COST OF LIVING IN FRANCE: PART 2 - GROCERIES

 

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

It's France that we are talking about, after all. That I put HOUSING and TRANSPORTATION ahead of FOOD may seem evidence of mistaken priorities, but I assure you that I have a full appreciation of the various forms and flavors of cuisine that I have enjoyed here. Cathey is a talented multi-cultural cook with a well-stocked pantry. Even with the sacrifice of piles of cookbooks and magazines left behind during our move across the Pond, her bookcase today in the pantry behind the kitchen grows and overflows, And we dine at the houses of friends who are equally talented in the kitchen. Everyone has access to fresh ingredients, mostly sourced locally. When we dine out, we have been here long enough to know where to find good bar food, comfortable mid-range restaurants, fine dining, and unique experiences. Let's see if I can make it all sound as good as it really is.

I don't mean to come across as starry eyed, though. Life ain't all strawberries and champagne. (I knew that was bad wording as soon as I typed it. It's strawberry season, for one. French strawberries are as sweet as candy and available at peak for a very short time. Like right now. And the wine...) Anyway, below you will find aspects of grocery shopping in France that are less than ideal. We'll start with that and move on from there.

GROCERY SHOPPING

Shopping for groceries in France is the same as in the States, except when it's different. No fresh corn tortillas. Nearly every supermarket carries that El Paso brand stuff and people have said that they have dined in authentic Tex-Mex restaurants in the region. Maybe so, but they don't buy their corn tortillas at the super. Karo Syrup requires a substitute unless your sister brings a jug in her suitcase...like she brings the tortillas. Every supermarket has a bakery, but none of them bake bagels. There are shops that say that they bake bagels but they don't even make an approximation of a bagel. Just toroidal-shaped brioche.

The point is that there are specific food items that are just not available, or are only available in certain places under certain circumstances. That having been said, there are no really vital dietary components missing from the shelves and for those that are hard to find, there are workarounds.

Meanwhile, your grocery shopping choices here in the south of France are practically limitless given that our village is within 25 minutes from the urban center of one city of about 50,000 and a second of 75,000. You'll find hypermarkets, supermarkets, specialty markets, village shops, butcher shops, bakeries, ethnic grocers, farmers markets, roadside stands and more. Take your pick. Get panko at the Asia Market, pita in the Arab quarter (if you don't make it at home), and fresh spring rolls from the food truck in the Sunday market.

And remember, the French demand information. Is the product organic? What's the country of origin? What's the price per kilo? Stuff that you'd like to know but that's not readily available in the USofA.

During COVID, there were folks who never left our little village. We have a bakery, two butcher shops, a convenience-sized store that's affiliated with one of the supers, and a tabac that sells fruits and veggies, milk and other essentials. (Tabacs are stores licensed to sell tobacco and cigarettes. They usually sell newspapers and magazines., postcards, and sundry other stuff at the whim of the owners.) So we are fairly well self sufficient. But let's get down to prices.

It's hard for me, ten years out from our move, to have a true understanding of the difference in the cost of groceries between the USofA and France. Cathey's sister Connie lives in Houston and provides commentary, though. There's a chain here called Grand Frais that specializes in fresh fruits and veggies, high-end meats and cheeses and seafood, as well as imported specialty items. Connie says that a bag of veggies that might cost the equivalent of 30 or 40USD in Grand Frais would come to well over 100USD in Houston.

The baguette at the bakery 100 yards away, fresh baked and warm, costs a few pennies over 1.00USD. Leaf lettuce, dense and full, might be 1.25USD a head, less in season. And here might be a good time to talk about seasonal eating. The Mediterranean climate allows for a long growing season. We are in easy reach of the gardens of Spain and Italy and Greece. And North Africa is a quick ferry ride away. So while we are particularly fond of those items that are in season outside our back door, most fruits and veggies are in season somewhere close by, not a continent away, and grown for their taste and not their ability to survive shipping. 

From the weekly circulars of a couple of our favorite supers:

Tomatoes - 1.50USD/pound

Yellow Onions - .35USD/pound 

Cucumbers - .50USD/pound

Shallots - 1.00USD/pound

Boneless Pork Loin - 3.00USD/pound

Chicken Thighs - 1.75USD/pound

We're not impressed with French beef, grass fed and almost game meat. Not marbled at all. I just purchased a pound of ground beef from the local butcher, put in the hopper in front of me, and had to request that fat be added. The best beef is imported from the UK or Ireland, readily available and not terribly expensive in comparison to the USofA. On the other hand, lamb and pork are to die for and cheap as chips in comparison.

