Provence, 1970

Well, I finished  Provence, 1970 by MFK Fisher's nephew, Luke Barr.  It is a satisfying "easy" stroll through a bit of food writing history.  I introduced this book here:  Friday in Provence.

Coincidentally food writers MFK Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, Simone Beck, Richard Olney and the editor Judith Jones found themselves in the south of France in December, 1970.  They were all known to each other, and in some cases were good friends and collaborators on various projects.

The very American Julia Child and the very French Simone Beck ("Simca") met in Paris in 1949.  Over many years they worked together and co-authored Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vols. I and II. The wonderful 2009 movie Julie and Julia tells part of this story.  Each had country houses in Provence, near Cannes.  Child's "La Pitchoune" was located on Beck's estate. They were both there with their husbands for the holidays in December, 1970.  Fisher, Beard, Jones, and Olney were also in the area.  Olney lived year around near Toulon, about two hours west of Cannes.

La Pitchoune

From the back cover blurb:

Provence, 1970 is about a singular historic moment when six iconic culinary figures -- including Julia Child, James Beard, and M.F.K. Fisher -- found themselves together in the South of France.  They cooked and ate and talked late into the night about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste, and the limits of snobbery.  Drawing in large part from M.F.K. Fisher's detailed journals and letters, her grandnephew Luke Barr has recreated what was in retrospect a key turning point -- when the democratization of cooking and taste became part of the national conversation in America.  His dramatic retelling of those weeks in the scenic hills above the Cote d'Azur traces the beginnings of a modern American food culture and how, without quite realizing it, these players changed the course of culinary history to reshape the way we eat now."

Soon after, a new figure in American food culture appeared, Alice Waters.

"...Waters and her generation of cooks had found a new idiom, an entirely original continuation of the legacy of the winter of 1970, a modern art of American eating.

It made a certain, perfect sense that Waters had embraced both Olney and M.F., as different as they were.  For Waters, avatar of the new American cooking, was rooted both immediately as a cook in Olney's bohemian purism, and culturally in M.F.'s groundbreaking literary sensuality.  Cooking was for Waters about more than food, it was a philosophy..."

And, as we all know, the rest is history.  Fresh organic produce from local farmer's markets, home cooking from scratch, growing our own food and making our own bread have become the norm for many many
Americans.  What started as a glimmer in the eye of those six Americans in Provence in 1970 has become a new way of life all over this country.

Thank you very much.

TRUTH, Travel and Food

I have finished M.F.K. Fisher's "As They Were", a collection of autobiographical essays, short stories, and a feature article.  The pieces are mostly about TRUTH, but also about travel, food, remembering, and looking forward.

Good Book!

I wrote here about the exceptional short story, "The Flame and The Ash Thereof".

Following on are memoir pieces about a childhood visit to an elegant restaurant, her first such dining experience; two rustic kitchens in Provence and how she managed to keep herself and her daughters in provisions; a trip to Dijon to see for herself a hotel with running taps of red and white wine piped into some of the rooms.  She also writes about the lonely winter trip to Arles and Avignon after leaving the 1970 food writers gathering as well as several fascinating accounts of trips to Europe by freighter from San Francisco. One beautiful piece pays homage to the Gare de Lyon, the iconic Paris train station for Mediterranean-bound travelers.

Gare de Lyon

The final essay is about MFK's decision to build "Last House" and remain in California rather than retire to France as she always thought she would do. She says she is grateful for the chance to CHOOSE where to live out her days.

All of the stories collected here are very fine, but for me, two memoir/fiction pieces stand out.  I have already mentioned and written about "The Flame and the Ash Thereof".  The other piece, "The Wind Chill Factor: A Problem of Mind and Matter", is a powerful meditation on keeping one's sanity.

"Mrs. Thayer" is staying in a friend's cabin in the dunes at the tip of Long Island when a Nor'easter hits and blizzard conditions keep her housebound for six days and nights, alone. She wills herself to stay sane as the doors ice shut and the cabin walls groan through the onslaught of wind and driven snow.

"The wind had become different.  Its steady pressure of sound had changed to a spasmodic violence. Snow was stinging against the northern and western storm windows, and Mrs. Thayer knew that the doors on those sides were frozen shut. It did not matter. A door to the outside place where people changed bathing suits in the summer began to bang hard, in irregular patterns. It is unhinged, she said with a sly grin. It did not matter either. The whole thing she must work on was to keep herself inside her own skin, and she was the only one there to do it, and with real sweat she did."

I have a personal connection to someone who went through a similar ordeal, alone, in a major hurricane. Her description of the experience came to mind as I read  Mrs. Thayer's account.  Very compelling writing.

Finally, this collection of stories weaves a tale of a woman, mostly on her own, moving through life observing the world, and telling us how things REALLY are. And, in the end, isn't what is TRUE the most important thing?

Cooling Trend

Finally, a break in the weather.  The rain clouds are just flirting with us this morning, but it is cool.  The possibility of something under 90 degrees in the kitchen inspired me to take a look at Richard Olney's well-regarded cookbook, Simple French Food.

Good Recipes Inside

In Provence, 1970, Luke Barr writes about the meal Richard Olney served to M.F.K. Fisher and friends in November, 1970 at his home in Provence.  Oh my.

"RICHARD OLNEY WAS PREPARING A FEAST.

