The French they don’t teach you at school

Markets are very much part of everyday French life and despite the growth of les grandes surfaces (the big supermarket and hypermarkets found on the edge of every city), the French still prefer to visit a local market to buy fresh produce where often you will buy direct from the producer much like the farmers’ markets in the UK and North America.

Whether you live in a small village or a district of Paris, there will be a market within easy reach most days of the week. The produce varies with the seasons however there will normally be regular fruit and vegetable stalls, butchers, cheese sellers, fishmongers supplemented by plant sales in the Spring, oyster sellers when there is an R in the month, freshly picked cherries in the Spring and so on…

In our local market on the edge of Lyon, in the summer many of the local producers from the Monts du Lyonnais would come down in their battered white vans full of trays of delicious soft peaches and nectarines,small punnets of raspberries and strawberries, freshly picked tomatoes all bursting with flavour.

Nothing beats the pleasure of wandering round a market with a basket on a Saturday morning, prodding and feeling the produce, tasting slivers of cheese and slices of fruit, comparing prices and quality and buying here and there until you have everything you need for the weekend.