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I Dropped the Ball on this one but I hope my Consolation Prize is Pleasing

Guys, I apologize, I really dropped the ball on this first one. I didn't get the chance to go to a farmer's market this weekend and totally forgot about doing it for the rest of the week. This one is on me 100%. Not a good way to start out a blog or the semester really. But, in the spirit of improvisation that has guided me for my four years here at ASU, I have a little trick up my sleeve that I hope will suffice. 

In the summer of 2015 I was lucky enough to study abroad in Paris for a month for a class titled "Food and Culture in France." Yeah, I know, what a rigorous and grueling subject for a study abroad class. In between my leisurely strolls around the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral hearing impromptu performances from jazz quartets, craft ice cream in hand, the class took us on excursions to various food related venues. The most striking of these for me was the trip to the Rungis International Market. The Rungis Market is the largest wholesale food market in the world selling everything from entire cows to fresh flowers. 

My experience at the Rungis Market started at 4 AM with a lengthy bus ride out of Paris into the Rungis suburb. We had to get to the market in the early morning because that is when most of the goods are bought and sold so that they may be turned into fine Parisian dining later that night. Getting around the market is disorienting. There are hawkers left and right, forklifts carrying pallets of fruit whizzing past you and restaurant managers rushing around to get their day’s ingredients.


The market itself is divided up into many different sections, cheese, seafood, meat, flowers, and produce to just name a few. My most striking experience at the market was walking around a warehouse of seemingly endless cheese wheels each the size of a tire. Pallet after pallet of cheese was right in front of me, just waiting to be a member of the finest charcuterie board the world has ever seen. The combination of my early morning daze and the harsh yet elegant halogen lights overhead left me dumbfounded and awe inspired amidst 1000s of pieces of cheese.

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 22, 2018 at 2:33 PM

    I can see you have a lot of potential to do a good job of this, you don't write badly, and you did connect some details with the text. However, because the experience isn't fresh in your mind, the whole piece is stale, like a week-old baguette. Do you want to make it up?

    ReplyDelete

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