Musings

• I went to the grocery store in our village yesterday and bought two ribs of stalk of celery. (I had to look up the definition to be sure that I had the terms correct.) I don’t think I have ever bought celery by the rib before. I don’t know whether it is a French thing but I am sure that every time I buy celery in the states, the stalk comes in a plastic bag. You don’t slide the stalk out and break off some ribs. You buy the whole stalk in its plastic bag.

• If I wanted to make something with a pumpkin-like squash, I could tell the vendor to cut off as much as I wanted; I wouldn’t have to buy the whole squash.

• When the vendor has cut the piece of squash or I hand over the ribs of celery to be weighed, I put them in a bag which I carry and reuse with regularity. The French have gotten serious about the overabundance of plastic and do not permit merchants to provide plastic bags unless they are made of bio-degradable materials. No one at the checkout counter asks “paper or plastic”. You are expected to bring your own shopping bags. (Grocery stores have not provided shopping bags for purchases for as long as we have been coming to France but eliminating the produce plastic bags is relatively new.)

• The perils of plastic remind me of an Italian cartoon I saw on Facebook in which the fish monger is handing a whole fish to a woman and the woman asks: “No plastic bag?” to which the fish monger replies: “It’s already inside.”

• We recently had a mechanical problem with our French car: the power steering went out. We had to call a towing service to transport our car to a garage. First, I had to learn the term for power steering (direction assistée) so I could begin to explain the problem to the tow truck operator. Then, I didn’t know the term for tow truck (camion de dépannage, dépanneuse). The French terms – repair truck, repairer – are more generic than English which was a good thing in this instance as the truck that arrived was a flat-bed; not a tow truck at all.

• For all of the allegiance to supporting handicappers in France, there are few sidewalks in this village which would accommodate a wheel chair…

• I have written before that Vaison la Romaine is a tourist town because it has the most extensive Roman ruins sites in all of France. Being a tourist town means that the population changes from about 7000 in the winter to 14000 in the summer. Being here in the low season has its challenges. Several restaurants have only eight or nine month schedules. If the restaurants are open all year, it is certain that they close for several weeks in the winter for congé annuel – annual vacation. It is not rare to plan to go to a restaurant only to find a sign on the door saying congé annuel or fermeture exceptionelle (closed due to unforeseen circumstances). Add to that the regular weekly closings of all commerce (closed after noon on Sunday and many places stay closed all of Monday), one learns that it is necessary to have provisions in place because one cannot jump in the car on a Sunday and go to a store to pick up a forgotten item and expect it to be open. And don’t bother thinking about the concept of 24/7.

• Twelve years ago, someone staying at our apartment wanted to find a café or a coffee shop where he could order a take-out coffee. I don’t know whether it is a good thing but there are now a couple of shops that will sell a coffee to go and now there is also MacDo – the term the French use for MacDonald’s – in Vaison : (.

Random observations

It has been very chilly here. The daytime temperature going only as high as 50° is bad enough but when the Mistral is blowing it is downright cold. We walked up to the old town yesterday and the wind was a literal slap in the face. (I understand that the word literal no longer means only literally. It can also mean figuratively.)  It was supposed to warm up before Easter but the wind continues to keep the temperatures cold…

Many of the shops do not heat the interior or if they are heated, they set the temperature very low. Several stores leave the entry door open even when the outside temperature is around 45° F. The clerks work while wearing big sweaters or coats and scarves. Customers don’t seem to mind.

More than a year ago, a dear friend sent me the Food Section of the New York Times. The section was titled: “The New Essentials of French Cooking” by Melissa Clark and includes 10 recipes. Since receiving the section, I have been going through the recipes to learn them. So far, I have been successful in making Coq au Vin, Cassoulet, Sole Meunière, Omelet, Ratatouille, Quiche and Steak. I have yet to try Tajine, Pommes Anna and Soufflé. I think my favorites so far are Cassoulet and Sole Meunière though I love making/eating Ratatouille and what’s not to like about a recipe that calls for marinating chicken with a bottle of wine? I would never have predicted that Tajine would be on the list but the author says that this dish of North African origins is so good it has found its way into French cooking. (I agree with her: it is quite good.)

