Market Day in Caen

The market was fantastic - as one would expect of a French market that dates back to the 1300s. I’ve been to markets in France before, but that was as a holiday-maker and was only sight-seeing.

Going to a market as a resident is a different experience altogether - I was planning meals for the next week and I was also thinking about what might be good to eat in the future and looking at some vegetables, fish and animal parts and realising that I need to look at some recipes and cook books to find out how to eat them.

Back in the UK I have learned to be kind to my guts but, at the same time, not let my Crohn’s ruin my culinary pleasures entirely. I know what food is safe, what is hazardous and what I can expect if I eat something that doesn’t quite agree with me.

Moving to France means a whole new exploration of these categories. There is no way that I’m going to stick to what I eat in the UK – not with what I saw in the market today. But neither am I going to be entirely reckless, that would just be stupid.

So I have Julia Child’s iconic ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ to help me through some of the cooking techniques of France. Soups and sauces are great for my small bowel strictures – as is drinking plenty of wine with my meals.

The fish on sale in France is far more bountiful and diverse than in the UK and I intend to make the most of it. A popular diet book for Colitis and Crohn’s by James Scala suggests that people with IBD should eat only the flesh of animals that swim or fly – so fish would be a good choice.

However, even on the dozen fish stalls at the market, there was a bewildering variety of fish, some I recognised, but others I will have to write down and look up in the dictionary. Then I can look them up in Rick Stein’s excellent little ‘English Seafood Cookery’ and find out how to prepare and cook them.

So what did we come home with today? We bought apricots and a melon, tomatoes and courgettes, onions, fresh garlic and potatoes. And we bought a vase in the bric-a-brac section and some flowers to go in it. Not much, but we do have another 50-odd weeks to sample other delights.