When You Can Actually Find Food On Sunday

Bon dimanche à tous!  I started out today going to the 18^th annual Exposition of Gastronomy and Wine with my host father, Jean.  This is an exposition at the civic center for the vendors of different wines, cheeses, chocolates, and meats, selling them off as gifts for Christmas, and in the meantime, handing out samples of everything there was to “prend”.

Everybody and their frère is hungry!

Macaroons!!!!

Festive :)

He's saying "it dices and it slices!" in French, by the way

Oh yeah, that's chocolate

Just like home!

As I’ve said before, I came to France with the intention of trying everything that was handed to me, and today was no exception—but I just tried different things once for the majority of time.  Because I haven’t been able to work out on a regular basis, and because I’m already so used to walking because of the fact that I work in a restaurant, I’m having to start to watch what I’m eating here, and lay off so many macaroons and so much awesome French bread.  It was good while it lasted, but now, back to body-reality!

Even though I laid off “prend”-ing so much, I still tried many things, including:

Cheese made from sheep’s milk (liked it)

Spanish dried ham (not like jerky-liked it)

Escargot (yep-snails!—and I liked it!)

Different paté’s (liked them in small doses—they’re very rich)

Andouillettes (DEFINITELY DON'T LIKE!!!) you"re just gonna have to look that up to find out what it is...

Potages (creamy soups) of a special mushroom called Champi-Bleu, which has a bluish tint to it (liked) and asperagus (I liked the asperagus by itself, but didn’t care too much for the potage)

Dried fruits (liked. Duh.)

Raspberry macarron (Duh again.)

Paté’s made from fish (actually really liked-I think it’s because of Marie-Anne’s attempt to feed me more well-prepared fish for my dinners here in France)

Different wines (brut champagne, Borgogne wine that tasted very light, sweet lichi-infused Gewurztraminer from Alsace, and others—liked them)

My experience with the wine tastings benefitted well from being with Jean, who was only one ingredient off from winning a wine blind taste test, which asked you where the wine was from and what was in it.  I’m in good company with French food, that’s for sure!

This exposition runs all day on Sunday, which is great, considering the fact that no grocery stores are open Sunday afternoon, there’s usually only one bakery open in an entire section of town, and the restaurants don’t open until dinner.

Yep, that’s right, even the French version of Walmart is closed every Sunday.

But the big polemic right now is the idea of opening some more grocery stores on Sunday, every Sunday.  This news is HUGE for French people, and it’s causing quite a stir.

In the U.S., we have Occupy Wall Street; in Egypt, the newest democratic rebellion riots; in Greece, the crisis with the Euro…and in France, we have protests against grocery stores being open on Sundays.  You can read an article (or use Google Translate and copy and paste, bien sûr) here: 

http://www.ouest-france.fr/actu/actuLocale_-Un-magasin-ouvert-le-dimanche-des-elus-choques-_49007-avd-20110905-61192483_actuLocale.Htm

Needless to say, the French take tradition very, very seriously.