A Misty Moisty Morning...

Somedays, it is simply a religious experience to walk by the side of a River...

computer in the shop

I've some great new photos... and other good things, but, with the computer in the shop, I'm rather hamstrung for updates. For all American friends, do enjoy your Turkey day! and I'll be back to blogging soon I trust.

with lots of affection - Madeleine

Thanksgiving far from home

I have a strong attachment to Thanksgiving and all that it stands for. Wherever I've lived in the world -– Japan, Paris, Seattle, Arles, Avignon-—I've managed to put one together. In Japan finding a turkey was near impossible -– so I purchased two large chickens. It cost a fortune – all those exotic ingredients -— but I reveled in recreating it alone for the first time in my life, for those I wished to say thank you to. I managed it in the home and kitchen of my host family, and added just three people to the four already in the house: my boss, my best friend/office mate, and the man who had introduced me to my host family. And there, amongst those dearest to me in that strange country, many of whom had traveled far and wide, I heard what I’d hear again and again in the future; my, but I didn’t know American food could be so good!

From my first winter in France in 1995 – the year of two months of transit strikes in Paris – I tried to offer Thanksgiving yearly. That first year, I was in Arles with Erick, and he invited numerous friends who’d met me over the summer to join us. Nearly everything was a hit, except the pumpkin pie -- my mother's recipe have you! Erick had declared, “c’est pas bon,”after one bite and not a soul took another piece. Ah well, pumpkin pie is an excellent and nourishing breakfast, and so it was for me for the rest of the week.

Returning to Paris I had no worry of putting on extra poundage through eating all my own left-overs of stuffing, corn pudding and pie. In the city of lights I walked absolutely everywhere for the during that two month strike. Add in my sixth story walk-up and I think I've rarely had such great legs in my life since.

As my family celebrated Thanksgiving, and later my Seattle friends, it's a time when everyone cooks, everyone feasts, and everyone helps clean. No one goes home (or to sleep) till the dishes are done. We've never been a football-watching crowd, so this truly included everyone from the oldest to the youngest, male, female, you name it.

But abroad, that just doesn't work. It is the rare French guest who helps with the dishes. In France when you entertain you do the “totale," meaning from start to end, the hostess copes with everything. Guests bring flowers, chocolate, wine, cheese or pottery (should that be their specialty), and go home, happy and well nourished. The potluck (now known as auberge espagnole had yet to really catch on when I first moved here. And, being the owners of a large and well-equipped kitchen, noted for our expertise in the cooking arena … well, it just evolved into a rather large event where I did the maximum if not all the work. Most years, it was pure joy to invite the various artisans, vintners, farmers, philosophers, archeologists and more to my table. I wanted to thank them for helping me, and us, make our business so rich with the warm welcome they offered to me and my guests as I tour Provence and visit them -- often! The irony was not lost on a soul that they were invited to the Provençal chef’s house, and his American wife was doing all the cooking!

From 15-20, from 20 – 28, from 28 to 35 … it just kept expanding. From our dinner table that sat 12 to the b&b table that sat 20, and then to the addition of a long make-shift table of boards, with very wobbly home-made benches alongside. Kids crawled under the table to access their seats – and a few adults as well!

There was the year I wanted to do it Southern style, harking back to my father’s Kentucky roots, and add bourbon to the sweet potatoes, cranberries and pecan pie. Rather than go out and purchase me expensive imported bourbon at the store, Erick got to work distilling wine to pure alcohol in the kitchen. Out came the pressure cooker, some rubber tubing, a copper coil, and voila, I had my alcohol. Granted it wasn’t aged in toasted casks, but, it was pretty thrilling to have your own house alchemist make you pure alcohol on the gas cooktop.

There were years when my American au pairs contributed their favorite family dishes – baked beans, potato salad, green salad with dried cranberries and cherries.... There were years when a Dutch friend came to help out a couple days before the event with grinding the corn through the vegetable mill to prepare the corn pudding base. There were years when my father came and did his special sausage, apple and prune stuffing recipe.