Other stuff that you buy at a supermarket might be a tad more expensive, but not always comparable in quality, although strides are being made. We no longer require travelers to bring us zip-lock bags. The plastic wrap has improved considerably. But aluminum foil still needs work.

Of course, the grocery stores sell beer and wine, but we usually buy our wine direct from the producers. We seldom pay more than 8.00USD for a bottle of fine sipping rosé, 10.00USD for fine whites, 15.00USD for a serious red. Beer is beer from 3.00USD for local commercial brew to 8.00USD for a good craft beer. I generally don't drink alcohol during the day, depending on 2 liter bottles of low-glucide fruit drink at 1.00USD a bottle.

Enough. You get the picture. Yes, there are street markets that generally have fresher, more locally produced fare - meats, cheeses, fruits and veggies, baked goods and the like. Not always cheaper, though. All in all, I stand by my earlier statement: A couple can retire comfortably in France on two average Social Security Retirement checks.

Next in the series: RESTAURANTS AND CULTURE

SPRING IN FRANCE, STEVE MARTIN, DICKEY BETTS AND MORE - #20

SPRING

It's spring in France and the sky is that special shade of blue. Close your eyes. Say that quietly to yourself. It's spring in France...in the southwest of France...not far from the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees and Spain. The color of the sky? Special. Indescribable. Cobalt doesn’t quite catch it. And with the way that sunlight pops off the landscape directly to your soul, it's no wonder that the Impressionists painted here.

Where else would I rather be? To use a phrase that makes my brain itch every time I hear people use it, I'm in my happy place. And because folks are traveling again now, I get to share that place. We've got a house with three spare bedrooms and it won't be enough. Three generations of family are preparing to bounce in and out. A dear old friend in the mix as well.

Have I told you the story of our first visit to the neighborhood? Recon expedition. Stayed in a traveler's hotel in a small town close by our eventual landing pad, the village of Quarante. We sat next to a pair of European couples in the breakfast room and talked about our decision to look for a little two-bedroom place somewhere in the region. We'd use the second bedroom as my office most of the time. No, they insisted, wagging their fingers. No. That won't do. Once your friends and family know that you are set and settled in the south of France, They will visit. They will all visit. Two spare bedrooms is the very minimum. You'll see.

It was good advice.

COST OF LIVING - PART 2 coming next week.

ANOTHER CONCERT STORY

Imagine that it's the early 1970s. You are attending a concert in the Great Southeast Music Emporium. (See #19) Given that the headliner is The Incredible String Band, your attitude has been thoroughly and completely chemically altered. But before that quirky, spacey folk band takes that stage, out trots the guy pictured above and yes, complete with arrow through his head. What do you think happened?

It wasn't Steve's fault that he got booed off the stage. He was just starting out. His shtick was not widely known - not really known at all. Years later, after the Smothers Brothers and SNL and the rest, he might have been welcomed with open arms. But not in Atlanta that night as an unknown. Way too unexpected for a crowd waiting to hear The Incredible String Band's The First Girl I Loved. (I just streamed the remastered version. The very essence of psychedelic folk. Take a listen.) Martin's humor was just jarring in that setting.

Oddly, I don’t remember The Incredible String Band's performance at all, but I certainly do remember Steve Martin’s disastrous few minutes. Funny that.

 

ASPARAGUS

 

It's asparagus season in the south of France. Since we enjoy eating seasonally, only those veggies and fruits that are in season in our corner of the Mediterranean make it to our table most nights. So we've been eating a lot of those tasty green spears lately. There's a farm just down the road that we visit. You can buy them by the kilo as they sort the fresh-picked ones by size. If you can't make it to the farm, the local super handles it after they've been sorted. 3 or 4USD a pound at the farm, a bit more in the stores.

 

After a year off the menu, the smell is always a surprise the first time that I pee after eating asparagus. It's the sort of thing that I notice with delight, much to Cathey's chagrin. Well, as they say, women marry men thinking that they can change them. They can't. Of course, the inverse is true as well. Men marry women thinking that they will stay the same. They don't.