It has been fun learning new recipes. My kitchen skills are still fairly minimal – I don’t have the creativity of our friend Dan or my high school friend who writes the food blog Yo Jo, What’s for Dinner but I enjoy shopping and then cooking. Plus, now I have more than six recipes so we no longer have to eat the same recipe twice in one week.

It is supposedly spring here though the temperatures belie the fact. But, one can now find asparagus and strawberries in the market. The early asparagus is expensive but the price drops every week until the end of the asparagus season. The strawberries are so sweet, one cannot imagine how nature packs so much sweetness into the berries. Soon, the vendors will start selling the softball-sized melons that are grown about 50 km south of here.

Related to the strawberries – and other foods as well – the location at which the produce is grown is important in France. Somewhat like Americans who buy salmon and choose the salmon based on its source. In Provence, the best strawberries come from Carpentras – a city about 25 km from here. The best melons come from Cavaillon. If you like mussels, the best mussels come from Brittany – moules de Bouchot. The best lentils come from Le Puy-en-Velay. And then there are the cheeses – all of which have a geographic origin. French gruyere for instance is called Comté and comes from the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. Grocery stores must post the country of origin for fruits, vegetables, honey and meat.

We have had a rush of visitors: our next door neighbor from Lansing, a long-time friend and colleague of Ellen with her friend. It has been fun – it is always fun – to show people why we like Provence as much as we do. On the clear days, the sky is a brilliant blue and the limestone in the mountains seems to glisten. And, of course, limestone contributes to creating the wonderful wines of Provence – les Côtes du Rhône – which have become my favorite wines.

Stepping Out

Now that we are back in France, it is clear what I miss most about France when we are away: steps, baguettes and local groceries. (The list could go on for several more pages, but these three come to mind first.)

Baguettes and local groceries are related to steps. Each morning, I walk to get a baguette. Then I walk to the local groceries and do the grocery shopping for the day and later I may need to make an extra trip for something that I forgot. At the end of most days, I have accumulated more than 10,000 steps just doing errands.

When in Lansing, I have to drive to a grocery. I used to walk to the City Market but all of the produce vendors have closed their booths. I now go to the City Market only for cheese. There are no small grocery vendors in Lansing though there are three within the center of Vaison la Romaine. I had hoped that the people who are buying lofts and condos in downtown Lansing might have created a demand for a local grocery but it has not happened yet… Maybe the recently passed legislation, introduced by Lansing Representative Andy Schorr, to bring groceries to urban food deserts will provide the incentive to establish local groceries or maybe Andy Schorr becoming mayor will bring a renewal of downtown Lansing commerce. We will see.

Grocery stores located beyond walking distance are an inconvenience but I can still get in my car and drive to one of the big box stores in Lansing. Finding a bakery that sells baguettes, on the other hand, is impossible. (People may object to my statement that there are no baguettes in Lansing by pointing out that almost every grocery sells a loaf of bread they call “baguettes”. They are all correct. But, I am talking about real, crusty baguettes, not the soft as white bread versions that most stores offer.) It seems that real baguettes have a freshness timer in them. If you don’t eat all of your baguette in one day, it turns hard. All you can do is use a plastic bag to keep the baguette soft or break up the hard left-over piece and make bread crumbs. Our while-in-Lansing solution is to buy frozen baguettes and bake them at home. The frozen baguettes are an acceptable substitute but far from the crunchy joys of a freshly baked baguette!

I guess that I have just become a proponent of “shop local, buy local”. I appreciate that I can walk that philosophy while I am in France – and am waiting for the day when it will be true in Lansing.

Summertime and the livin is easy… (George Gershwin)

We have been back in the states for two months now. I have stopped interjecting French words into conversations. (I find that most people just look at me strangely when I say “voila” instead of “see” or “there you are”.) I try to remember to say “yoo-hoo” instead of “coucou” when I’m trying to get a neighbor’s attention.

