A Photo Diary of my day at a French Market!

I had a long weekend over in France last week and as well as lots of swimming and sunbathing we also managed to get to a few Markets, including a night market in Najac and a farmer’s style market.

I love capturing photos of fresh produce, the colours are so vibrant and beautiful! I especially love seeing all the veg piled high at a market, much nicer than all the uniformed packets at the super market! I’d rather buy a big ugly mishaped tomato which tastes so sweet and full of juice over those perfectly smooth bland little guys who have only ever lived in a fridge!

I love the long shape of these tomatoes

Supermarkets charge more for tomatoes like this!

Home grown veg/ market stall veg is so much more interesting, there is real character to the produce and you can get a feel for the different variaties available. The stalls are rustic with wooden crates, paper bags, sunshine naturally ripening the fruits and lots of cute old French ladies with wicker baskets buying their fresh bread! Food looks more appealing in this atmosphere and it brings the creativity out in people. We are more connected to our food when buying it laid bare in it’s natural form and when you look around you can see people thinking about how they can do justice to the food 🙂 Can you tell I love markets!

Big Paper Sacks full of herbs and dried teas

Slightly beaten up Gourds but perfect for baking or stuffing!

Garlic

For example if I had only ever shopped in the super market I wouldn’t have ever seen these wonderful Aubergines or unusual Patty Squashes.

A mixture of aubergines

Patty Squashes

I can’t help over buying when ever I’m at a market stall, curiosity gets the better of me and I always come away with something I’m not entirely sure what it was but I simply had to have it! (We bought a spaghetti squash which neither of us had cooked before). All of the fruit and vegetables are all piled so high that when looking for what you need you almost always see something else which looks perfectly ripe and simply must be purchased!

Amazing big lettuces freshly picked

I remember at university deciding it would be cheaper to shop at Leicester market (a very good fruit and vegetable market) but soon realising that this also meant buying in bulk. Unfortunately I wasn’t quite as inventive with my vegetable dishes back then (unless it was roasting them to stir into pasta) so I soon went back to the supermarket however now adays I use left overs to make big soups or ratattouiles so nothing is wasted. I’ve also got into making smoothies and juicing since being in France and this is definitely when a market will come in handy, any left overs get popped in to be juiced! Look at all these beautiful fresh fruits available to buy.

Local Strawberries

So many plums!

Wild Figs – AKA Prickly Pears

Nectarines – Love how they’re a cute squashed shape!

This is what we bought in the end, mum made some delicious meals using the fresh vegetables and any that looked like they were nearing their use by date got juiced each morning. My mum also has a huge vegetable patch so I will post pictured of that soon. With the mixture of home grown veg and these farm veg I was spoilt!

We juiced the melon and the carrots, the aubergine and tomatoes became a fantastic moussaka and the fruit got eaten!

The fennel was braised and served with a morrocan tagine, the peppers were roasted and served with courgette cous cous, the parsley was juiced and the patty squash was baked and eaten as a side dish!

aaaaaand one last photo……….