My Life in France by Julia Child, with Alex Prud’homme

France may be the most astonishingly different culture in all of Europe.  Not denigrating any other country and we all have our favorites.  Lived in Spain for years and love the country.  Lived in Germany and would never utter a complaint.  Great Britain?  Hell yes!

So, you see, I’m not claiming that France is the best or even that I like it the best.  I’m only saying that for my money France’s culture is the most astonishingly different.  Depending on your outlook, that can be either bad or good.  In my case, extreme enchantment. 

I’ve heard a lot of travelers remark that Parisians are rude and follow that up with:  It’s expensive and we hated it!  As though Paris is all there is to France. That opinion isn’t limited to Americans.  Heard it a lot from Germans. To aid you on your voyage of discovery, I offer this advice:  The French way is not like America’s or Germany’s way.  Accept that and you’ll relax and enjoy this strangely fascinating country and its people and way of life.

Unlike many of my fellow countrymen, I have always had a fabulous time in France, Paris included.

Recently I blogged about adventures in Provence and that laudatory book by Peter Mayle, A Year In Provence.

https://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/08/two-weeks-in-provence.html

https://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/08/chocolate-in-provence.html

https://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/09/a-year-in-provence-by-peter-mayle.html

Well, now I’ve got another book that will make you grab your bib and buy a First Class ticket on Air France:  My Life In France, by Julia Child, with Alex Prud’homme.

I’ll confess that I carried this book in my man-purse everywhere I went.  Couldn’t put it down and didn’t want to.  Those who know me will spew out slanderous accusations that Julia’s love of wine spurred me on, drove me to drink and drive.  You fools, that what a wife is for, so I can drink and ride and read!  I also took it to my favorite bakery cum coffee shop. Multi-tasking, reading in English, speaking to the irresistible women around me in German.  Yes, yes, men too.  But, always back to the book and my new friend, Julia.

Have both my loyal readers heard of Julia Child?  She’s the famous chef who almost singlehandedly brought French cuisine into America’s homes and kitchens, with her seminal work:  Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volumes I and II.

My Life In France, written by Julia and Alex Prud’homme, uses Julia’s multitudinous letters, reminiscences, and her husband’s letters and photographs to tell the often humorous and frequently intimate story of her love affair with the country and it’s cuisine. 

She started out as a normal American woman, with only a smattering of cooking knowledge. Her knowledge of France was a dark void.  As she wrote on Wednesday, November the third, 1948:  “As I gazed through the portal at the twinkling lights of le Harve I had no idea what I was looking at…In Pasadena, California, where I was raised, France did not have a good reputation.”

As she and her husband sat at a table in the Norman restaurant La Couronne, her husband translated what the waiter at the next table said to his patrons, explaining where the chicken they ordered was raised, how it will be cooked, which side dishes would go best with it and which wines would be suitable.

Her comment said it all about the difference between French and American culture.  “Wine?  With lunch?”

But, Julia was a woman of strong attitudes and stronger passions.  Once the tastes and flavors of the French kitchen enveloped her, her path opened and widened with the popping cork of each bottle, and the placement of each pot on the stove.

What I found so enticing about My Life In France is the intimacy of how it was written, as if a very famous chef offered a glass of wine, sat down at your kitchen table and told you her life’s story, amid lengthy struggles, staggering failures and heroic successes.  As some would say, My Life In France is a painting that includes warts and all.  Interesting? Fascinating?  Oh, hell YES!

Most of all, it’s a story of the development of a passion and following that passion like a lit fuse to a stick of dynamite, in spite of the nay-sayers and dream killers many of whom were family members.   The story is so unlikely and convoluted that it could only be replicated in the saccharine sweet pages of a romantic novel.

And speaking of romance, it’s also the tale of a lifetime love affair between Julia and her husband Paul, and the unlikely journey of togetherness, yet always keeping Julia’s passion in the forefront.

As she wrote so simply and eloquently:  “…the sole meuniere I ate at La Couronne on my first day in France, in November 1948…was an epiphany!”

Julia, wherever you are, I want you to know how much I enjoyed this little chat.  And, I dearly hope both my readers do, too. I hope they will all have their own epiphany and find the trail that leads them to follow even their most unlikely dreams.

And to that end, dear readers, I raise a glass….Á votre santé!

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

How often do you get the question:  Read any good books lately???  Your mind spins. Your face blanches. Have I read any GOOD books?  Repeating the question buys you time. The qualifier takes your spinning head and begs you to reconsider ignorance vs bliss.

You quickly excuse yourself to rush home to count table napkins.  Meanwhile, you’re thinking one of two things.  Number one:  Were the books I read any good? Or Number two:  Did I forget to read…let’s see, hummmm, have I read anything for the past thirty-six years? Does the Anthology of Little Known Mathematical Equations count?  Or, the video version of The Joy of Sex?

I’ve got a book that will solve your dilemma and make you say with pride and a gleaming smile, I read! A book!  It’s good!  Immediately, in the minds of your insufferably judgmental friends, you will no longer be thought of as just a leaf raker, a calloused thumbed TV lounger, or a swiller of screw-top wine.  You’re an intelluelle, an inter-something…..you're a really smart guy!

So, what’s the book?  A Year In Provence, by Peter Mayle and yep it’s been around since 1989, but some things don’t change.  The entire misunderstandable country of France and the funny way they talk. The quirky ways of the French through the eyes of an outsider.  The dry, rib-wracking, understated Brit humor.  The fun and foibles of visiting a foreign culture versus living there without benefit of room service.

You can’t mention France without starting the food conversation, especially in comparison to English fare.  To paraphrase the French opinion: It is well known the English kill their veal twice.  Once when they slaughter the animal and again when they cook it.

What is it about French food that captures and enchants us? Mayle and his missus soon learn during an evening with the neighbors.

“We had entire breasts, entire legs, covered in a dark savory gravy and surrounded by mushrooms.

We sat back, thankful that we had been able to finish, and watched with something close to panic, as plates were wiped clean yet again and a huge steaming casserole was placed on the table.”  He goes on to describe the rest of the almost never-ending, yet entirely sumptuous meal.  “That night we ate for England.”

But, this book is more than a description of the French table and the country’s undying passion for food. Mayle takes us through the settling-in, and from season to season, beginning with the hazards of buying a car in a country that prides itself on its inefficient bureaucracy.

And how about house repairs and overcoming the natural suspicions of the natives.  How about truffle hunting?

“During the season, from November until March they can be tracked down by nose…the supreme truffle detector is the pig, who is born with a fondness for the taste and whose sense of smell in this case is superior to the dog’s.  But there is a snag:  the pig is not content to wag his tail and point…He wants to eat it.  In fact he is desperate to eat it…and you cannot reason with a pig on the brink of gastronomic ecstasy.”

Or how about a discussion of house insurance?

“One reason, apart from idleness, why we had neglected the matter of insurance was that we detested insurance companies, with their weasel words and evasions and extenuating circumstances, and their conditional clauses set in miniscule, illegible type.  But Bernard was right…we resigned ourselves to spending the afternoon with a gray man in a suit who would tell us to put a lock on the refrigerator.”

Yes, the joy of this book is not only the unabridged humor that echoes off nearly every page, but the sense of being there, of living and breathing in Provence for an entire year, month by month, season by season, through high expectations and convoluted results.

Yes, you will say with certainty, I have not read a better book in a long, long time.

So, your former friend asks, have you been to Provence?  Oh, screw you!  I told you I read the book!!!!