To market, to market... to buy a lot of cheese...

Despite the snow and cold (yes, more snow and cold), we HAD to make it to the Beaune market this morning. As always, it was fantastic. I just asked Jay and Judy to describe it (a request they are complying with while playing cards with Jack... so if they sound a bit distracted, they are. Jack is a tough card player).



"It's so varied," said Jay as he muttered in disgust at Jack's discard choice. "Usually in a market, you don't have such variety -- clothes as well as food. They even had underwear!"

"Between French lingerie and roasted rabbits and chickens..." said Judy, debating the play Jack was making.

"And you throw in all of the cheeses and meats," Jay added, indulging in his daughter-in-law's love of all things fromage. "We don't get anything like that."

"It's an artist's palatte of vegetables," said Judy, listening to Jay and Jack discussing whether they could overtake her. "The textures of the vegetables, the colors..."




In the end, Jack won the game (called 313, a kind of complicated rummy game they have been playing nonstop since Jay and Judy's arrival) but we all were victors when it came to a delicious lunch (and snack, and dinner...). The haul included: four bottles of wine, a bigger chicken than usual (to feed more people than usual), six pears, two kilos of the BEST clementines, four apples, two kinds of fresh pasta, walnuts, pistachios, olives, marinated garlic, tapinade, strawberries, radishes, une baguette, three kinds of cheese (a hard cheese called, I think, comte, and two spreadables that everyone seems to love), and fresh parmesean. I feel like there was more, but we have probably already eaten it!