My name is Kristie. Not only am I a baguette-a-holic, but I am also a market-a-holic.
The first step to recovery is admitting that one cannot control one’s addiction or compulsion.
I admit that I have a big, BIG problem with markets.
Today, at the market, I cried over salad.
Yes. Salad.
M and I were at the Italian stand, trying to work our what type of fresh ravioli we would buy, when a radiant green flashed in the corner of my eye.
A row of different types of salad leaves, in separate wicker baskets.
The first, carrying baby spinach leaves, even more beautiful than their name in French: “Jeunes pousses d’epinards”. How can I explain how perfect they were? Tender, fresh, without a single blemished leaf? How is it possible to have a whole basket of delicate leaves without them looking a little transport-weary? I could have sworn that he had picked each leaf by hand and carried it delicately to rest in the basket.
The next basket was full of fine tendrils of rocket. Not the big, burn-your-mouth-out leaves that I used to buy in Woolworths supermarket in Sydney. These rocket leaves were elegant, fine, gently curling, as if asking to be placed on your fork.
And the other baskets – salad leaves that I have only seen in France, like Mache.
It was a moment of amazement and wonder and I actually welled up. How can you live in a big city, and yet have access to produce that you would normally have to go to the country to find, or grow in your own backyard?
And we’re not even in Paris central. We’re in a little suburb just outside of Paris, and yet the market is open 2 or 3 mornings a week.
This market is undercover, in a big hall on the main street. I walked past it’s grimey doors a million times, thinking it looked too ugly to warrant a visit. The supermarket was just fine by me, and if I wanted a proper market experience, then I would just join my friend, A, at the organic market on Rue de Rennes, in Paris.
But one day, M suggested we make a quick Sunday trip to get a few things before all the shops closed on Monday (yes – in most suburbs, all the shops and restaurants close on Mondays. If you dont have anything in the fridge to eat for Monday night’s dinner – you’re stuffed).
Wow – from a dingy entrance, into a fabulous market atmosphere inside. There are:
- 3 cheese stalls (including my favourite husband and wife stall, where they always seem to be bickering and laughing together)
- one basic butchery, one butchery selling offal, and one butchery selling pate, terrines, pre-prepared meat dishes etc
- 5 fruit and vege stalls, with one particularly raucous Italian fruit and vege stall where the owners always seem to be doing more talking, giving kids strawberries to taste and general frivolity, than selling. I dont know how they do it, but they always have a crowd.
- 2 fish stalls (I avoid these like the plague – the smell for me is just too fishy!!)
- 2 flower/plant stalls (you name it – they got it)
- one wine stall (poor guy is always lonely. Everyone prefers the cute man in the bottleshop across the road)
- one cured meats stall (cured meats from everywhere – Corsica, French mountains, Italy, yum yum…)
- one italian stall, with mozzarella de buffala, fresh pasta, fresh pasta sauce, salami, proscuitto and delicious antipasti
- one stall that just does olives, tapenade and antipasti – thats it.
- one stall that just does potatoes and herbs – and salad…..
Now, every Sunday, I promise myself that I will only buy the necessities: the things that we have run out of from our 2 weekly supermarket shop, or the things that we cant get anywhere else. I promise myself that I will only buy the items I have written on the list. This is partly because the market is more expensive than the supermarket, but also as a way to control my addiction.
Some weeks, I succeed in only buying the things on the list – hurrah!
Other weeks, I just lose myself in the whirlwind of delicious market goodness; the people, the dogs, the banter between stallholder and local – and I want it too. I want to be given chunks of cheese to taste by the cheeseman, I want the fruit and vege man to greet me with a smile, I want the potato man to say “oh well, its better to have a big tall fiance with a big appetite than a small weedy one!” as he piles an extra couple of spuds in the bag. If I pass a fresh and beautifully pink pork fillet that has never seen a styrofoam tray or chemical preservatives – how can I leave it behind? I imagine that everything I buy from the market is full of vitamins, minerals and health-giving properties, and will without doubt be more delicious than anything I can buy from the “Auchan” supermarket (whether that’s true for everything in the market, I dont know, but the placebo effect works fabulously on me!).
Sometimes, the market isnt even about me, it’s just about watching how other people interact, watching how they choose their produce, listening to the conversations two women are having about their husbands and their work. I listen to the politeness, the protocol of the market, how things must be displayed, the interaction between stallholders who discuss whether it’s time to start packing up or if they can put aside a fillet of salmon for a customer who has just bought some fennel and lemons. This is the true France, the true meeting point of the neighbourhood – and I love it.
If there is such a thing as heaven, I am absolutely positive that there will be a market there.
