Tournefeuille Market

Sunday 25 August

Tournefeuille Market

Sunday is market day in Tournefeuille.  Rachel, Jasper and Penelope decided to ride their bikes there, the rest of us went in the car.  We parked by the swimming pool and headed into the market.  Mel and I didn't get past the first stall, so many clothes, all looking good, and cheap at €10!  We rummaged around and I found a nice top with a lacey cotton tunic over it,

 

very "French"  pastoral, but wasn't sure if it would fit, no changing rooms here, the stall holder came over and put it up against me, and of course it fitted, one size fits all.  

Mel fancied a rather stylish pair of black capris with a buttoned down leg, but I noticed there was a big fault in the material in the front, so the stall holder found another pair, which looked too small even for Mel,  she stretched it out as far as she could but although it may have fitted at a squeeze, Mel decided not to buy.  And that's how it went, so much to see, we all went our separate ways and kept meeting up saying, oh you must see...., or look what I have bought.

There was such a great variety of stalls, but the food stalls were the most interesting to me. 

Just a small selection, one of many vegetable stalls

Toulouse sausage rings, chickens, rabbits with kidneys intact, lamb chops, kebabs, and that's all we can see in the picture I took, there were also many interesting cuts of beef. 

Olives, olives and then more olives, gorgeous.  Dried fruit of every variety in the background.

Mel and I did some serious shopping, we stopped at one of the butcher stalls, and there was this old guy with bushy eyebrows and only 4 front teeth.  We wanted to buy some ham and we were trying to decide how many slices and how thick.  So he took the ham leg over to the slicing machine and cut a slice, just right, so he gave Mel half a slice to taste!  Well "moi aussi" I said in my best French, it was like I wasn't there!  Then we decided we needed 6 slices, so he held up five and a half fingers just to confirm what we said, "ok, five and a half then!" I said, fortunately he had a sense of humour!  It's a sign of a good butcher to have half a finger missing.  Then with a big grin to Mel he put in 4 slices of prosciutto for free.  After that I took her everywhere we went!  Mel bought some paella which was crammed full of seafood and chicken, and David bought a freshly roasted  chicken.

And what did we do with all this delicious food?

Had a great lunch of course!