Shopping in Strasbourg - II

A while back, I had the pleasure of spending a day in Strasbourg looking for food. While I find that my local vegetables from my farm guy are better, it's just fun to shop in France. Of course, Germany isn't cut off from the rest of the world and you can get things here, but the variety in France makes things fun. Like chickens with heads & feathers. Fun. A mountain full of avocodoes. Fun. Wine barrels from the 15th century. Fun (although I'll pass on the wine).

Here a few samples of what I saw:

A wine vat dating back to 1472. The wine in it has only been served 3 times - the last time being as General De Gaulle visited Strasbourg, and the city just returned to France immediately after the Second World War. The vat is located in the Cave Historique des Hospices de Strasbourg. That's right - the city hospital has it's own wine cellar. It dates back to 1395 and was an effort for poorer people to have health care. They couldn't pay with money, but they paid with wine. If you can read French and are interested, you can find more info here.

View of the Strasbourg Catherdral on the way to the market. The second tower was never completed.

Fresh chicken at the market. Note the yellow skin. While I didn't buy these birds, the ones I bought were equally yellow (but headless) & absolutely fantastic.

Time for a break with the Salad Gourmande. Shrimp in cocktail sauce, tomato with shallots, an oyster, crudites, a salad of celeriac? in a creamy sauce, a thick slice of bayonne ham, melon, smoked salmon and foie gras. Under all of this, there is in fact lettuce.

The grocery store where I do my shopping. I go there for the food, not for the carousel. Honest.

I heard that there is an avocodo shortage in North America this year. I'm not too sure whether or not this is true, but I didn't see any signs of a shortage in the supermarket.

When I'm driving over the border with a cooler, I always pick up some oysters. Bear in mind that Strasbourg is still 8 hours away from the sea. The 2 hours seems to make all the difference because they have better seafood than we do in Germany.

I'm not too sure if I actually bought any of this wine, but there was something strangely appealing about the mountain of bordeaux. It was so cheap, I should have bought the whole mountain. Or at least a little rock.

So that's a little bit of what I do & what I buy when I go to France. Reason enough, non?