Contents:
She goes to the same market and to the same right fishmonger to discuss the correct fish for dinner that evening.
This takes time and consideration, and broaches many topics other than the piscatorial, as does the discussion with the right merchant in another village of the proper local wine to accompany the fish. At times, she makes long detours to other villages and markets in the hunt for the perfect melon. Everything in its place, everything in its time. It took years for her neighbors to accept her and her children as belonging, like the seasons, in the rhythm of their life and to share with her their traditional family recipes, 40 pages of which conclude this book.
When Caws is not gardening, drawing water from a place not too near, reading, translating, repairing a beam or a window, she is making meals for her family and friends—the simplest of dinners exciting our appetites: For all her quotidian duties, the seemingly endless work of obtaining and preparing and cooking a meal, the negotiating of narrow roads and hilly climbs by bike or by an old midget car to carry water to the house, there are meditative moments in the beauty of the commonplace: Over it hangs a grapevine.
The grapes ripen at the end of the summer, growing more purple by the day. A large table is placed in the field here, among the grasses and the wild flowers, where you can sit looking at the cherry trees at the end of the field, observe the way the light changes, from the sunshine of early morning to the late darkness lit only by stars. In any case the color of the figs and the white of the cheese set each other off to perfection, sugared or not, cut up or whole. If you happen to have some green almonds available, put a little dish of them alongside and let each person remove the kernels while eating.
The combination is unbeatable. In telling his house-buying, getting-to-know-the-villagers tale, Greenside captures how an American in France trying to accomplish the simplest of life's tasks can feel like a complete and utter buffoon. In one memorable episode, he describes the way his insurance agent always seems to regard him with absolute dread, wondering or so Greenside supposes what unanswerable question the foreigner will ask in his mangled French:. The big mystery remains how he does this, if his French was as bad as it seems to have been.
Since the book talks anachronistically of the franc, the reader realizes that these events took place in the Stone Age before the euro; with any luck, Greenside has since mastered the fine art of the French subjunctive -- or at least the conditional past -- in the intervening years. The book winds up with a winning description of a 50th birthday party Greenside threw for himself, and then -- baf!
Greenside realizes that when you try to live a bifurcated, bi-national life, there's a price to be paid no matter how good the cheese.
When something happens there, I worry. I now worry two times as much as I used to. Greenside could have given a bit more thought to his irreducible American-ness, to the question of why it is, exactly, that he'll never be French, and to the auxiliary question of why he even thought about trying.
It was through her work with Char that she came to love Provence and to be the owner of a, yes, crumbling structure called a "cabanon. The reader learns that Caws is divorced at some point and that she is now remarried, but we are never told directly about anything more controversial than the look of Provence's celebrated Mont Ventoux or the usefulness of always having a basil plant nearby. There was little else in the way of material goods.
Her little cottage, her cabanon , had no running water, no heat, no electricity. When she arrived that first day with her young family in tow, the house was even missing a wall and almost half of the roof. The rest of the place seemed held together only by weeds and brambles. Mary Ann and her family were never happier.
The beauty of the olive trees, cherry orchards, marketplace and vineyards dictated the rhythm of their new lives. The process of preparing food and then sharing it with friends and neighbors came to embody the essence of their existence on the hillside of Mount Vertaux. Now, in this delightful and lyric meditation on Provence and its food, Mary Ann invites you to sit down at her table and share in some of her favorite recipes, the recipes of her neighbors, and her delicious memories of life in France.
Hardcover , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Nov 21, Courtney rated it really liked it Shelves: A weird, delicious poem of a cookbook. Apr 18, Rachel Rogers rated it it was ok. A little bit Frances Mayes and a bit more Peter Mayle but not really either; this book didn't know what it was trying to be. When you add in the homage to Rene Char and the recipes this was an odd conglomeration that did nothing to impress upon me the joy of travel and food of the other two.
This one doesn't really belong anywhere. Jun 03, Juliette Morris Williams rated it liked it Shelves: A lovely little book, but difficult to pin down in terms of what she was trying to 'say. However, it feels - unfinished to me.
Very pretty, however, and something nice to read, say, while on vacation. May 23, Carrie rated it it was amazing. I absolutely loved this book.
Eye Emmy Awards Fashion: May marked it as to-read Apr 04, In October , she published her autobiography, To the Boathouse: She is married to Dr. Everything in its place, everything in its time.
Mary Ann Caws' poetic memoir of living and cooking in Provence is truly transporting. Kathryn rated it really liked it Jan 29, Monica Casper rated it it was ok Jul 01, Colleen rated it liked it May 29,