Each year’s feast required an explanation and proper introduction to this strange American tradition. I would tell my version of the arrival of the Pilgrims, their meeting with the Indians, what it meant to learn to survive in the New World, to begin to tame it, to know it … Then I’d tell them what all the dishes were : corn pudding, turkey, apple and sausage stuffing, sweet potatoes, squash, mashed potatoes, corn bread, biscuits, cranberries, and of course, the pies. All these foods of the Americas (excepting the apples). All these amazing food stuffs brought back to Europe from the New World. I added to my old favorites special new recipes for mince meat pie from the New York Times, oyster cornbread stuffing from a book of Indian recipes, Indian pudding.

With such a list of traditional favorites I couldn't delegate, nor entrust the dishes to any one else. I became a bit of a control freak. And the fact that I’d calmed down over how Erick carved a turkey (unlike my WASP dad, he most definitely did not slice the white meat, but removed the entire breast and then cut it in chunks) was already a big deal.

In the last two years much has changed. My home is smaller, my budget minimal, and my energy much taken up by kids, rebuilding the business, job searching, etc., I managed a variation on a pot luck T-day last year at the winery. It was lovely, but required nonetheless grand orchestration. This year, perhaps I'll be with a friend who has an American husband? Perhaps I'll just make a couple special dishes for me and the boys? I don't know. But I'm ok with it. I'm grateful already for my friends, for my world, for good health, for happy and healthy children, for getting along better with Erick, for putting many a project in motion. I will give thanks, even if I don't roll away from the dinner table in doing so!

Fall Foliage takes my breath away

Driving home after dropping the kids off at school I simply had to park the car just off the bridge and photograph. It was just too stunning, and yes, too amazing that I live in such a beautiful place. The fall foliage has come in, the sun was shining, the Rhône was calm and reflecting all those glorious colors. And there was the Pope's Palace, majestic on its rock above the city.

Just extraordinary.

Home Alone

I'm looking forward to this weekend. I'm home alone and it feels good. At last -- has it been what, a month? -- I'm content and strong and present. A weekend without the children, a tango workshop with a new cavalier (a father from my kids' school -- no romance, just a shared pleasure in dancing), time to write, time to do yoga, time to walk or bike, time to clean the house (yup, it needs it!), time to read, time to be. I'll see some friends and help out the school at their vide grenier Sunday morning in Avignon (flea market stall). And I'll perhaps start a new sweater, and maybe even take in a movie? How delicious to anticipate it all! And on top of it, I'm keeping off 4 of the 5 kilos I lost while so sad!

I so appreciate that I'm pretty much uncrushable. I feel, I live, I taste and savor moments in life deeply, and I come out the other side stronger. What doesn't kill you...

Teamwork hits the nail on the head

When you see kids sitting around looking bored. When they start doing silly things like slamming doors and causing plaster to fall. When the teasing gets a bit out of hand. When you've a collection of young people in your home and you have no TV, nor do you permit computer or other electronic games. Well, they need to be occupied.


There I was with lots of spare wood from my friend's house, and at least five bicycles that would last out the winter weather far more happily in a shed. So, to work.


Time to build a bike shed as an add-on to our store bought garden shed. Time to get creative, to put all hands to work. Time to solve our small dilemma and involve all in the process.


It's not quite finished -- we've still to put the roof on -- but it is far advanced and it quite did its job of bringing together my disparate pre-teens into a functioning team of upbeat workers.

Between bike sheds and piling up 7 cords of wood, we're getting somewhere. Truly, the more often I can get them working as a team, the better the whole household functions. I keep thinking of my cousins and their wall-building/ step-fixing/ roof-cleaning projects. They truly had something there!

A Family Outing to the Ochre hills

Free weekends to do as I please. Time to spend with my boys and our friends. We spent this one making cookies at school for the Christmas fair in two weeks, at a glorious bon fire party at the home of an English friend, and hiking the hills below the majestic Mt Ventoux. Not bad, hm?