We have acclimated fairly well to our state-side lives. Even though we have been living our schizophrenic lives for seven years now, I find that I still get surprised when we make the transition.

·         I lament the fact that I cannot walk to a grocery from our Lansing home. (The City Market is a little over two miles from here – but there remains only one produce stand (and the good cheese shop). There are neighborhood weekly farmer markets but nothing quite like market day in any village in Provence.

·         Americans dress far more casually than the French. Sweat pants and T-shirts seem closer to the norm than the aberration. We seem to have forgotten Jerry Seinfeld’s comment that ‘people who wear sweats in public are announcing that they have given up’.

·         Dining out in the states usually includes taking home a doggy-bag – more accurately, a styrofoam container – for the second portion that was served as part of your meal. The size of the portion served here is much larger than what we expect in France. (There are now some French restaurants which have begun offering take-away containers.)

·         For a long time, we have thought that food in France was more expensive and wine in France was less expensive than here but my perceptions are changing. Meats, cheeses and local vegetables seem to be equal to or less than American prices. For instance, a log of goat cheese that costs almost $10 in the states sells for about ¼ th that amount in France. ‘Exotic’ meats, e.g., duck, quail, rabbit, even lamb, are far less expensive in France and more often locally produced. Eggs are more expensive but bread – a baguette – is about a third of the US price. (Clothing is more expensive in France.)

·         We are fortunate to have a home with a backyard large enough for my vegetable garden. Many fewer houses in our village have enough land for a garden and at our apartment, we can manage only a few herbs grown on the balcony.

·         It seems easier to find a good craftsman/mason/carpenter in the states. We have heard horror stories about craftsmen and their work here but not nearly as often as we hear the stories of poorly done work in our village. not sure whether Angie’s List covers France…

This past weekend, we went to the christening of our godson’s first child. While the baptism was the main event, driving to North Carolina permitted me to reconnect with a high school friend and to see my sister and beau frère who drove from Wilmington to meet us in Raleigh for lunch. The events and gatherings were all fun: what beats family and friends?

Belle Provence or Beautiful Michigan?

We’ve been in Lansing for two weeks. The vegetable garden is planted, most of the home maintenance chores are finished and I am back on my volunteer schedule at the two nearby child care centers. Clearly, we are settling into our state-side routines.

As we encounter people we have not seen for six or more months, we are often asked about what we missed while we were away or what strikes us as a source of differences between Lansing life and life in Vaison la Romaine.

From the get-go, I turn around the first question and reply that I miss living in the center of a village where a car is not necessary. I miss the walking to – everywhere! Not just in steps logged but in people encountered who smile or stop to talk or simply offer “Bonjour Monsieur” as I pass. (At some point in time though it must have been recently, I stopped being middle-aged and became old. People say “Bonjour Monsieur” as a respectful way of greeting someone older – and to most of the world, the someone older is I.) In France, I averaged 12,000 steps a day. In Lansing, I may get to 12,000 steps once a week. In Lansing, one can’t walk to any grocery or butcher shop or bakery… - did I say ‘butcher shop’? I am not sure where there is a butcher shop outside of a grocery.

I have missed the camaraderie of people with whom we have forged friendships over the past 30 years. I have missed our neighborhood and the special connections/supports that our neighbors offer.

I have missed NPR and the Sunday word puzzle with Will Short on Weekend Edition. And John Stewart, and Steve Colbert and John Oliver. (I have missed understanding subtle humor and political comedy.)

In general, people speak louder here than in France and we Americans laugh louder than the French.

I like the pervasiveness of “the customer is always right” attitude in stores here. It may also be true in France but you might have to do penance before your shopping error is absolved and the item is taken back…

I miss good, cheap wine. In the US, food is less expensive – even though the produce in the grocery stores comes from three different continents – but wine here is more expensive. Similarly, a baguette in France is only a dollar. In Lansing, a baguette costs three to five times as much.

On balance, there are so many things to make each “home” attractive. We are fortunate to have such wonderful options.

