/ck/ - Food & Cooking

A ham, mushroom and onion crêpe.

The same, but with yummy runny egg yolk...
(Accent circonflexe is just the funny ^ on the e of crêpe. I just have it on my keyboard...)

By the supreme power of the French keyboard, I call the accent circonflexe.
A ham and egg crêpe.

The apple is NOT in the recipe. (The cider isn't either.)
Also, you may ask "why the fuck is this receipt in English ?". Well because it's cheaper to steal a cash register from England than to buy one. Or to get one from an English-speaking country and not change its settings. It's one dude having one small shop, not a brand-of-small-super-markets like 7-11 or Franprix. That's also why the code bar scanner doesn't work and ALL items are imputed manually and have the same name (épicerie without accents nor the final e).
I'm not sure of the exact order of the inputs, so the }{ may or may not be inverted. I'm still very sure the apple is the first one.

Oh, also, it's "muslim-friendly ham". It says "turkey breast", not actual pig ham. But it has so much flavouring it taste almost the same. "The cheapest sliced meat of the shop"...

For the record, 7.93 Euros = 10.358166 U.S. dollars and 7.13 Euros = 9.313206 U.S. dollars (told you it keeps changing...) Google "X EUR in USD" to check by yourself.

And this recipe is from Brittany. So there is cider from a bottle served in a bolée. It looks like a tea cup and makes English go all WTF.

>>3878267
Kinda the same here, I assume everybody eat actual food and don't have to go to a hipster shop of some kind to be able to buy a tomato... (But now I understand the lack of carrots, courgettes and cucumbers on other boards. That "Sharpie" brand don't sell here...)

OK, so tried to stay away from vegetables. I bought butter, milk, eggs, onions, ham (read bacon or "the cheapest sliced meat" (bacon is in the "imported food" part of our supermarkets, between limoncello and ラーメン, but we have lardons.)), and mushroom (would have bought it in a can, but the shop sells one can every 6 months, so the shop keeper increases the price. About 3 times more expensive than a supermarket, "c'est le business" the shopkeeper told me (I still think he's doing it wrong...)).
And I already have flour. (>>3872084 "Flour you can use")
I can remove the onion and/or mushroom if you want. (If so, can I add an apple ?)
I also bought an apple, but it will be out of the recipe.

I'm not sure these things are available in 7-11 or a gas station, but most of it could almost be in the "you already have it at home" category (who doesn't have milk, eggs and butter in his fridge and flour ? And maybe a few onions and bacon/ham too ?)
So I hope it makes it fair : I forced myself to use "limited choice" products (compared to what I could have bought, hoping it'd be in a 7-11) and bought it in an expensive shop to add more challenge on this 10$ limit point.
If co/ck/s tell me it's not OK, I'll try to find something else...

For the record, 7.93 Euros = 10.416848 U.S. dollars and 7.13 Euros = 9.365968 U.S. dollars (it keeps changing, the 0.80€ apple will be out unless I'm asked to remove other items and allowed to use it. I'm praying for the $ to raise a bit so I can use everything, it would be amazing.)

>>3878065
But stores without any fresh things are called "DIY stores" or "banks" or "bike repairs shops" or "restaurants" or "closed épiceries". It's not my fault if I live in /ck/ paradise... Sorry about that...
(But hey, if you ever visit yerop and pass by Paris, I'll invite you in a cheap brasserie. It translate to a "very fancy and typical French food restaurant" in American English...)

The price is still quite a challenge, the "alimentation générale" stores are ridiculously expensive. (But the USD is on the rise, I have 4 more cents than 3 days ago ! (that's 0.05 US$, disapointedYAY.jpg))

>>3874406
Well, fuck. I was hoping the 7-11-like shops would be OK... (I'll make a thread about stores here or on /int/ when I have time. With pics from fancy groceries stores.)

Can I shop at two or more stores ? (like potatoes where they are the cheapest and onions in that other store where they are 2 cents cheaper ? (Staying in alimentation générale stores.))
Also, again, do we use "official bank" change to see how much money we can spend, or do we use that BigMac index that, even if it sounds like a joke, is actually very a good way of knowing how much euros/currency a dollar actually is ? (Again, this would probably benefit Scandinavian Anon more than me, and piss off Anons from "poor" countries where you can feed a family for 10$.)

And finally, the franprix. A bit bigger than the Carrefour express. This brand is specialised in épiceries-like shop, so it would be the closest to 7-11.
Both Carrefour and Franprix have prices a bit higher than a supermarket, but are not ridiculously high like the alimentation générale.
In all cases, I pictured the whole shop, there is no hidden aisle. Only for Carrefour, the external glassless wall has some food inside, and there is a freezer in the alimentation générale that is meant to store a few ice creams, so less than a cubic meter.

Now you tell me what is considered a convenience store and what is a grocery store, and where can I go shopping.
(Also tell me about this "one fillet out of a 2 fillets box get price divided by 2 ?" thing...)

