Grocery Shopping in France (or, I thought I knew the rules, but was wrong)

Well, my good college buddy Lenore has been with me for a week, and she has had a rental car, so we have made a few trips to the big "super-Marche" ("marche" rhymes with "bouquet"), to get me stocked up before she leaves WITH THE CAR.  It turns out that there aren't a lot of shops open within comfortable walking distance here, so having A CAR is a very good idea and offers freedoms which not having A CAR eliminates.  (Did ya follow that?!)

So--off we go to the grocery store.  We found it--fine.  We park the car--OK.  We go to the little storage area where the carts are--and they are all LOCKED TOGETHER.  You can't just grab one and go.  Turns out you have to have a 1 Euro coin to insert into the lock, and that unlocks the cart from all the others; when you return the cart, you re-lock it to the group and get your Euro back.  OK, so I can do that.  (Leslie, Lenore's friend, lived in Bordeaux for a year so she knows these things).  The super-Marche is like a combination of Home Depot and Fred Meyer--and it's in a "mall" with a laundromat, dry cleaners, coffee shop, candy store, clothing stores and shoe stores.  So finally we figure out how to enter the grocery-store part.  Finding things is interesting--for example, they don't sell paper napkins with other paper goods (like t.p. and paper towels)--they are ONLY in the "party" section, even though they have some which are plain white and clearly meant for everyday use.  Also, the array of cheeses is something which would bring a smile to the face of any fromage-o-phile--easily 300 choices.  And both milk are cream are NOT refrigerated, but on the shelf--you're supposed to refrigerate them after opening.  The bread section is heavenly, as are the pastries--so many fruit tarts it makes your blood glucose climb just to walk by!  And when was the last time you saw a real chocolate eclair in the bread aisle?

Getting vegetables is an adventure, also--one puts them into a plastic bag and weighs them IN THE VEGETABLE area, applying the little sticker which the scale spits out at you--you have to know the name for the vegetable or else look at the picture which looks most like what you just picked up.  If you fail to do this, you are sent back to the vegetable area from the check-out counter (don't ask me how I know this).

If you ever wanted tripe in a can, this grocery store is JUST FOR YOU!!  Also chicken gizzards (a delicacy), many different kinds of sausage (canned), and the local specialty, CASSOULET, which is a white bean stew with bits of meat in it--you can get rabbit, pork, beef, veal, duck, or "sweetmeats" of several species along with your cassoulet.  I went with a meatless variety, to which I will add the leftovers of the smoked chicken which we are having tonight for dinner.

The wine aisles are amazing--every region of France (including the island of Corsica) is represented, with wines which range in price from 2.60 Euros to 19.00 Euros (that's the Chateau-Neuf-du-Pape from the eastern Rhone area).  You can get splits (1/2 bottles) or the usual 750 ml bottles quite inexpensively.  I have not located any local shop which sells table wines by the barrel, as we encountered in Venice in 2008; but I'll bet there is such a place.  I'll have to become "a local" to be told about it, I guess.

Anyway--I got out of there with all the things on my list, and my Euro back from the cart-lock, too.  It feels like a BIG DEAL to have survived a trip to the Grocery store!  This is NOT the same as doing the little shops every day which most French folks do, for bread and vegetables (at "l'epicerie")--there's one within walking distance, I think--I'll have to try that next.