Missing You! Missing France! 2

A week from today, we leave our apartment to go to Marseille. Our flight to Lansing is at 0 dark thirty on Tuesday morning and it is a whole lot easier to deal with the early departure from a hotel at the airport.

Given our departure, we are working on turning our apartment into a rental property for the summer/fall. The focus on work helps me not think about leaving here but I nonetheless do think about leaving and what I will miss most. (I looked back through my old blogs to the one I wrote as we prepared to leave in 2009 after our first six months here. My list of things I will miss has not changed a lot. For the sake of redundancy, I offer my 2014 edition of “Missing You! Missing France!)

·         FRIENDS! We have developed wonderful friendships here in Vaison la Romaine. The village is ‘just the right size’ for encountering friends on a regular basis. I realize that the village is also large enough that it could feel isolating without friends.

·         The “Bonjour, monsieur” greeting as I walk into almost any store (followed by: “Au revoir, monsieur. Bonne journée” as I leave a store – even if I didn’t buy anything.

·         The plethora of wineries and all of the wonderful wines of the Rhone Valley. We are fortunate to live amongst some of the best wine-producing villages of the southern Rhone Valley: Cairanne, Chateauneuf du Papes, Gigondas, Rasteau, Roaix, Sablet, Vacqueyras, Vinsobres, Visan. An American friend once asked if one could drink the water in France. I replied: “Of course! But wine is cheaper!”

·         The emphasis that the French put on good (and fresh!) produce, meat and fish. Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, underscored the importance of buying fresh/buying locally produced. Right now, asparagus, strawberries (from the next big town – Carpentras), spring melons make shopping more fun and cooking easier. I learned from the fish monger that the best mussels are from Brittany but the ‘moules de Bouchot’ have a season – July to March.

French grocery stores and shops as well as the Tuesday market vendors always display the country of origin of the produce, meat, fish and cheese they are selling. As I have tried to become more of a “locavore”, I have started paying careful attention to the country of origin of my foods.

·         Our world-class cheese store and the choices of cheeses. I am pleased that our market in Lansing has a very good cheese shop but in Lansing, the choice is usually binary: ‘Do you have Roquefort?’ Yes! (or no!) Here in our village, if I ask for Roquefort, I have to clarify what style of Roquefort I want. The same is true for Gruyere, goat cheese, brie, etc…

·         The varieties of meats and poultries

·         The View! from our small but viewalicious balcony on the 3ème étage (4th floor) The spectacular views as one drives/walks around the area.

·         Our daily bread (baguette)

·         Being able to clean the WHOLE apartment while standing in one spot (almost) – in about 12 minutes

·         Leaving the apartment at 5:25 for a 5:30 movie and being on time

·         Playing with the kids at the crèche.

Luckily, the sadness of leaving here is replaced by the joy of returning to Lansing and our wonderful friends there. Life is good!

Les Marchés of Vaison la Romaine

I love to go to the markets in Vaison. We are fortunate to have two: the big, Pope-stipulated (in 1532) Tuesday market and the little market of local producers on Saturdays.

The Tuesday market is both a social and a shopping event. In addition to being able to buy everything needed for the cuisine (and the house), you run into friends and acquaintances and get to catch up on local news. Often, at the end of the shopping, you see residents and tourists sitting at the cafés having a coffee or a glass of wine and enjoying the community/social aspects of the day.

On Tuesdays, you can purchase vegetables and fruit from 20 vendors and meat from about 10 or so trucks – not including the dried sausage vendors who account for another five or six stalls. There are usually four fish mongers offering everything from albacore to sea urchins; seven or eight olives and olive oil, dried fruit and nuts vendors and an equal amount of cheese vendors. (Some cheese vendors offer the full array of French cheeses, some offer cheese from only a certain region such as the Jura and some offer only their home-made goat cheeses.) There are several honey vendors offering locally produced honeys and preserves.