 

 BIEWER TERRIER

 

Cute little thing, isn't it? New breed. Stands a few inches tall and weighs only a kilo or two. Affectionate. Loyal. And very importantly, not a yappie little thing. Lots of energy, but not a lot of yapping. New pet brought over from the Colonies by our good friends down the way. They named her Valentina. (I don't know the name of the dog in the picture, but could be Valentina's brother.) I'm a cat person, but these are dogs that I can like.

DICKEY BETTS

After meeting Cathey and spending time in the South, I learned to get into what some call Southern Rhythm and Rock. Blues-based, jazz-infused, and nothing like the Philly street-corner doo wop that I grew up with, I dove into the genre head first. One of the great regrets of my life is that, when I had the opportunity, I failed to see either Little Feat or the Allman Brothers Band live. I feel particularly stupid when, after leaving an all-night Grateful Dead concert at the Fillmore East in 1970, I looked up at the marquee, saw that the Allman Brothers were due in town and, not knowing any better, decided that I didn't need to see that Southern ricky-ticky band. I was that stupid. If it had been the booking in which they had recorded At the Fillmore, I just might have shot myself. But that night came a year later. Probably the best live recording ever produced. Even though Tom Dowd monkeyed with the solos on In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, taking Duane's from one night and Dickey's from another, it's 13 minutes of music that I listen to again and again and played more often than I should have in my radio days. 

Legend has it that, in setting the lineup for the Fillmore's final, invitation-only concert, Brian Wilson told Bill Graham that the Beach Boys wouldn't play if they didn't close the show. Graham had scheduled the Allman Brothers to close. "It's too bad that you won't be playing," Graham is purported to have said. The Beach Boys did play, but the Allmans closed.

R.I.P. Dickey.

10 YEARS OF EXPAT LIFE: COST OF LIVING PART 1

 I retired on April 1, 2014. Cathey and I boarded a plane at JFK on April 15th with four suitcases and two cats, determined to become lifetime residents of France. In the intervening 10 years, we have been back to the Colonies a total of five times - twice for me, three times for Cathey. Only for REALLY important stuff. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm American and I say so with relative ease and pride. But we've chosen to live in France. Chosen. Macron is my President.

SPOILER: Not a single regret. Not. One.

COST OF LIVING

From buying groceries to eating out, from going to concerts to partying with friends, what does it cost to live a satisfying retirement life in a small village in the rural southwest of France? You may be surprised to learn that an income equivalent to two average Social Security Retirement checks monthly is sufficient. (The average SSR check, which can be direct deposited to your French bank account, is currently just over $1,900 per person monthly.) 

Remember that legal residents in France get 70% of most of their healthcare costs either provided freely or reimbursed. (The French consider healthcare a human right. What a concept.) There might be what are called social charges to pay, a percentage of income to pay for the healthcare and other socialized services. But those charges at their very most would be a small percentage of your taxable income above a generous floor, can be offset by US taxes (which are credited against any French charges), and your Social Security Retirement income is not considered taxable income in France. 

The point of all of this is that, assuming you have a home and a car free and clear or loans that consume only a small percentage of your monthlies, and assuming the two SSR incomes, retirement life here can be rewarding. More income is better. Of course. Less is possible, but not an easy road.

Your experience may differ. Different folks live different lives.

HOUSING 

If you take the cost of healthcare off the table and if the tax burden is minimal, what's left is housing, transportation, food and entertainment. 

First, there's the problem of a bank account. There are people that I know who work entirely through their plastic from Wise (formerly TransferWise). But a bank account makes things so much easier. It's France, though. You can't get a bank account without a house and you can't get a house without a bank account. As digital as France has become (I have fiber and 5G.), it's still France. Patience and, depending on your circumstances, professional help may be required to establish a working relationship with French bureaucratic culture. But what can be done will get done eventually given unfailingly polite but insistent determination. 

If you are reading this, you have some personal interest in moving to France. My suggestion is to carefully research the region of France that most seems to suit your requirements. Must you be near snow skiing or ocean sailing? Can you stand Mediterranean summer heat in order to be free of winter frost? France spans from the Med to the Atlantic, from the Pyrenees to the Alps. It's northern tip lines up with Brussels. So finding the France that's right for you demands serious investigation. 

What to do if you are certain that you've found just the right place? A number of the websites/blogs will tell you to rent first, for some months at least, and that's not a bad idea. You may have picked a region that really doesn't suit you after all. You may have pegged region correctly but picked the wrong town. At the very least, you'll have a base from which to broaden the scope of your search.