He sat at the kitchen table with a small, pointy knife, painstakingly piercing each large piece of beef stew meat and inserting small strips of pork fat into the incisions.  The strips of pork belly had been covered with a paste of chopped parsley and garlic, and would add flavor to the meat from the inside out.  He put the larded meat in a bowl, poured a bit of olive oil and cognac and then a bottle of dry white wine over it, and left it all to marinate.

This was the beginning of his 'daube a la provencale'...

It was late November and raining outside.  He was alone in the kitchen.  He was happiest at moments like this."

Although Barr gives the impression that M.F.K. Fisher grew to consider some of Olney's attitudes to French cooking and wine with disdain, she had a very good time as his guest on that cold wet November night.

Richard Olney was an American ex-pat who lived in the south of France, in an old farmhouse on a steep hill overlooking the Provencal countryside.  He refurbished the house, hand-dug a wine cave into the hillside, and made Provence his home for nearly forty years.   Much has been written about Olney and I will have more to write as I learn more about him.  His connection to M.F.K. Fisher is how we ended up talking about him here.

And that is why I am taking a stroll through Simple French Food today.  There will be no  'daube a la provencale' for dinner tonight, but there will be one in a few months, perhaps on a cold wet November evening.

Friday in Provence

Well, not really IN Provence, but since it is too hot to do much else, I am reading through and enjoying mightily this book:

Provence, 1970

Luke Barr is the grand-nephew of M.F.K. Fisher and writes here about an impromptu convocation in Provence of American food writers who had all, in their own way, introduced French cuisine to the average American table. Times were changing, and America's tastes in cooking and style were changing too. The conversation around their kitchens and tables in Provence was about the direction American cuisine might go and how they could help to shape that journey.

A fellow food writer and American ex-pat entered this scene and apparently the fireworks began!  I think, Richard Olney, you were a very naughty boy!

After Olney and M.F.K. were introduced and shared several wonderful meals with the group, a disgruntled M.F.K. left and went on her own to Arles to have a good hard think about the direction her writing would take going forward. Using M.F.K.'s journal of 1970, letters to and from those who gathered in Provence in December, and from M.F.K.'s own story of her time in Arles, "About Looking Alone At a Place:  Arles", Barr weaves the tale.

An introduction to Richard Olney:

Richard Olney: the quiet American who found his soul in Provence

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous and Back Again

My last post left you here:

SUBLIME

Source

I have returned home and it is HOT and DRY here today, and apparently will be so for the near future.  So, I am hunkered down indoors with the AC, my iced tea spiked with blackberries (one of the perks of summer around here!) and busy adding books to my LibraryThing database.

Stack 1

Today I am working on my cookbook shelf in the study.  It is too much hot work to haul them into the room with the photo chair so I am just stacking them up next to my computer here in the study.  I just took a break and see that the thermometer says 99 degrees!  The forecast is for 104 degrees today.  RIDICULOUS!

Stack 2

If you notice a distinct slant to French cooking, you would not be wrong.  I like to try recipes from around the world, but I definitely LOVE French cooking, especially cooking from the South of France.  More about that some other time.

Finally, I mentioned the awful heat wave we are having.  Here is a bit of beauty mixed into the RIDICULOUS!

SUBLIME

M.F.K. Fisher

Imagine yourself hiking through the hills of central France, a woman on her own in the 1930s.  A common enough thing to be doing at that time, in that place.  Midday and time for a break.  You come upon an unlikely restaurant in a renovated old mill next to a stream.  This is the setting for the first Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (MFK) story I ever read, "I Was Really Very Hungry".  I have no idea when or where I read it but it made an impression.

Before embarking on the My Reading Road Map journey, I was reading MFK's "Sister Age", a small volume of essays and short stories around the theme of aging.  I did some digging around on the internet and learned about her life and her "Last House" in Glen Ellen, California, the home she designed and had built on land given to her by a friend for her lifetime use.  This is where she lived and wrote for the last two decades of her life.  She died in 1992.  As usual for me, I had to know more so I ordered this book from you-know-who.

 And, I remembered that many years ago I had acquired two other books by MFK.  A second edition hardback "Serve it Forth" published in 1937, and  "Two Towns in Provence", "a celebration of Aix-En-Provence & Marseille" according to the cover blurb. I still have not read either of these.

So now I owned four MFK books and she was on my mind front and center.  I had ordered a fifth book, again from you-know-who (a habit I am giving up, I promise!), "As They Were", and a book written by MFK's great-nephew Luke Barr, "Provence, 1970".  So now I have five of her books and one by her great-nephew about MFK's collaboration with other celebrated food writers one winter in Provence.

This is pretty normal for me.  I get obsessed with an author or subject and want to know everything there is to know.  All of this is going on while I am "supposed" to be entering my books online into the LibraryThing database.  So, I got cracking.  Here is where the Legacy Library idea was born.  I discovered that I share two books in common with MFK's Legacy Library.  Hers is "in-progress" as is mine, so there is hope for more.

These are the two books:

I am reading "As They Were" now.  It is a book of essays, part memoir, part voluptuous food writing.  "The Collected Stories of Colette" has been on my bookshelf for years.  I have dipped into it, but have not read all one hundred short stories.  So, for the next few weeks on Monday, I will check in here with progress reports on both books.

To whet your "appetite" for MFK Fisher, here is a recording, and according to Julia Child in her introduction, the only known recording, of MFK Fisher reading one of her stories.  It is "I Was Really Very Hungry".  Now, prepare to get off the dusty trail and sit down to a meal you will never forget.

I Was Really Very Hungry