Légumes d'automne

We are having a vegetable-filled fall.  We normally get a vegetable basket every other week, but I can change the delivery dates if we are going to be out of town.  Several of our pick-up dates were pushed into the fall because of travel over the summer, so we have had a basket every week since we got back from the United States.

Pears, peppers, turnips, green beans, zucchini and cauliflower from a basket earlier this fall

Even with the steady influx of produce from the baskets, I can’t resist picking up other vegetables when at the market for our other groceries.  I recently tried out a new market on the other side of town and came home with some Green Zebra tomatoes, gorgeous purple carrots and kale.  

I was really excited to find the kale. It is easy to find throughout the fall in stores and farmers' markets in Chicago and I was used to baking it into smoked-paprika-dusted chips or wilting it into stews and soups.  When we moved to Paris I looked all over for it and was unable to find any.  I gave up on the search until a coworker of J’s mentioned The Kale Project in passing a few months ago.  It was fun to read the blog of an American expat who came to Paris around the same time as we did. Instead of shrugging and buying more cheese upon discovering the lack of kale in Paris (which had been my response to the situation), the author has been working to bring kale to Paris. 

I headed to the Marché Président Wilson to check out the stand of the Joel Thiébault after learning through the Kale Project that he has been selling kale this year.  The stand had more stunning vegetables than I could ever fit into our tiny refrigerator and I exercised restraint in only buying the kale, tomatoes and carrots pictured above.  As we’ve mentioned before, most of the stands in the markets in Paris buy their vegetables from the farmers at a wholesale market just outside the city. I was intrigued to find that not only was the source of my kale a stand run by the farmer himself, but that his family has had a stand in the market in that area since the 1800s!  The vegetables were delicious and the variety at Monsieur Thiébault’s stand was amazing.  I plan to keep visiting the Marché Président Wilson to see what else I can find as the seasons change. This was a good reminder to keep trying different markets around Paris, maybe someday I will run across someone with jalapeños for sale . . .