dry white wine is light and refreshing with that distinctive ‘muskiness’ that muscadets are well known for.

The sixth and final product in the box are actually two sachets of seeds to plant at home. One are Corn Salad seeds (or Lamb’s Lettuce as it’s more commonly known as in England) and the other are Brandywine Tomato seeds. My aunt is a keen gardener who has an allotment so I’ve given these to her to put to good use and look forward to seeing the results when they’re grown.

I really enjoyed this month’s La Plij Box from Penn ar Box – there was a good mixture of products and I know that anyone who loves French artisan food and drink, will simply love it too! Find out more by visiting http://www.pennarbox.bzh/en/subscription-brittany-box.