France: The Market

One of the most amazing things I've witnessed in my life is the Provence Traveling Market.  It would roam around the region weekly, always stopping in the same towns on the same days.  We accidentally caught it twice during our journeys, once in Aix en Provence and once in Lourmarin.  Naturally, it blew my mind.  We have been in European cities that hosted markets before, but they were rarely more than booths filled with knock-off name brand t shirts and stupid souvenirs.  This crappy style of market was so frequently encountered, I didn't know they could be anything more.

At the risk of sounding redundant, I've never seen anything quite like the traveling market in the South of France.      

You can literally buy anything you'd ever want or need at these markets.  Fruits, vegetables, oils, vinegars, bread, cheeses, meats, fish, spices, soaps, utensils, knives, artisan crafts, clothes, shoes.  The list went on and on.  Each type of good would be grouped together in the same part of town.  As a result, the food was all together, the clothes were all together, the artisans were all together.  It was incredibly easy to navigate and impressive in its size. 

The very top picture was one of the first booths that drew us in: the spice booth.  They had what seemed like an infinite amount of different spices, teas, seasonings, and blends out in the open.  I've never seen anything quite so beautiful and tantalizing.  I could have photographed this booth all day.  We bought 4 tubes of Mediterranean salt mixed with herbs, one small bag of rose potpourri, and one small bag of lavender potpourri.  It was all incredible.

Next was the cheese stand.  As you can see above, they didn't mess around.  They brought a massive cooler full of hundreds of cheeses, all beckoning you to steal away with a baguette and eat till you felt sick.  We purchased 3 rounds of Chevre (goat cheese) for 6 euro.  Region wide, Chevre portions were always about the size of a hockey puck.  The 3 varieties we bought had honey, herbs de provence, and cracked pepper.  Feeling ambitious, we also bought a wheel of Camembert cheese.  Since a vegan friend once told us that Camembert cheese was the only thing she'd consider cheating for, we had to try it.  The cheese people also sold bread, so we grabbed a big loaf to add to our quickly growing handful of bags. 
 
Next, at one of the produce stands, we selected two large heirloom tomatoes and a bushel of cherries.  It seemed that dinner was already planning itself.  After a stop later in the day at the nearby beach town of Cassis, our dinner became complete with a local bottle of rose wine.

The Mediterranean as seen from the beach at Cassis

These markets gave us two unparalleled dinners, both enjoyed from the comfort of our B&B garden.  The first featured the following menu:
-French Bread
-3 types of Chevre cheese: honey (my favorite), herbs de Provence, and cracked pepper (my wife's favorite)
-Camembert cheese: which smelled like "ass feet" (a term I coined), but tasted incredible
-Rose wine (that's pronounced Rose-ay, not rose flavored) from Cassis.  A sip of wine after the Camembert cheese would create a turbo-charged taste explosion.
-Heirloom tomatoes sliced and served with nothing more than Mediterranean sea salt mixed with herbs
-the cookies in the foreground weren't good, but were very commonly seen around town.  They were chewy and tasted lemony.  
 
The second dinner was very similar and featured:
-The same cheeses left over from night 1
-French fiscelle bread (not baton, like my wife told me to say.  That means stick.) from Gordes
-A new type of heirloom tomato served the same way as the previous night.
-white wine from Gordes
-local cherries
-local strawberries and blackberries.  These guys won the gold medal for unparalleled taste.  I swear to you that you've never tasted a strawberry or blackberry until you've had one of these.  They were at the prime stage of ripeness and were so juicy sweet that you almost believed they were some new magical fruit you've never heard of before.  I'll swear up and down that you've never had anything like these berries before. 

 

The beauty of these markets really existed in the fact that everything was local.  And when I say local, I mean from right over there (pointing to some piece of land visible from where you are).  The fruit was meant to be sold and eaten on that very day.  It wasn't picked early and then "ripened" with chemicals.  That was the exact day for that piece of fruit to exist on my plate. 

More to come!