Grocery Store Adventures

This week we had three different grocery store issues:

1. For some reason, I have been wanting pancakes lately, so I found a recipe online and made the list to go to the store. One item on the list was going to be difficult and I knew it: Baking Powder. I looked up what baking powder was in the dictionary before I left, so I was hopeful of finding exactly what I needed. Got to the store and went on the hunt for the baking aisle, a logical place to put baking powder, or so I thought. After wandering around for a bit, I finally found the flour. Next to the pasta. No sugar in sight. No baking powder either. So, I went looking for the sugar, thinking it must be in the "baking" aisle. I mean the French bake, it isn't like they don't use sugar. After a good 5 minutes of walking up and down every aisle, we finally asked someone and he told us the sugar was in the front right corner of the store. We found it. Next to the orange juice. No baking powder in sight. Ok, fine, now I went in search of the spices. Found the spice aisle, where the cake mixes are and there was....two shelves of stuff with similar names to baking powder. See baking powder in French is levure chimique. Levure itself is yeast. Problem was I couldn't figure out by the packaging which was really baking powder. So, I took an educated guess and bought one of them. In the states the baking powder comes in a can, here? 6 packets (like yeast is packaged in the States) Thankfully I made pancakes this morning and they worked out very well.

2. For a dinner we are having tonight, we thought it would be fun to try to make chocolate mousse for dessert. The recipe called for bittersweet chocolate. Easy. We're in France, they have tons of chocolate in every flavor imaginable. I found the chocolate aisle in the store (ok, ok, I already knew where it was, I have been there a few times) and began the search for bittersweet chocolate. Right. No dice. I looked next to the cocoa and nothing there either. What the!?! So we nixed the chocolate mousse idea because we didn't want to have normal chocolate and a cup of sugar, and then the whipping of the eggs was going to be quite a task as well, so I picked up the chocolate cocoa box and flipped it over and viola! a recipe for chocolate truffles that looked easy enough. Except.

3. The recipe called for creme fraiche semi-liquide. Ok, off to the milk/creme section we go. There are so many different types of creme, but none that say semi-liquide. Ugh. We asked a nice lady for help and she pointed out to us which one was the right one. Hallelujah. We haven't made the truffles yet, so I'll keep you posted.