"The longer I lived in France, the more I ate.  And the more I ate, the more questions I had.  I yearned to discover French regional cuisine, and, I soon realized, the only way to truly understand it was to visit the regions themselves, to be curious, explore, taste, learn.  In France dining is meant to be a special, pleasurable part of the day; food offers not only fuel for the body but also a connection – between the people who have joined you at the table, between the generations who have shared a recipe, between the terroir (the earth) and the culture and cuisine that have sprung from it.  Separate from cooking, the very act of eating is in itself an art to master."
  – Ann Mah, from Mastering the Art of French Eating



Introduction


For a long time I've wanted to pick French cuisine cooking and learn as much about it as I can, study its heritage, cook the recipes, garden according to its needed produce.  After reading the book and seeing the movie Julie and Julia, my interest was even more affirmed – I've read through Julia Child's old masterpiece Mastering the Art of French Cooking, recently bought Monique Hooker's

(from DeSoto WI), Cooking with the Seasons – a classic French cookbook written by a chef born and bred in the French countryside – and have a copy of the French Garden handy and ready for this coming spring.  It was wonderful, then, to stumble across the book above by Ann Mah, a memoir of a young food writer who had far more ambitious dreams of immersing herself in French cuisine.  Her husband a widely traveling diplomat, their next assignment had been chosen for them as Paris (for those who saw the Julie and Julia movie, Julia Child's husband too was a diplomat sent to Paris).  For Ann,

this was to be a true crescendo moment in her life – she had visited Paris when young with her family, and her husband, Calvin, had actually spent time to study in Paris and had friends in the city.  They would cafe-hop, shop open air markets along with the seasons, and Ann of course would have her cooking subject matter wrapped up in the experience.  On arrival to the City of Light, however, Ann's husband had been quickly reassigned to Baghdad, one location of the world where spouses did not accompany.  As she lost her husband, she too lost parts of her romantic vision.  She had to reconceive her self-assignment: "At first I wasn't sure how to maneuver myself toute seule (alone). I missed my husband like an internal internal organ, and the city, which had seemed so quaintly formal when we where together – its bon jours and bonsoirs, and four-course dinner parties, and cheek kisses instead of hugs–felt a little cold now that I was alone…And then, somewhere in the midst of navigating new markets and memorizing new vocabulary, I remembered the wife of another American diplomat, a woman who had lived here sixty years earlier, another trailing spouse who needed a push to find her way: Julia Child."

We visited a replica of Julia Child's kitchen in Washington D.C.

Her memoir became, instead, of "ten different regions of France and their signature dishes, of the link between history and place, culture and cuisine.  I chose these ten dishes and regions because of their significance in the United States or, as is the case with Aveyron, because of its significance to me.  The four years I spent in Paris felt like the shortest of my life, except for one – the year Calvin was in Baghdad – which was the longest.  It changed me, of course, living in France – Julia Child could have told me that it would – even though, like a lot of things, the change crept up on me little by little.  Bite by bite.  Which, I suppose, is the only way to savor life."