Stick me in a kitchen with recipes and ingredients and off I go. My task was chocolate sablets and walnut macaroons, plus shaping vanilla crescents. With many a fellow mother by my side the tasks went quickly and smoothly. And from my discreet nibbles, I can attest that the cookies will be wonderful!


The boys were in their element, taking over the school grounds, walking Filou, coming in to join us when they were simply too hungry to stay outside further. The weather has been balmy and warm. When it came time to depart the only thing that held us up was finding the discarded sweaters.


My English friend A has a knack for hosting parties that are great fun but not too much work. Truly she is gifted. The French tend to hold parties that require scrubbing their house top to toe and putting a great deal of stress into the perfection of the moment. Everything must be just so. As I gather from my French friends, they observe us, and have decided that it is more in the Anglo-Saxon temperament to simply enjoy having friends over. As such, A is a prime example. She skillfully designs events where others bring the food or alcohol, she provides the setting most wonderfully enhanced with candles, outdoor furniture and a signature theme: dancing on the terrace, a bonfire, marshmallows, etc., and we arrive and have a grand time. The pre-party prep is minimal, the clean-up after easy, kids are welcome or not depending on the event. The directives are clear. Our French friends are rather in awe of her relaxed demeanor throughout the event.


From sparklers and marshmallows to a cozy reception at my friend P's, and an outing à six the next day. Under the cherry trees we enjoyed our simple picnic of sandwiches, soup and cold Japanese somen noodles -- a major hit with their gomasio and special sauce --, followed by fruit and chocolate. In all directions were glorious fall vistas of yellow and red, the Mont Ventoux rose above our heads, and ochre hills were deep in the forest, there to climb and explore. We discussed everything under the sun: life, love, children, divorce, happiness, ambition, drive, goals, basic needs -- that's what women do, right? And our boys scrambled and loped, ran and jumped, slid and tumbled.

A most successful weekend.

Olive Harvest

It is the time of year to harvest olives for our wonderful golden oil. The air is chilly, the sun bright. The Mistral wind never fails to blow for at least a week of the harvest -- just to keep you on your toes, and to bring frostbite to your finger tips -- full gloves being useless for an activity demanding dexterous digits.

Depending on the varieties planted in your orchard, or oliveraie the picking begins early November, or early December. Isabelle and Paul Pierre's orchard is filled with Verdale, and Grossane olives. As such, they pick a section early, and another portion later in the season. Teams of friends come to stay with them in their large transformed stone mill for the harvest and together with their two or three nets, a comb per person, their red aerated crates and traditional triangular ladders, they go from tree to tree stripping it of its plump fruit.

The trees are never very tall here. They are pruned in an open parasol shape. And the olives are always picked by hand, not shaken from the trees.

Surprisingly, the scent in the air is that of honey from the bed of white flowers covering the orchard, with an occasional whiff of wild mint and oregano. These scents waft up, warm the soul, tickle the palate and confuse the senses. Happily a hot lunch awaits the workers at noon.

There are over a thousand trees to pick, with varying quantities of fruit on each depending on its exposure to the sun and wind of the season. When I've clients here during this season we always go picking at one of my friend's orchards, be it with Sophie our beekeeper, or over at JP's vineyard, or here with Isabelle and Paul Pierre. It is a local past-time this time of the year, whether you've two trees or over a thousand.

From the farm there will be daily trips to the organic mill up in the hills above Mouriès to bring the day's harvest, fresh. The mill is truly a small structure lost amidst the limestone hills jutting above and around, down a long and much pitted dirt road. You have to be committed to your oil to come this far.

But they are. The trees are all treated organically, and even though recently a product to treat the flies which attack the trees has been officially deemed permissable in organic oliculture, they hesitate to use it, feeling it is an industry decision, not one that is truly safe and considered.

And soon, the fresh oil will be there to drizzle over pasta and bread, baked fish and steamed vegetables...yummmmm