I will have a good 10 kg of Romeo «sour» cherries ready for jam making but only in the next 2 or 3 weeks. For now it’s time to mix sweet cherries with chocolate:
N.B. If by any chance you know someone working in the «sweet cherries« production, selling or packaging industry please send me their email so that I can write to them about this «problem» that has been going on for decades…
Someone not very knowledgeable in French just opened an English-French dictionary and decided that sweet cherries should be translated into French as: cerises douces. There is only one possible and accepted translation for sweet cherries which is: cerises sucrées. As written on package: cerises douces means: soft cherries which is nonsense.
P.S. I’m dead serious. I sent 3 emails to differents organizations and no reply at all…
Ugh, I speak French (un petit peut) and I’m embarrassed to realize I’ve never picked up on that.
The jams look great, as always. Do you take visitors? I’m hoping to take a trip to Quebec sometime in the next few years. I’m only about 4 hours south of you.
I love your comment on the error in translation! I wear a perfume from France, and saw one of their ads translated into English. The ad claimed the new perfume was “the scent of despair.”
Wish I knew what the company was trying to communicate…
Hi Jay: AH! AH! It’s: un petit peu. But since peut and peu are pronounced the same way: I did not notice the error! I know Nashua like the bottom of my pocket as we say in French meaning I know the city very well. We always stop in Boston and insist to dine at a fabulous Thai restaurant which name I forgot en route to P Town or elsewhere on the cape Cod and always stop in Nashua for shopping. No sale tax. Paradise on Earth for us who pay 14.995% combined Federal and Quebec sale tax. Well (almost) free education and (almost) free health care must be paid for somehow, right?
You are welcome to visit us, in fact everybody from Growingfruit is welcome.I love to talk and exchange with fellow fruit trees lovers. And the lucky visitors could buy some of my jams, right? I accept U.S.$ at par… HA! HA! HA! And you could buy some jam for Mamuang too: I sell mango and (real) vanilla jam…) and papaya and guava too. The list (both prices and names of jams) is available on request. It’s in French and very simple to translate but Google translate might as well do the job.
Haha of course it is! There’s a lot of rust on those particular gears in my brain. Je peux pratiquer, I guess. And feel free to stop by if you’re passing through!
1.99$ can is about 1 27$ us. Not that expensive… If you pay much higher change food store! Or move to Canada… Maybe it’s a case of food dumping… or food store’s lost leader because 1.67$ can for u.s. cherries + transport + profit is very very very cheap for us!
Is it just me or do I see more French labels on many grocery items across multiple stores recently - Wholefoods, Trader Joes and Costco? I wondered why and it didn’t make sense other than the stores think buyers might look at a French label and assume its sophisticated.
You didn’t know and realized yet that everything French IS sophisticated??? Come on… Perfume, foie gras, champagne, caviar, Louis Vuitton, Yves St-Laurent, Boucheron jewelry, French vanilla etc. I could go on for ever…
Needless to say that the French invented and control a big chunk of the super de luxe niche. Well, well, well (niche) another beautiful French word use by anglophones… like crème de la crème, c’est la vie! etc… I could go on for ever…
Cherries are expensive here in the northeast, too. The average price here is $4-5 a lb. Rainier is often more expensive than Bing. I only buy them on sale. Sale price is around $1.99 a lb.
There are several varieties sold under Bing. They are not the real Bing but look similar. Consumers only know Bing so they are fooled. I bought “sweet” cherries yesterday. They were firm but sour. They were picked too soon but consumers want cherries.
You are right. Items, products whatever you call them must have a French written label if it’s sold in Canada. An anecdote: a box or Corn Flakes sold in Canada will be French only on one side and English only on the other. When Red necks in Alberta are fed up with French-speaking people from Québec, the urban legend goes that they put the English side of the cereal box facing them when they breakfast and take time to be assured that the French side is not facing them…
Rainer are always expensive here. They never go on sale. Usually $5.99 or $6.99/lb. I’ve really only eaten them a handful of times. Since dark sweet cherries are a little cheaper and we all love them we just buy them instead.
So it’s definitely a case of food dumping but I find it strange that u.s. sweet cherries producers lose money selling cheap in Canada when they could sell a lot more cherries at higher prices in the USA… From my travels I have seen a lot of cases of food dumping: in Switzerland I found Swiss cheeses & chocolate to be way more expensive than here in Québec for the same brand names and sizes. Marc
WHAT??? Up to 7$ a pound for rainier??? Last week is was on sale for 3.99$ I believe it’s the same scenario for other fruits. Here it is quite common to see 3 packages of 170g raspberries for 5$ or 90% of the time for 2 packages for 4$. Marc