You might also consider a foothold, a relatively inexpensive village house with just enough space to cram your stuff into until you get set and settled, looking for a more suitable landing pad. All of this assumes that you have sold your house in the States that is going to be your nut. Or that you have been prudent in the markets and come to France with a bit of cash in hand. Either way, a foothold gives you more than a base. In some small hamlets, you may be welcomed almost as a celebrity. Or shunned. In some tourist towns, you may become part of a thriving expat community. Or become part of what your neighbors see as a growing problem. Either way, home ownership, particularly in a small village, makes you a part of a community in a way that being a renter does not.

A small foothold with 100 square meters of living space or more that doesn't require extensive remodeling, with a reasonably-sized terrace or courtyard, and with two or three bedrooms and functionally modern plumbing and electrics can cost you 125,000USD, less in the deep sticks far from shopping and services. Count on 175,000USD more or less in our neck of the semi-rural woods when all of the fees are paid and if you want a garage and serious outdoor space. In the most popular places like Aix-en-Provence or Paris, mortgage your firstborn child. (Actually, compared to similarly popular American locations, even Aix is relatively inexpensive. But if you look at what's available within a couple of hour's drive, it's off the charts.) If you choose to jump directly into the fire, a larger house that has a mature garden, a good-sized garage/workshop, a small pool, and is otherwise good to go will sell for 300,000USD if you are lucky and go up quickly from there. In our neck of the woods. At least. Today.

The seller pays the real estate agent, the buyer pays the notaire - the French equivalent in France of a property lawyer and notary. Add anywhere from 5% to 10% depending.

We were fortunate in our house hunting. We found a house that was a bit more than a foothold that met all of our requirements except one that we didn't anticipate - the ravages of old age. Well, maybe that's a bit harsh. The house served us very well for eight years. But the stairways were narrow, steep and winding. Very common in a small, village house in France. What had been a snap for us when we moved in became a burden on our older, less well-lubricated knees later on.

Because we had eight years in the village and had made a surprising number of close, endearing friends, it took a while to find the right place to buy in our small, rural village of under 2,000 souls that would be in our price range and had the proper interior and exterior spaces. Oddly enough, we found just such a house 75 yards from our old place, downhill to make wheelbarrow moving possible...with professional muscle moving the really heavy stuff for us at the end. 

You never know what's beyond the facade of a village house. Often courtyards and terraces are not visible from the street and can be extensive. Look for a side gate wide enough to accommodate a tractor and there's no telling the size of the yard and outbuildings that might be behind that gate.

I have left out our trials finding a bridge loan/mortgage/home loan. Story for another day. Banking is another post entirely.

Your experience may differ. Different folks live different lives.

TRANSPORTATION

France mimics the rest of Europe in that public transportation at almost all levels is safe, reliable and affordable. Ride sharing is popular even over long distances. Check out BlaBla Car. Ride sharing on steroids. Busses and trains go pretty much everywhere and, within about an hour of our house, there are four stations that connect to about all of the country's routes. Short-hop airlines compete with the trains in pricing and time. Yes, you can buy cheap train tickets, There are sales and promotions. But if you are not flexible and need to go from here to there on a schedule, train tickets can be surprisingly expensive. Small airports like the one closest to us are under siege with the government subsidy running to 1,500USD per passenger. But two internationally connected airports are about an hour away and major international hubs are within about three hours.

And yes, the French hitchhike.

But mostly, when we go anywhere, we go by car. And that is getting interesting. More and more cities are banning smelly old diesels. I drive a smelly old diesel. Yes, Ginger is reliable and economical. (I name my cars. Ginger is a bright red station wagon.) But yes, Ginger is old and Ginger is smelly. The way that things are going, in a few years we will have to go gas, hybrid  or electric. Today, 5,000USD to start for a decent older used car. 10,000USD for something newer and more reliable. Some folks lease. New car prices are new car prices. Whatever, you have to factor that cost into your budget. 

I love my old diesel. Ginger is comfortable, reliable, and gets the equivalent of 42 MPG. Given the price of fuel in France, diesel costing the equivalent of 5.67USD or so, you need that level of fuel efficiency.

Your experience may differ. Different folks live different lives.

FOOD, BANKING AND MORE

That's PART 2. Internet. Grocery stores. Restaurants. Concerts. Wine! Lots to talk about.