God save the Queue
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I can’t remember when practices for queen’s death started in earnest, rather than generic state funeral, but I guess it was quite a few years back….
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Wonderful article about “the queue”
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Thank you Sue, proper laugh out loud!!!
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I trusted your judgement enough to take a look 
… and had a good chuckle… 
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Something I find amazing is the quality and variety of fruit and veg available in UK supermarkets compared to France. We’ve not had time to find markets that are good for fresh veg (our French neighbours said don’t bother because markets are expensive and poor quality) or better local suppliers.
Having just returned again to the UK, everything in Tesco (other stores available) seems a bit less expensive and quite a bit better quality than either the Intermarche or E Leclerc in Autun.
Oh, and the other thing is bread you can eat 2 days later and it still tastes ok without breaking your teeth.
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The variety and quality of fruit and vegetables in our local supermarkets here in 86 far exceed the offerings I’ve seen in UK shops on recent visits.
And as for bread: I’d rather eat fresh bread made from flour, water, yeast and salt than some pappy, Chorleywood-based loaf that’s chemically engineered to ‘keep it fresh’.
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The irony being that it was probably grown in the Netherlands or Spain.
Pappy white bread makes excellent toast though, doesn’t it? 
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Not a patch on my home-made loaf!
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I beg to differ, but imagine it depends on where in France you are.
Here in the Lot Valley, it’s years since we bought any fresh food other than fish from a supermarket . Some local producteurs currently have as many as ten different traditional varities of tomato, they are organic, freshly picked and have never been chilled - their flavour is incomparable and when the season finishes around the end of October, we’ll stop eating fresh tomatoes until next year.
If you live in the south of France all the year round you can still find sufficient local variety to eat seasonally well all the time. With a few staple exceptions - coffee, oranges, parmigiano / pasta / polenta and sea fish - what we eat probably originates from within a a 50 km radius.
And as for bread - I’ll probably never visit the UK again, so will be spared the search for decent bread
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The peppers (I use a lot of peppers) were ALL from Spain, and often quite shriveled. Mange tout from Zimbabwe, other stuff from China and the ROW. Anything not salady seemed imported.
Bread we’d have bought daily from the local shop, but they were en vacance for September. As was the baker in Anost 7k across the valley. I love the taste of fresh French bread, but it sucks after a couple of days.
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Given the geographical extent, France provides a massive growing season and range so we don’t have that much problem finding quality fruit and veg. Ok hard to get decent (eg) fresh turmeric and curry leaves, but don’t do badly for other stuff. The exception here is potatoes! Apart from the hugely expensive ratte and things like that we often find it hard to get decent ones. Our own potatoes will last us to January, but beyond that…
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This is quite recent discovery but if you freeze a baguette on the day you buy it from the baker, then when you defrost it another day it is actually pretty good, certainly better than stale baguette. You don’t need to toast it, just defrost.
It’s quite handy for those days you don’t want to drive anywhere.
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Slice it it into halves as if making a sandwich then into about 4 or 5 bits, you can freeze them in a plastic or paper bag and then stick them in the toaster and they are as if fresh.
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‘This is quite recent discovery but if you freeze a baguette on the day you buy it’
I’ve been doing this for a while since discovering I’ve developed a cumulative allergy to our otherwise excellent artisan boulanger’s experimental wild yeast pain au levain.
I buy baguettes from a good bakery twice a week, cut them into thirds, freeze them and reheat when needed. Meanwhile Madame, who has an otherwise ‘delicate stomach’ that cannot digest lamb or offal, continues to scoff pain au levain. But we manage…
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When we get an oven and a freezer it will be practical to freeze bread, though I rather detest frozen bread, and would prefer the whole-seed stuff from Tesco that lasts 4 days.
I agree with you that potatoes are relatively difficult in France. I think part of it is that the UK diet relies a lot on potatoes - and Iove them in all the ways they can be cooked - but France seems to spread their preferences over more different starches.
I really find this frustrating and think growing my own may be the only answer.
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TBH reheating bread or croissants doesn’t take a lot less time than their first bake, would it be worth making your own and just freezing pre-bake?
Doesn’t really save time though - if you have a boulangerie Marie Blachère near you you may have seen the undercooked baguettes, people freeze and then bake those at home.
Edited because obv it may be time- and effort-saving for some, but as I drive past a good bakery with convenient parking on my way to/from work every day (which is when I buy bread anyway) I get it then.
In the S of France as a child in town I remember bread being bought several times a day so you ate it properly fresh, going and buying it was often a job for me and my cousin (keeps children out from under adult feet, quite apart from anything else).
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Indeed. We have a bread maker which is much less used since Marie Blachere opened in our nearest town. We used to drive out daily for bread but saved a fortune by baking at home. Now if we are in town for whatever reason we make a piont of buying baguettes from Marie, 12 for 8.97 whats not to like. Bang them in the freezer and job sorted.
If we are further afield and looking for a sandwich lunch then Marie is the place to go. There sandwiches set the standard that others should follow!
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