Have you guys heard about Provence? It’s in France. Hilltop villages, lavender fields, wine. If you haven’t heard about it yet, my advice would be to invest now. I think it’s going to be big.
We arrived in Provence yesterday afternoon and spent today driving from one adorable town to another. It’s a Saturday in January so pretty much everything was closed, but the market in Apt was open, as was apt, and we fingered ourselves a bunch of fruit and cheese.
For lunch, Martha suggested we go to the town crêperie, which turned out to be the town bruschettarie, which isn’t a thing, but ought to be, because the open-faced Italian sandwiches we were served were quite tasty. I had “Le Sicilienne,” which was like a tuna melt, but good.
I don’t remember knowing about Provence before Peter Mayle’s 1989 memoir, A Year in Provence, was published. That book inspired a radio series, followed by an apparently awful BBC television series, followed by three book sequels. Provence had already been a well-loved summertime tourist destination, but Mayle’s work exploded the region’s popularity for the hoity-toity set. You know who I mean… people who read. Gross.
In the winter months, though, the area is mostly morte. The village in which we’re staying, Ménerbes, is in hibernation at the moment. Our hostess told us that there is only one village restaurant open right now, which is allegedly excellent. We will never know, however, because she texted Martha this morning to tell her that, no, she was mistaken. That restaurant is closed, too.
Never mind. We’re tired of restaurants. Yesterday, we drove down to the valley to the Super U, the closest available supermarché. I love good French supermarkets. Like in the States, they’re not all good. I visited one in Albi which was not only the worst French supermarket I’d ever been to, it might have been the worst supermarket I’d ever been to period, which is saying a lot considering I used to live in New York City.
We strolled the aisles, filling our little wheeled cart with fresh produce and a little exotic fromage and a bar of dark chocolate and a pack of Old El Paso tortillas, with which we made some vegetarian fajitas. Yummers. We also bought six organic eggs for €1.35. Very reasonably priced. Thank you, President Trump, for bringing down the cost of French eggs so quickly!
The first time I noticed how inexpensive groceries are in Europe compared to the US was when we visited Sitges, Spain about a dozen years ago. I could believe it. A bag of food there cost what felt like so much less than what it does in the States. Plus, the produce is fresher and the general nutritional vibe is that of health and well-being as opposed to addicting the citizenry to corn syrup. Maybe that’s naïve of me, but we looked up the incidence of coronary heart disease in France compared to the US, and, as you might guess, it’s far less, despite the fact that the French eat so much of the stuff that is supposed to kill you: chocolate, cheese, and, of course, lots and lots of absinthe. (Ok, maybe not the absinthe part.) The imbalance between what they’re eating and their health outcomes is known as “The French Paradox.”
For a while they thought maybe it was the resveratrol in all the wine keeping people alive but that’s been discounted. There are a lot of possible explanations for the apparent paradox, including that it doesn’t exist at all but is, instead, based on faulty statistical analysis. I don’t know whether it’s real or not, but I’m heartened by the fact that French people are getting fatter. Hopefully they’ll start dying sooner which will have the double effect of erasing that snooty French attitude toward their diets and also lower the cost of housing because there will be fewer people to live in them.
Am I really wishing for the French to die? Of course not - unless it saves me a few dollars if I ever decide to purchase a home here.
While we drove, we debated what fruits the denuded trees would grow when the weather turns warm. Pears? Olives? Almonds? The market sold all of these, plus Spanish oranges and dried Italian sausages and heaping plates of steaming paella, which I was dying to try except that I am trying to be a vegetarian, open-faced tuna bruschetta aside. From here, Spain and Italy are both a couple hours by car, in opposite directions, which is kind of cool for an American who is used to taking a full day just to drive across frigging Pennsylvania.
This travelogue has involved much more food talk than I expected when I began writing about our trip. Food, though, is probably among the top five or six most important things in my life, right after love, family, sleep, water, and 80’s pop trio The Thompson Twins. When people travel, they may visit the cathedrals, but they remember what they ate. I track my journeys through my stomach: Indian food in London, Chinese food in San Francisco, homemade fajitas in France.
How quickly the world shrinks to accommodate the size of our stomachs. Thank God for all the planet’s peoples. They make such delicious food. How lucky we are in the United States that people from every corner of the globe choose to make our nation their home, bringing their native cuisines along for the adventure.
Has the nation benefitted from all this immigration? I think back to the blandness of my childhood diet: burgers and frozen pizza and flabby chicken served with reheated green beans. I think about what my newish hometown of Savannah has on offer today: everything. Japanese, Nepalese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Korean, Chinese, and one very good British pub. How lucky that we Americans understand the value of immigration, but wouldn’t it suck if somebody came along who didn’t? Wouldn’t it suck if all of that went away?
You'd be wise to stay! Thompson Twins was my LOL moment for this one. You are neck and neck with George Saunders for my best Substack, which is saying something because GS is sublime.
Gen X filters at hand. Their best song isn't Hold Me Now, it's Doctor Doctor. Just sayin'. :)