No, I didn’t take this one, but it’s public domain
I tried to upload a picture I took of a baseball game, but apparently WordPress is remaining obstinate. Anyway, I was in the supermarche yesterday when I realized that the way they kept everything made sense to me. Same with the brocolage (DIY) store. Nothing they did made sense when I first got here, or at all until recently. Now, what the heck, I’d find the organization of a US grocery store to be odd. Which got me to thinking about what constitutes “normal” situations.
It appears that “normal” has more to do with what you’re used to than anything else. When I was shopping at a Kroger outlet (Smith’s) I could figure out fairly well where they would put any given item. Of course, in France, some of the items are different, but even if they’d been the same (as some, such as Heinz Ketchup, are) I didn’t find them in the expected place. Dairy and eggs, in particular are stored in a manner that seems entirely wrong to an American. They both are simply put out on the shelf like pasta or soup in a can, where you pick them up, take them home, and don’t need to refrigerate them (unless it’s one of those really hot hot spells we seem to get these days.) I even know why this is so.
Eggs emerge from the chicken covered with slime. The FDA decided some years ago that the slime should be removed for sanitary reasons. Without the slime, the eggs will absorb oxygen and rot forthwith. You may have smelled the result? With the slime, the pores in the eggshell are sealed, which is why the European agency equivalent to the FDA decided that the slime should remain on for sanitary reasons. I don’t advocate anything, I just report stuff. You can refrigerate your eggs if you want to, but then you have to keep them cold or face the smelly consequences.
Milk is pasteurized in the US. In Europe it is irradiated and sterile. This means that it is probably immortal in the bottle, and needs refrigeration only after the bottle is opened. There are some brands of milk in the US that are ultra pasteurized, but some say that they taste off. The milk in France is not pasteurized at all, but irradiated, which kills anything alive in it (the stuff that makes it curdle and spoil) but so far as I can tell leaves the milk as it was formed. This is handy, as I buy six-packs of liter bottles, put them in the cupboard, and only refrigerate whichever one I’m going to open next. I’ve never had milk turn, although it is certainly possible once you crack the seal on the bottle. Also, I drink it up fairly quickly. Sealed up, milk has a use by date of four months from the day it was bottled. I’ve never had any around that long, but I imagine it would last even longer than that.
But, is that better? Heck, I don’t know, but all of a sudden that seems normal. I’ve thought for years that a good idea to prevent salmonella and similar infections would be to irradiate meat. France doesn’t do that, either, but then France also doesn’t have huge industrial sized feedlots, so maybe they don’t need to.
It’s odd when I think that, after three months here last year, and five months now living here full-time, my normal has shifted. I’m fine with it, just as I’d be fine with normal in the US if I moved back. After a few months, at least. Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever had your “normal” shift on you.
