Aw Rachael, made me feel so sad that you're crying secretly inside for sprouts, roast potatoes, peas, carrots, cranberries, (real) gravy, stuffing ; all these shall be on our festive table at the in-laws in Lyon (rustled up by my good self) :)
PS and all that with a gammon joint from the farm!
Little by little we've been weaning ourselves away from supermarket meat and veg. Any veg I don't have to hand from the veg garden we get at the Friday market from a local smallholder who sells his own produce, and our meat we get from either a farm which produces poultry and pigs, or a local butcher whose meat is produced locally. Can't be doing with stuff that's been flown halfway round the world and chemicalled to death...
Plenty of my French in-laws eat the skin, if the spuds are fairly recent. I keep them in spuds from my veg garden :)
...on no!! I forgot about the chestnuts and parsnips bit Doreen!...Thanks for reminding me, NOT ;-) Hope you enjoy it. They have so many starters here (probably 3 or 4) though that by the time one gets to the turkey you only really need a tablespoon of puree and a tablespoon of turkey.
We occasionally use tinned peas and beans when our home-grown frozen supplies run out, but frozen veg is less likely to contain additives. We get through large quantities of tinned tomatoes. Winter fresh tomatoes are expensive and don't taste good.
LOL! Brian, and "...what happens to the many superb vegetables at the markets?" they end up as one tablespoon of pureed something with your turkey on xmas eve....and I am crying secretly inside for sprouts, roast pots, peas, carrots, cranberries, gravy, stuffing... :-(
I do not like white bread. For many years my preference has been for rye breads. Guests seeing me eat that rather than baguette (cotton wool with a crust) have asked me if I have some kind of health problem. When I say that I do not like white bread the look perplexed. Also, on refusing a portion of one of those 10,000% sugar and other rubbish gateaux my host told another guest that they keep some fruit for diabetics, just in case, rather than asking me why I did not want any. I also clean and leave some of the green on leeks and keep them 'crunchy' rather than boiled to pap. One woman offered to teach me how to cook leeks properly. Apart from that, I have also experienced people not helping themselves to vegetables and then looking very surprised when one of our daughters piles them on her plate but either takes no meat or very little and very little of the staple, unless it happens to be chips (of course). So, what happens to the many superb vegetables at the markets? I must say as well, whereas I usually fill up at least four of the typical €1 plastic bags from supermarkets, many people are going away with one lightly filled. I am also surprised at the narrow range of fresh products at local produce shops but no longer by how few 'health food' shops there are.
The other quirk is that we cook a lot of Italian food, my OH being Swiss Italian and all that, whereby I often make our pasta. Given the amount of pasta available everywhere, when we say we make it ourselves, an easy little task in reality, people will say how complicated that is so better to buy the dry stuff. For a nation that is supposed to be composed of geniuses rather than just cooks, that attitude baffles me.
In the late 40's and early 50's we lived in Warwickshire and our Welsh farmer cousins used to send us glorious Welsh butter wrapped up in newspaper and brown paper BY POST! It was a great treat!
I once made jacket potatoaes for a French man for his lunch and was told, very ungratefully, that potatoes in their skins are for animals! If I give my French inlaws steamed potatoes in their skins, they peel the skin off! My main shock here is how much refined white flour and sugar the French eat (baguettes, croissants, desserts, gateaux, biscuits). I'm not French bashing the general population, just my husband ;-)
Tinned vegetables are full of preservatives and sugars. Much of the natural goodness, live enzymes and so on, have been killed off in processing. Apart from the chemistry set in a tin one might as well eat blotting paper filled with the flavouring they add to tinned vegetables for all the same 'benefits'.
I steam with skins on, the best way to keep spuds nutritious.
Nothing wrong with tinned veg but.....check the labels. Salt is often added which is bad enough but many staples such as peas and SWEETCORN now include added sugar too. The world has gone mad....
I eat potatoes with the skin on. I like them better that way.
I would eat the skin if I knew it was cleaned beforehand. Hell, I’d eat the whole spud, Schkin an’ all 
It was interesting to watch Heston Blewmytop make mash the other day, he put the potato peelings into the milk he heated to make his mash to reinforce the flavour.
Has anyone here ever served a jacket potato to a French person and seen them eat the skin ?
Yes, I was very surprised too - bang went my ideal of the french mingling in the markets - and then look at their shopping trolleys.
I think France is way behind more northern european countries with the buy-in of processed and pre-packed foods.
The Irish veg section is minuscule nowadays - we "gluttoned" on smash, sandwich spreads and powered desserts in the 70s and 80s - France is catching up now.
But now Irish are getting more interested in growing their own and buying fresh and direct from the farm. Where I lived in North county Cork, we could buy fresh eggs from a dispenser outside the local DIY store. And milk too :-)
France is catching up big time - I don't look forward to the downfall. In Ireland I used about 20-30% of the aisles in supermarkets, here about similar. But at least here we still have fish and meat counters.
Supermarkets are the devil, but I personally still need them. Every Friday we go to the market, and then 2 or 3 supermarkets for weekly shop. Always the market first tho. Even before the bottle bank :-)
She is not French as you know, but my OH buys tinned vegetables and stuff like fruit cocktail or pineapple that I refuse to touch. She does peel potatoes but peeling them in the first place! Unless I am making mash I do not peel them, the best part of a potato is like many other vegetables and fruit more or less on the inside of the skin. But anyway, the sections with all the tinned foods in are a very large part of the food area of any large supermarket. I feel bad buying concentrated tomato purée. The closest I get is the fact that out of season I buy frozen peas. I refuse to touch the tinned ones stacking up here.
See???
You can't beat an Irish idea - Ash hurleys and ash mice - see how well that works?
seeing as this is a good news thread - I will bring you back a slab - it will be a small one though :-)
Aah butter!
In Ireland it's just butter - there's not demi-sel, doux - it's all salted - you have to really look for unsalted (we even bake with salted butter).
We grew up on salted butter - now in France the doux just tastes like - well - fat (I know, I know, the irony).
BUT BUT BUT when I come back from Ireland next week - my little 10kg Ryanair bag will have at least 4kg of Irish Kerrygold - for my french neighbours - they lust after it. It's brownie points for me.