Yes, ALL of our shops have some vegetables, and less snacks and crap food than the shop in the film Clerks. (And no cigarettes.)
This one didn't let me take pictures inside, but you can guess the size of it, there is no hidden back aisle.
But it's close to what I pictured of a smallish 7-11 from google images.
(Carrefour is a supermarket brand, Carrefour express is the "small épicerie inside cities" brand.)

If I buy a box of two salmon fillets (they don't sell by the unit) and only use one, do I get to divide the price per two ?
It's not like buying a jumbo pack for a family of 50 to get lower price (this would be "cheating" a little bit.)

Ok, so here are some pictures of what I would call a convini for sure : it's ridiculously small, one aisle is so small an adult has trouble passing the end, the frozen food part is so small I didn't notice it when I was taking pictures and if full of random things (really, I asked for not-minced steaks, the shop keeper told me they have some "sometimes". But not at the moment), the "fresh" food part is pictured : you have to check the best before date before buying (and no crème fraiche).
It's very expensive too, of course.

>>3872812
Well, I'll take pictures of the shops I have in mind, just to have approval and avoid a "bees are not animals" situation. (Sorry, that made me lol a lot. I guess I had a good biology teacher, and I was having fun chopping trees in a forest and reading it from my phone (sleeping in a tent in the forest too, hello Mother Nature and mosquitoes). Thanks FSM for internet on 2G.)

I've been told that supermarkets (and most convenience stores) in France surprise some UK/US folks for having our vegetables without plastic warping, looking like a "farmer market" or something. So the "maybe a few simple groceries if you're lucky" means that almost any store will have a lot of them, and being unlucky means I specificly aim for one that only sells at alcohol, and a few TP, tampons, and canned food at night...
Source about the plastic warping and farmer market thing are books from Stephen Clarke.

Can I get things from 2 stores (like, one has good rice but shitty water and salt, and the second one the exact opposite) ? Or do I have to limit myself to only one store ?

I'm just talking with a friend who lives nearby London and who told me that the Coop nearby her place is a convenience store, while I would have called it a "supermarket they managed to fit in a smallish place", aka a grocery store for me. It's true that they don't have much choice and it's convenient, but there is still some choice and it's cheap and cooking for 7.6€ would be easy.
Also, I've been told that the term "supermarket" in the USA means "a freaking ridiculously gigantic hyper-mega-giga-market" by French standards. (We have "hyper-markets" outside of towns, where the rent for the square meter is way lower.)
So maybe I was putting my Parisians standard too low.

Can we have a definition in square meters/feet of the shop size maybe ? Or by price of a can of coke in BigMac dollars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index))
Or just a clear definition that is internationally understandable...
And do we have to change USD in our currency by bank standards, or could we use the BigMac index ? It would be more fair for Anon from Scandinavia for example.

So, convenience stores are OK, grocery stores are not.
Wikipedia translates both as épiceries in French... (And that would make them spice shops etymologically.)

Can we say that, if it's small, if it's more expensive than a Parisian intra-muros supermarket on most items (I can post a receipts comparison on a can of coke, a baguette and a can of paté if you want), it mainly sells booze, it's open late and maybe on Sundays (every-thing's closed on Sundays here.) and owned by someone who looks like a stranger (you can actually say "un arabe" to designate a shop like that, even if Chinese are stealing our Arabs' jobs nowadays) then it's a convenience store and not a grocery store ?

As we have plenty of these convenient-grocery-stores (as well as more traditional ones), the gas stations gave up on selling anything else than windshield washers, coke, sandwiches and crisps.
So I could offer you a nice menu of things you can prepare (read "open") and eat in your car, but, well... They don't even have bread to make a sandwich nor soups where you add hot water. (Would need a knife or a water heater to make, not present in cars.)
(I don't have a car, our métro is quite good. I never went to a gas station in Paris, only on highways, so it could be worst. I know only one nearby, it doesn't have any store at all.).

I imagine I'm not the only one with this convenience/grocery store problem, so it would be nice to put an official line. (Like price comparison with a supermarket on common items, a picture of the shop, opening times. Something like that.)

>>3868259
If you mean "just a little bit almost uncooked in the centre so it has a nice texture under the teeth", then probably no.
If you mean "just cook the pasta the way pasta are meant to be cooked, and don't do anything stupid like too many people do" then yes...

I'm a bit late this week...
Peach tart with hibiscus jelly.

I already had coal, so you can give the 10$ to a /ck/ related charity. Learning kids to enjoy actual food (like what Jamie Oliver does) or just feeding the little starving Africans.
Or just add it to the final grand prize if you don't find anything suitable.

>>3732904
Yes, you can eat the orchid if you want. Many flowers are eatable.
The leaves are technically eatable too, but they just don't taste quite fine with the coconut milk...