{"id":1133,"date":"2009-01-31T08:47:28","date_gmt":"2009-01-31T13:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2009-01-31T08:47:28","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T13:47:28","slug":"what-theyre-eating-in-the-south-of-france-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=1133","title":{"rendered":"What they're eating in the south of France #5"},"content":{"rendered":"

anivid-honey-1.JPG<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a guest column by Anivid, who lives in the South of France and who also took these photos in markets near her home.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Anivid<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hello Everybody,<\/p>\n

We\u2019re here on a French town market in the South. Even though it\u2019s January, it\u2019s not extremely cold – around 48\u00b0 Fahrenheit. The time of the day is early in the morning, where the customers haven\u2019t yet started to arrive. The marchandises (fruit, vegetable & especially for this week: honey) are nicely presented \u2013 a quality, I personally am very fond of. It\u2019s not only about finding something edible to a fair price \u2013 it\u2019s also about esthetics \u2013 you first eat with the eyes, then the mouth & last the stomach \u2013 all three have to be given their share of attention & consideration \ud83d\ude09 E.g. the lettuce is presented in a nice row, the big tomatoes (called Tomato de Boeuf), are sliced into halves for the customers to enjoy the beautifully arranged chambers inside, with the intersections covered with film. There\u2019s shown respect for the country\u2019s products! Perhaps it\u2019s better saying the countries\u2019 products, as e.g. the egg-plant (aubergine) and the squash (courgette) are from northern Spain (marked: ESP), whereas the radish (radis), radicchio = Belgian endive (tr\u00e9vise = chicor\u00e9e rouge, where the roots are used for \u201ccoffee\u201d. Do you know chicory coffee in the States ??, in Europe we knew it during WWII, and in France it became a specialty we still know ;-), and tomato are from P.O. our departement (66) Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es-Orientales.<\/p>\n

You see, the northern part of Spain (South Catalonia), and the southern part of France (North Catalonia) once belonged together, but the Treaty of the Pyrenees 1659 gave one part to France and another to Spain (not to speak about an enclave in France, called Llivia, which became Spanish \ud83d\ude09 A little earlier Andorra had become a co-principality with the French President and the Monsignore on Sicily as co-princes \u2013 Andorra is situated at the foot of d\u00e9partement Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es-Orientales \ud83d\ude09 We have a lot of such historically based constructions in Europe. All this happened in the late Medieval Ages. Earlier, around 1100-1300 same landscapes together with Provence and the Balearic Islands belonged to a kingdom called, the Kingdom of Mallorca, and further back, in the Antiquity, the romans were here. Hannibal & the elephants crossed the Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es before they finally came to the Alps. The road they made is still here \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Enough history ??<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll go back to the market.<\/p>\n

There being a whole booth with honey, the light, creamy sort as well as the darker, almost liquid sort \u2013 and here on the honey booth we can see the two official languages in the P.O. represented: French (miel) and Catalan (mel). Catalan is a specific language totally different from both French and Spanish. One can learn a lot by a little trip to the market \u2013 eh ? I assume you know all the products over-there, also the avocado, the kiwifruit, the artichoke (artichaut), the pumpkin (potiron), the broccoli, and the fenugreek (fenugrec).<\/p>\n

Voila ! \u2013 what are you saying ??<\/p>\n

anivid-honey-2.JPG<\/a><\/p>\n

anivid-honey-3.JPG<\/a><\/p>\n

anivid-honey-4.JPG<\/a><\/p>\n

anivid-honey-5.JPG<\/a><\/p>\n

anivid-honey-6.JPG<\/a><\/p>\n

anivid-honey-7.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a guest column by Anivid, who lives in the South of France and who also took these photos in markets near her home. By Anivid Hello Everybody, We\u2019re here on a French town market in the South. Even though it\u2019s January, it\u2019s not extremely cold – around 48\u00b0 Fahrenheit. The time of the … Continue reading “What they're eating in the south of France #5”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}