Early Summer in Lyon

What I did on my first full day back in France

Christian picked me up at the airport on a Wednesday afternoon and I was very glad to see him. It had been almost three months, our longest physical separation since we started our relationship in 2018. I was too tired to do much of anything that evening apart from feeding my rye sourdough and doing the “refreshing” phase so I could make bread the next day.

Thursday is one of the three weekly market days in our neighborhood, so my first activity of the day was shopping. I took our caddy and set off for the shopping street. Every neighborhood in Lyon has one of these, a street fully lined with businesses where you can find almost everything you need: groceries (including a Biocoop health food store), bakeries, butcher shops, tea shops, cheese sellers, chocolate makers, shoes, clothing, kitchen supplies, hardware, pharmacies, and even services like real estate agencies and banks. Ours is currently under construction, part of Lyon’s massive investment in making the city more pedestrian and bicycle friendly and less convenient for cars.

The thrice-weekly market is at the intersection of this street and the one that leads to our apartment, a ten-minute walk. I started at the Biocoop, where I bought kombucha to re-start my refrigerated scoby. Then I bought Assam tea in bulk at a tea and coffee shop, and cilantro at Cerise et Potiron. Cilantro is not one of the classic herbs in France (those are parsley, thyme, and bay leaf) and I rarely see it for sale at the market. At the market, I bought white asparagus, the first vine ripened heirloom tomatoes of the year (from Provence, in the south of France), avocados, some delicious local cherries, and cheese from my fromager.

I walked back and put away my purchases, then went out again and walked a block and a half to the office of my estheticienne – a lovely young woman from Italy whose partner is French. I had a waxing appointment for aiselles (armpits) and maillot classique (bikini wax, outside the swimsuit area only). I have stopped shaving completely since living in France, where waxing is much more common, of higher quality (they use better wax), and astonishingly inexpensive by American standards. I paid 22 euros total (25 dollars).

Back at the apartment, I cooked asparagus for lunch and made mayonnaise to accompany it. We only had moutarde à l’ancienne, old fashioned mustard with whole mustard seeds so my mayonnaise wasn’t as good as usual, but still delicious.

As I described in my previous post on asparagus (which also has the recipe for mayonnaise), white asparagus can be produced from either the green or purple varieties. My guess is that most of the white asparagus in France comes from the purple variety, since they often have a noticeable purple tinge.

That disappears during cooking. Purple asparagus become green when cooked, while the white variety become a very pale yellow.

The tips are the best part of the asparagus: the flavor is stronger as you eat from the bottom to the tip of each spear. Christian eats his asparagus spears one by one like a grown-up, but I reserve my tips (the top two inches) like a child, wanting to save the best for last.

I’m very happy that asparagus season is not quite over in Lyon. I was worried that I would arrive too late this spring, but there is still plenty to be found at the markets – so much so that I’ve had asparagus seven times already in my first week. For those of you who remember the previous post, I also found a field further south where the harvest finished a few weeks ago and the plants have been allowed to grow and store nutrients in their roots for next spring’s crop. Here is what the mature plants look like:

I finished my lunch with the cherries from the market. My favorite vendor, who recognized me even though I’ve been away for months, let me taste both varieties and choose my favorite, which turned out to be the Primalat.

After lunch, I unpacked my suitcases and baked my 100% rye, 100% sourdough bread.

I did some work (including a zoom meeting with a colleague), then made guacamole as the first course for dinner. Christian had never tasted homemade guacamole until I started making it, but now he can’t go back to the smooth, tasteless paste that is sold in grocery stores. Not everyone has the same preferences for the perfect guacamole, but I’ll share here my recipe here:

First finely chop one medium shallot. Put it into a bowl and squeeze over the juice of one large or two small limes. The lime juice will temper the shallot a little bit, making it less sharp in flavor. Use three avocados: slice in half, remove the pit, score the flesh into cubes with a paring knife still inside the skin, then use a spoon to scoop the cubes into the bowl. Just let them sit on top (the shallots are still mellowing) while you finely dice one tomato and half a bunch of cilantro. I almost never pluck the cilantro leaves off the stems: unlike parsley or mint, cilantro stems are edible and delicious. I do cut off the bottom few inches where there are no leaves at all, but after that I just chop everything together.

Leaving the tomato and cilantro still to the side, mash the avocado, lime and shallot mix with a fork until you get the consistency you like. Add a half teaspoon of salt, then mix in the tomato and cilantro. Serve with corn chips.

This is one of my go-to appetizers (for the apéro, see here) in France, where most people have never had homemade guacamole.

We had dinner, with the guacamole as the first course. As the second course, we had thin slices of tomato with olive oil and salt. I hadn’t had a real, sun ripened tomato since September and I honestly had forgotten how delicious they are. Eating it was like biting into summer.

We moved on to the cheese course. We don’t normally display our cheese selections on a board, but I wanted to take a photo for all of you, my readers:

The large block in the center is 18 month old Comté, my favorite cheese. I also chose a blue goat cheese and a tomme aux fleurs, a spring cow cheese coated with Alpine wildflowers from the Savoie region east of Lyon.

For dessert, we had what we usually have: yogurt. I hate the plastic (it used to be glass), but I love the way yogurt is most commonly sold in France: plain, and in small portions (125 grams or 5/8 of a cup) that each person can flavor according to their own taste. I had mine with bitter orange marmalade, homemade by my friends on the goat cheese farm. Christian prefers apricot jam. Other popular choices besides jam are sugar, honey, nutella, or chestnut cream.

In Lyon, we always wash the dishes and clean the kitchen after dinner. I have to admit that I sometimes leave dishes for the next morning when I am in Minnesota, but that never happens here – not even if we have guests who don’t leave until midnight.

I read for an hour or so before going to bed, enjoying my first fiction reading since January. Between course prep, grading, and preparing to take students to Athens in the fall there simply wasn’t time for pleasure reading in the spring semester.

That’s all folks! I hope you enjoyed this small window into a mostly typical day in Lyon. Today (May 28th) I’m heading to Brno in the Czech Republic for my first Polyglot Gathering. I expect that my next post will be about that.