Day 95 (3 October 2010) – Sunday Shopping
I mentioned before that stores are closed on Sundays here in Nantes. This necessitated a change in Melinda’s and my grocery shopping routine as we would typically do the bulk of our shopping in Seattle on Sundays. Truth be told, though, so many of our routines have been altered that this one hasn’t been that big. It’s just an 
adjustment to not be able to shop on Sundays.
But to our surprise, we learned that a unique grocery store is open for a few hours on Sunday. Why this store gets special Sunday dispensation, I don’t know. Anyway, the name of the store is Picard (yes, Star Trek fans, like Jean-Luc). What makes it unique is that all the food sold here is frozen. It’s just aisle after aisle of frozen food. Really good stuff, too, and some quite unlike you find elsewhere. Tonight, after returning from seeing the movie “Inception” with Laurent, Frédérique, Manon and Chloe, Melinda and I each had a Bento Box that we purchased at Picard this morning. It was quite good – salmon, rice & edamame (speaking of edamame, we’ve been searching for it in the local grocery stores without luck…).
I took today’s photo of Melinda inside Picard as she considered the relative merits of some desserts. Apparently, they all had merit but we came home with a flour-less chocolate cake with caramel filling.
French Sabbatical 
[…] Day 320 (16 May 2011) – Tartares de Saumon That was the basis of tonight’s dinner, at least for Melinda and me. Chloe & Ella preferred chicken… But Melinda and I are huge fans of sushi and sashimi, and we found this particular raw salmon delicacy at Picard, the frozen food store I’ve written about before. […]
[…] Yesterday Melinda, Chloe and I went shopping at Trader Joe’s, one of our favorite grocery stores in Seattle. The prices are excellent and the diversity of products offered makes shopping there a unique experience. We sometimes find things that look almost identical to products we found in France (in fact, we think there must be some kind of overlap between Trader Joe’s and Picard). […]