Yesterday was my sister's birthday—happy birthday sis! It's the first of many birthdays I won't be there in person to celebrate. Missing my family and feeling a bit homesick this week. So I kept busy in my own way when in a foreign country. Though France is actually not that foreign. Within a 10 minute drive, I can shop at five major supermarkets: Carrefour, Intermarche, ED, LIDL, and Leader Price. If I'm willing to drive 20 minutes further, I can find many more shops. A few of these big chains try to be a one stop shop. Not only do they sell fresh and frozen foods, there's a fromagerie, boucherie, boulangerie inside the store. They further try to cater to the average shopper's every day needs for clothing, electronics, sports gear (even bait), dishes, pots and pans, yarn and thread. The one stop kind of shop may be good for these chains and customers but they are not great for the small independent stores.
With all these shops around, I'm surprised how difficult it has been to find what I think are common ingredients.
Plain white vinegar. There's a whole shelf devoted to vinegar: vinaigre du vin, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, flavored vinegars with herbs de provence, shallots. But no basic white vinegar. I scoured the oil and vinegar shelves at three different grocery stores before I found it at my local Carrefour. It's called Vinaigre Cristal avec alcohol. At .35€ it seemed very cheap, but I'm hoping it turns out to be what I'm looking for. I'm making Vietnamese green mango salad today and I need the vinegar to make nuoc mam which is the fish sauce that I'll be marinating the mango in.
Baking powder and baking soda. At most supermarkets in the U.S., there's an aisle which holds all your baking needs from baking powder, baking soda, baking chocolates, chocolate chips, Dutch processed cocoa powder to dry yeast, flour, sugar, powdered sugar, and spices. At Carrefour, most of the same items can be found (I learned that through many visits and asking people) but they're spread across different aisles. The sugar is in the sugar aisle while chocolate is in the chocolate aisle. Flour and yeast are in a third aisle. I can't yet find powdered sugar or chocolate chips. And baking powder and baking soda? I've been looking for the little cans of baking powder the past week or so to no avail. Due to my lack of French, I still haven't asked the employees at the supermarket. But thanks to this blog of a fellow American baker who is now living in France, I realized I had seen baking powder in a different form at the supermarkets. Instead of a little metal can, baking powder or levure chimique/levure anglaise are in individual packets. So excited! In her blog, I also found out the French keep the baking soda in the spices aisle. So now I'm fairly confident that I can find almost everything I need. I just have to figure out what it's called, what the packaging looks like, and which aisle to find it in.
Fresh herbs used in Asian cooking such as mint, Thai basil, cilantro (which is called coriander here and in the U.K.). I've planted coriander seeds, which is a perennial so I hope to have coriander for a long time coming.
An Asian market nearby. I do that thing now where I make contact with Asians to say hello (thee are so few of us here) or to ask them about the nearest Asian market. I stopped an Asian man the other day at Migros and asked him if he knew of any good Asian markets nearby. He was only visiting so his Swiss friend told me she had heard rumors that there is one in Ferney-Voltaire, France. I'll try to find that one next though it is as far away as Geneva but maybe it has a bigger selection of food. My wish list, to start—Kasugai gummies, vermicelli, large bottles of soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, rice paper, packages of Mama noodles, packages of chewy squid, roast pork buns, sushi rice, sushi ingredients.
Yesterday R and I spent the greater part of the day searching for French language options for me. We visited and spoke to people at 5 different locations: l'hotel de ville, la Maison Savoie, a social services center, le lycee (high school) which has an adult education center (think BCAE, CCAE), and another center for local immigrants. All fingers pointed to GRETA, a continuing education service which used to offer French language classes, but no longer does at this time. Apparently there is another organization in town that offers classes, but the administrator at GRETA had no idea about the new organization. Today R will telephone our department's prefecture to inquire about local French classes.
After our searches turned up empty R thought we could try visiting American Liz and her husband who live in the same village as we do. Even though she's lived in France for over 30 years, she's still known as "the American Liz" just as R is known as "the Dutch R". And what about me? Will I be given the moniker "the Chinese-American K"?
American Liz is at the gym but her French husband is home gardening and is quite helpful. He says he'll put me in touch with locals interested in language exchange, my English conversation for their French. In addition he would ask his wife about the baking powder (this was before R found me the blog above). And lastly, he pointed us to the house where a Japanese woman lives.
We thanked the schoolteacher and made our way down to the house...the same house that we had passed earlier with a cute kid outside on his scooter. We introduced ourselves to the husband and the kid, asked about his wife and where she shopped for Asian foods. He went inside to get her but she was busy bathing their littlest one. The French home is sacred. So unless you are explicitly invited inside, or have a very close relationship (like we do with our neighbors P and D), you don't automatically go inside. We waited outside for a bit and then he came out and offered me a box of arborio rice from Italy. He frequently travels to Italy and picks up arborio rice which is a good substitute for sushi rice. We chatted briefly about life and work until his wife came out with a very adorable 8 month old baby. The couple and their children were incredibly nice. They moved to town about 7 years ago from Annecy where the wife M had learned to speak French. Annecy has a university and many foreign students so there's actually a good language school there. M and her husband C invited us to stop by anytime (as did American Liz's husband) and we plan to!
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