The house was nondescript. It stood squashed between its neighbors on a narrow street in a small, unpretentious village in a very remote part of the French countryside. I wondered why we were stopping here but was assured by our host, and my father, that this was a requisite stop of the utmost importance.We were ushered into the salon – a slightly stale room at the front of the house. The owner’s wife stood by during the introductions but was dismissed by her husband with a wave of his hand...
Culinary inspirations and mentors come in all guises. Mine heralded from Normandy. Her name was Genevieve Fay. She stood 5’5” tall and was - until the last day of her life – always immaculate. With her jet black hair elegantly coiffed, she personified elegance in the very French manner of her dress and etiquette, yet her sapphire-colored eyes often had a mischievous twinkle in them. She marshaled all those around her with an apparent ease that I always marveled at. She was my grandmother...
Albert Camus once wrote, “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” I thought of this as I drove back to Santa Barbara through the picturesque rolling hills of the Santa Ynez Valley. I was struck by the beauty of our local landscape, captured in exquisite color on one of those pristine autumnal afternoons. The colors were beginning to change in the local vineyards and the evenings had started to have a little nip in the air.I had picked up some local wine in preparation for a...
Standing above the harbor one recent chilly morning, watching the sunrise painting the local mountains in pastel hues, I spied two fishing boats heading out to sea. I could hear the throb of their engines reverberating across the tranquil water, their silhouettes crisply outlined against the rising sun.That sound transported me half way around the world to the Mediterranean Sea - decades ago - as I stood on another harbor wall watching the local fisherman bring in their overnight catch....
The day announced itself with one of those breath-taking sunrises awash with color and a touch of warmth carried on the breeze coming in off the ocean. It was a day to spend outside. It was the perfect day for a picnic. A few hours later I was driving the car down a pot-hole filled dirt path, which was—in theory—a road in the local national forest, but ‘weather’ had obviously taken its toll on the now non-existent tarmac. You might well ask why I was putting my fellow passengers and I...
In 1520, as Ferdinand Magellan struggled to find the passage around South America, his crews slowly perished from scurvy. 208 souls were lost, out of 230, mostly to this disease. Twenty years earlier as Vasco de Gama opened up the spice routes to India, sixty percent of his crew also died from scurvy and yet herbal and dietary cures had been known for millennia. As Jonathan Lamb describes in his book ‘Preserving the Self in the South Seas 1680-1840’, more than two million sailors lost their...
“What are we having for dinner Mum?” I get asked this question on a daily basis and I often answer, “I’ll let you know when I get back from the market”. I grew up shopping for food at the local markets on a daily basis and the habit has stayed with me. I feel inspired as I walk through rows of fragrant herbs, gorgeous vegetables, surrounded by the flowers and plants of the current season.Autumn brings with it a cascade of wild mushrooms, piled higgledy-piggledy in great mounds on the...
The golden containers of honey that sat on my grandparent’s breakfast table were scented with the wildflowers and lavender of the French Alps. The jars had a distinctive flower pot shape with the name of the ‘apiculteur’ (honey maker) italicized on the side. The honey’s rich flavor matched the deep flaxen color. My pleasure, each time I tasted it was undiminished. Just the aroma of that honey made me smile. I longed to discover where it came from.I had always heard about the lavender...
My French Grandmother, Geneviève Fay, kept a very formal household and meals there were – even on the simplest of days – fairly grand affairs. Each guest would use a minimum of three plates, two glasses, two knives, three forks and a spoon. More formal occasions necessitated a battalion of silverware to be lined up across her pristine tablecloths.As a young child I was taught how to lay tables for different occasions, the placement of different pieces, calligraphy for place cards and the...
The fragrant gift was hand-delivered wrapped in a brown paper bag. A spicy aroma emanated from within. As I opened the package a multitude of small bags, each a different color, spilled out. They had been hand carried half way around the world, from the market in Luxor, Egypt where my mother had recently traveled. She told me she had found the perfect gift, and what a treasure trove it was, containing, amongst other things, a bag of fragrant cumin seeds, a sachet of beautiful fennel seeds and a...
