Market day ~ what did you buy?

[lagatta]

I think they are mostly called "bietole" in Italian, though there are many dialects - Italian is much less standardised than French. "Cardoni" or "carduni" a more like a big celery-type vegetable, most closely related to artichokes. Also just called "cardi"; cardoni means of a large size - there are many suffixes in Italian, as in Spanish, that make things bigger, smaller, nicer, nastier etc.

Do remember that "beet" for the edible root (usually red) is American English; in much of the English-speaking world this is "beetroot".

[Deleted]

I bought just two items at the village market in Senones in the Vosges mountains today. It was pouring rain anyway, so I did not dawdle, but the wild blueberries looked sensational, too.

The first item was the "country bacon" that my family has been buying for more than 100 years. The recipe for the exact mixture of herbs piled on top, plus the other curing instructions are written in India ink in an old ledger that I have seen just once. This ledger represents about 80% of the price of the butcher shop when it changes hands every 30 or 40 years. The bacon costs 13.73€/kg and I paid 35€ for this slab (rounded down from 35.49€). I will slice it into more manageable pieces and freeze the vast majority when I get home.

I also bought some mirabelle plums for 2€/kg. This is what was left when I got back to the hotel. My mother gobbled about half of them in the car today. 95% of the world production is from Lorraine (and the Vosges département is part of Lorraine).

They are mostly made into tarts and jams, as well as the very famous eau de vie. The aroma is extremely distinctive and can be identified in a flash by anybody familiar with mirabelles, no matter what the form of presentation.

[imec]

Great looking bacon!

[bixaorellana]

Pin-up quality bacon! Wow. I've never had bacon cured with herbs -- it has to be fantastic. You can see the bay leaves, but who knows what else is in that miracle paste.

[hwinpp]

The bacon looks very eatable.

Maybe I'll try to do something similar but without the herbs.

Think if I buy pork belly and cook it whole in a herbal soup it'll be tasty? I could even smoke it later, you get little smoking contraptions here. Biggish pots with lid plus the stuff that produces smoke.

I should add I'd not cook it too long, it would have to still be firm after cooling off.

Oh, beetroots are 'rote beete' in German, red beets.

[bixaorellana]

I won't starve now! Finally made myself go buy food. Popcorn for supper just doesn't cut it. Here's my haul from the big downtown market. Well, except for the fresh-corn tamales. Those were being sold where I got off the bus near my house. Guess I broke the old "don't go shopping when you're hungry" rule.


There are three kinds of meat (chile wet-rubbed pork, accordion-cut beef, and hogshead cheese) for me, and a big bag of beef bones for Ginger. Also: mangos, apples, pears, cactus pads, cilantro, onions, green beans, squash flowers, limes, lettuce, cucumber, bread, and too-hot-to-touch fresh corn tamales.
Oh yeah -- and grapefruit.

[Deleted]

Do they let you take your burro on the bus for carrying all that?

[bixaorellana]

I didn't think I was going to make it -- that stuff was heavy!

[hwinpp]

Are the onions the white bulbs in the right foreground? Can you buy them cleaned and peeled?

Also, good to see you eat squash flowers. I get pumpkin flowers here. I love it! So crackly (and I get a kick out of eating flowers anyway...).

[Deleted]

Bixa, why do they color the baby chicks like that? It was brave of you to take that picture of the men with the guns!

[bixaorellana]

;D
hee hee, Deyana ~~ I guess I derailed you by posting the same picture in two different threads.

The thread to which you are referring is this one, in Post Cards.

[Deleted]

Ooops, yes it meant to be posted in that thread

[Deleted]

I remember when they used to sell multicolor popcorn, too.

[bixaorellana]

Colored popcorn balls -- real treat food!

[Deleted]

Some of today's purchases.

Tomatoes, mirabelles, some kind of edible flower, basil branches, 1.5 kilos of pork bones from the butcher, Korean junk food 'onion ring' snacks, Thai junk food 'shrimp cracker' snacks, Gouda with cumin, a half dozen eggs, Macau husbandcakes (whatever they are, but there were buy-one-get-one-free so I needed them)...

