Paris. Saturday April 6, 2013

Saturday , the day for the bio farmers market on Blvd de Batignolles.  But first breakfast and two loads of wash.  This is a vacation?  Finally we are out the door with a stash of bags to carry home the food.  Stop 1-a new bakery, Chez Julien, recommended by the wine merchant we visited yesterday.  Lots of people waiting so it must be good and the stock looks delicious.  So many temptations, both sweet amd savory, in a place like this.  So we have our bread and across the street is the beginning of the market.  Just like old times.  First stop is the vegetable stand we frequented two years ago.  It is difficult because it consists of two rows of vegetable displays with a narrow aisle between with check-out at one end.  It wouldn't be bad except for the number of parents with baby carriages squeezed into the narrow space.  But we load uo with veggies including local asparagus and some pears and continue on looking for the fish stand we went to every Saturday on that earlier trip.  Found it and the same man who always greeted us with:  ah les Americaines.  Got some salmon and smoked halibut to freeze for later in the week since there is still a couple of days worth of curried chicken and rice.  Then on to the stand with all sorts of nuts and then the cheese stand for Comte and a chèvre.

Next stop the wine shop to buy another bottle of wine.  This time the store clerk opened it for us so we wouldn't suffer the problems of last evening.

Home to lunch and a nap.  Then made some bread pudding with yesterday's bread for Harley.  I know it is for Harley since it has raisins which he loves and I hate.

Paris is so different from US cities even from New York which it probably most closely resembles.  There seems to be a bakery, a green grocer and a small restaurant on every block.  One wonders how they all survive.  There are also many small cheese shops, wine shops, ready-to-eat take away shops.  Of course it is almost a sin in Paris not to eat well and it is definitely a sin to buy bread in a supermarket if you are a true Frenchman.  We hypothesize that the difference is that maximizing profit is not a primary value.  The French culture has a lot of desirable characteristics.

For example, some of the larger subway stations have glass barriers between the platforms and the tracks with doors that open only when a train is in the station.  Much safer for passengers and something that is discussed for NYC each time someone falls or is pushed in front of a train but is always rejected as too expensive.  Taxes being anathema in the US, we don't do much for the good of the people anymore.  You get what you pay for.