Tuesday market - one of the 'Spice' trucks

If you are hungry while shopping, you can choose from pizza trucks, roast chicken trucks, paella stands, fried rice and egg roll stands, nougat stands, sugared fruit stands or a full-line bakery. Many of the vendors offer organic options. If you need a tablecloth or napkins or runners or flatware or pottery or cooking utensils or high-quality knives, you will find them at the Tuesday market. You can buy shoes, scarves, belts, socks, gloves, hats, clothing (both new and used items), thread to repair clothing, sewing machines to make clothing… If you prefer, there are live plants – pots of both ornamentals and vegetable starts including olive trees.

I needed a new gasket for my espresso maker. I found it at the market on Tuesday. Books – new or used? Tuesday market. Music – new and used? Tuesday market. Soap or perfume? Curtains? Artwork? – you guessed it: Tuesday market.

Fish?

The Tuesday market offers an amazing array of – everything. We have big box stores in the States many of which would be hard pressed to offer the array of items one finds on Tuesdays in Vaison la Romaine.

(The locals like to shop at the market in the spring and fall but often avoid the market in the summer as there are so many people there that it becomes difficult to walk from one stall to another. But then, the population of Vaison does double in the summer.)

The Saturday market, by contrast, is the ‘locavore’ market. In the fall/winter/spring, there are about a dozen stalls offering locally grown vegetables and fruits, poultry and eggs, honey and jams, olive oil, olives and tapenades and, in January and February, truffles. A fish monger parks his truck at the end of the parking lot. (The market doubles in size in the summer but still offers only locally grown or produced items.)

"Locavores"

He probably smiled to himself as he made the decision to send the book to me. He knows me very well and knows how the hypothesis would work on me. He has seen how we live in France and probably made a connection.

Now we are back in France and I am trying to address that for which I have been ruminating as a result of John's gift of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and family.

The book is about how they became “locavores” for a year at their family farm in southern Virginia. The family agreed to eat only what they could obtain from their own garden/farm or the gardens/farms of neighbors. That meant no broccoli or oranges from California, no lamb from New Zealand, no red bell peppers from Holland or anything outside their region. The author claims that “Every food calorie we presently eat has used dozens or even hundreds of fossil-fuel calories in its making…” and once the food is processed, “Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has travelled an average of 1,500 miles” (co-author Stephen Hopp). The family wanted to know where things were raised and how things were raised: (pesticides? herbicides? growth hormones? antibiotics?)

So, as John knew it would, reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has caused me to assess my shopping habits from a “locavore” perspective. When we are in Michigan, I go to the Allen Street Farmers Market on Wednesdays or make meals from the vegetables of my own garden (no pesticides, no herbicides there!). The majority of my food shopping is nonetheless done at big box stores. I do pay attention to finding fruits and vegetables that are in season – as in Michigan’s seasons. (I love it when asparagus from western Michigan is available and cheap In the spring).

In France, I think it will be easier to get closer to a “locavore” profile. For one thing, the French display prominently the country of origin of all fruits and vegetables.  Restaurants usually have a display showing the sources of beef and pork.  Cheeses, some meats and wines are origin-protected. Origin-protected means, for example, that only the sparkling wine that comes from the Champagne region of France can be called ‘champagne’. (You may remember my post a few years ago when I bought a 10 pound origin-protected turkey for Christmas and paid more than 100 € for the privilege – to my great shock.)

If Ellen and I are to be “locavores” in France, it would mean shopping at the local independent stores and not at the big box stores. The one ‘caveat emptor’ is that in the center of town there is a small grocery – part of a franchise large enough to offer their own brands…

We are going to try it. (John probably predicted this decision.) That means that we will buy our vegetables at the local épicerie (grocery store), our meats at the butcher shop and our fish from the fish monger and continue to buy our bread at a local, made-here bakery. I will include the market on Tuesdays as it is the day on which we can buy all that we might need even though the Tuesday market includes fruits and vegetables from Africa and Spain. (The “little” market on Saturdays is populated with farmers who bring produce from their farms.)

Since we are starting “cold”, I don’t have a cellar filled with canned vegetables or fruits that I could use to bring some summer back to the menu. I will have to get really creative to make inviting dishes to reduce the boredom of winter vegetables. “On verra.” (We’ll see) how this works out. Stay posted.