[lagatta]

That bacon looks yummy indeed. I love mirabelles - I'm glad your mum has kept an appetite for them - and no doubt some kind of memory of them.

[Deleted]

I forgot to mention the six pack of Badoit Rouge, the excessively fizzy version of Badoit.

[bixaorellana]

What pretty tomatoes! Any idea what the flowers are? They look really fresh.

I don't see how anyone in his or her right mind could resist something called "husbandcakes", especially with a two-for-the-price-of-one sale. It sounds like something English lasses of a past century might eat on Whitsunday eve, probably at midnight, in order to dream of their future spouses.

[Deleted]

They appear to have a filling of dried melon.

[Deleted]

Sensing that a period of kitchen laziness is imminent, I bought these items at Picard (the frozen food store) today.

[bixaorellana]

France has really ritzy frozen food products!

Here's a blurry picture of the bananas I bought the other day,
next to the computer mouse for size reference:

[bixaorellana]

I am lucky to have a fruit stand down where my road meets the highway. It's right next to the mini supermarket. I'm sort of embarrassed to show today's haul, since it includes some unnecessary indulgences.


Ginger gets a good bit of the chicharrón -- pork crackling. The store has started carrying a new, local product -- flour tortillas with smoked chiles. They're addictive. Look at that chicharrón -- pretty irresistible.

[hwinpp]

What were the unnecessary indulgences?
And which one is the pork crackling?

[bixaorellana]

I'd say the sweet bread (in front of coffee package, top picture), the crackling, and the flour tortillas are frivolous, fattening foodstuffs.

The pork crackling is the item in the open bag on the left in the second photo. You can have some if you like!

[hwinpp]

Thanks, 'twas excellent.

[Deleted]

Today I went to the market and here is some of what I bought.

white grapes 1.19€

two pink pomelos 0.65€ x 2 = 1.30€

six potatoes 0.51€

Thai chives 0.98€

800g headless raw shrimp from Bangladesh, 15/20 count 7.20€

1kg mud crab pieces and claws from Madagascar 6.60€

one bunch fresh coriander (cilantro) 0.28€

one dragon fruit, 4 limes, 4 prickly pears 3.35€ dragon fruit (ouch!) 1.47€ limes 1.01€ prickly pears

two packages Japanese junk snacks 0.70€ x 2 =1.40€

package of 10 pork spring rolls (nems) 3.30€

500g bean sprouts 0.59€

[bixaorellana]

Whew! Stuff that's ubiquitous and cheap in one country is a pricey bit of exotica in another, isn't it?

I went to the market for my brunch, plus bought two tamales de mole for later. I also stopped at a garage sale ("bazaar" here) where I bought some bowls and chatted with the bazaar guy about his plants. He gave me a perfectly ripe purple fig & a couple more for tomorrow. As soon as I got home, my landlord came over to give me some corn he'd grown, saying that his wife boiled it last night. I didn't have high hopes after that comment, but it's excellent.

[hwinpp]

What's the stuff wrapped up in leaves at 6 o'clock?

[bixaorellana]

Those are the tamales.

Remember when you posted the pictures of the food for the dead at your office? (<-- Reply #1007 here) You explained about " 'nom som', sticky rice filled with fat pork and white (mung) beans wrapped in banana leaves and boiled". I replied that they are a Cambodian version of tamales.

A tamal is made with lime-slaked dried corn that's ground into a dough. The dough is beaten with lard, spread on corn or banana leaves, filled (or not) with meat, sauce, leaves, or any combination of those things, rolled up and steamed until cooked through.

[Deleted]

Bixa, I was pretty sure that those were the tamales, but I wasn't about to reply to HW before you did and make a potential fool of myself. I can see how it would intrigue anybody living in SEA, however, since it looks so much some of the items eaten there that are wrapped in banana leaves.