Our Local Bakery
We live in the sticks, really. It’s ten kilometers to the nearest town with any normal facilities, such as supermarkets, hospitals, movie theaters, etc, and both towns at that distance are still very small. But, the bakery pictured is two blocks from our house in a commune of 400 people. Bakeries are, I’m saying, common in France, and the bread is very good. The food you buy in France to take home and prepare is all good, actually, so it’s really just a matter of deciding what you’re hungry for this week, or today. You can buy most familiar things in a supermarket in France, if you know what to call them. Most things. However, Molasses is iffy, truly hot sauce can be tricky, refried beans are mostly unheard of, although there are places to get them because some restaurants use them. Without salsa, but still. Powdered sugar, eh, you may need to make your own. Tami did find brown sugar, which is sugar and molasses mixed together. There may be other things that are harder to find (Fritos Original!) but that mostly covers it. Besides those things, which can be worked around, you can buy whatever you need to use at home. And, it will be better than what you buy in the US.
I’ll use wine for a quick example. All French wine for sale is at least good. Maybe not top shelf, but good. This is generally true of anything you find for sale in France. The butter is all good, and some of it is excellent indeed. Meats are fresh and tasty, never having been dosed with antibiotics to fatten them up, yet still fatty good. (French people don’t worry about fats. A quick rule of thumb, if you’re not sure of something you’re cooking, add butter.) There are no factory farms in France, so the chances of contamination with e-coli or other bacteria are considerably lower. Another rule of thumb is that a person weighs ten pounds less in France than in the United States, and this without excessive worry about weight. Hmmm. Legumes (all vegetables) are fresh and seasonal. Right now, for example, cauliflower is over eight Euros per kilogram, which would be outrageous during the harvest season. This is different from the US, although thanks to our Southern neighbors in Spain and Italy one can get pretty much anything pretty much any time.
So, in sum, there are a few frustrations to cooking at home in France, but whatever you cook will be made with high quality ingredients. Not so bad, really.
