2009 week 7

Dutch products to buy in France

There are things you can’t get anywhere in France, like chocolate sprinkles, flakes, peanut butter, etcetera. Not that we’re longing for it, but we can imagine that you just miss certain things, especially in the beginning. We don’t want to encourage you to do your shopping in supermarkets, small 's already difficult enough, but for Dutch articles (or something that resambles) you'll still usually in the large supermarkets to search. Here are some tips to some of those familiar things to find in France.

The Géant in Rodez has a special section for non-French products articles. You can buy brownsauce, baked beans or peanut butter, for instance, but these are imported from the UK and are generally very expensive. And by the way the English peanutbutter does not taste very well for the Dutch, they are used to a different kind of peanutbutter.

Nowadays you can find an extensive bio section where you can find meat substitutes in many supermarkets. Furthermore, during the touristic season certain stores in tourist areas sell Dutch (English or German) articles.

The range of sandwich fillings in France is limited, you can get jam, chestnut puree and ... jam. Lots of jams. Assorted sliced meat and cheese is, of course, in abundance.

Brown bread: give it up, the Dutch fresh bread, or even casino bread is simply not available. Yes, in the supermarkets bread is sold in plastic bags. Great stuff for playing games, whith stamps one can play a magnificent tic tac toe or make an imprint of ones cellphone. Very nice.

Tip from a reader: Brown bread is not abundantly available with the french boulangers. The ingredients for a delicious Waldkorn-bun can be found in the shops of Point Vert or Gamm Vert. These shops are the french brothers and sisters of the Boerenbond (Peasants-union?) in the Netherands and Belgium. Zoesie products can be found in France. On the other hand you will have to put some effort into it for preparing such a deliciously sweet-smelling loaf of brown bread.

Crepie: structural paint type product that you can smear on your walls to obtain a fine grained structure. In France, buy a jar of 10 liters for 9 euros. In the Netherlands you would pay a multiple thereof.

Yeast: yeast is often sold in France as "levure chemique" but that is baking powder, this is no good for most of our recipies. you will probably find dried yeast (levure SECHE) near the othe baking products. Elsewhere near the fine pastry you will probably find fresh yeast (levure Boulanger). FOund in cubes of about 30 grams and sufficient for baking a quantity of 1,5 kilo off bread.

Dutch cheese: the Netto Marche is cheap and you can get Gouda, maasdam or leerdam cheese, sometimes even edam chease. But the delicious old cheese from Holland are nowhere to be found. There are a lot of nice French cheeses which you can bay on the local market.

In the Netherlands you will find shelves full of salted crisps, but that is not the case in France. Recently the Super U furnisched a complete shelve for bags of chips. Great. But where are all those salted snacks like pretzels? Well, they lie hidden in an inconspicuous shelf back of the supermarket. French do not snack so often, therefore salted snack are less comon.

Lottery: Well, obviously they have many lotteries, but neither forfeited us any succes, alas, never again.

Buttermilk: you can get to the Leader Price, there is' t called 'Lait Fermenté.

Smoked sausage: as a substitute for the famous Dutch smoked sausage in France, there are many sausages available, usually under the name "Marteau, but they usually taste slichtly different. The variants are usually smoked 'fumée sur Hêtre'. Someties we buy smoked sausage at the Super U, four hideous looking sausages in a plastic packaging, but they taste very much like the real Dutch smoked sausage.

Whipped cream: Chantilly cream is beaten cream in France, it is generally known in the aerosoltype of cans, but if you look for the liquid cream search to 'creme entière'. We buy it from the Netto Marche for € 2.50 a liter.

Sugar: ordinary table sugar is sold in France under the name 'sucre en poudre, very confusing if you're looking for powdered (icing) sugar. It is Dutch, fine granulated sugar. The powdered/soft sugar (icing sugar) is called sucre glace and available in almost any supermarket.

Sauerkraut: pre-packed Sauerkraut is year round available in in the Netherlands. In France you can only get it in the autumn and winter season. Normaly you will find it at the butcher or the butcher department of a supermarket. It is sold under the name 'Choucroute cru.. (Dont fall for the canned saurkraut, thats a ghastly killer product.

posted by Ruud at 12:00  |  send a comment