The Romans and Vaison la Romaine

This story has two parts but the parts are connected by 2000 years – give or take a century or two.

The first part starts in the hills near Mt. Ventoux, between the villages of Beaumont du Ventoux and Ste. Margarite about 20 km southeast of Vaison. High above the Gorges du Maupas are the quarries from which the Romans cut the stones that built Vaison la Romaine.

We went there with Phil and Margaret for a walk/picnic. They parked the car beside the small stream in the Gorges and we walked up to the site of the quarry along the road that the Romans had built for transporting the stones from the site. One can still see rocks in the roadway that have ruts worn into them as a result of the carts and their heavy loads. Because the incline is fairly steep, there are also places where one sees the striations cut into the rocks to improve human or beast of burden traction. The quarry is immense and, even after 2000 years, one can get a sense of the work that was done at the site.

Side note: I know nothing about the etymology of words, but I find it interesting that the French words for career and quarry are the same – carrière.

The second part of the story comes from Place Monfort in Vaison la Romaine. The city had planned to change the traffic patterns and create a park in front of the cafés and bars that line the north side of the center of town. A few days ago, the city closed half of the parking lot and brought in the back hoes and started tearing up the area around the fountain. They worked about one half day…

Gone are the back hoes. The big equipment has been replaced by a team of archeologists who are working with hand tools and brushes because the back hoes had uncovered more Roman ruins about two feet below the surface of the parking lot – probably some of the stones from the quarry are buried in the parking lot.  I don’t know what will happen to the city’s plans, but clearly the city’s plans have been put on hold… 

Au Revoir

 

I love the way French women say « Au Revoir » when they are ending a conversation on the phone. It is sort of a breathy, lilt-in-the-voice way of saying good bye that makes me feel like they enjoyed talking with me and are hoping to speak again soon.

I generally fear phone conversations in French because I have to be VERY attentive and listen to the words carefully and then respond – on occasion I can actually respond intelligently – on other occasions the caller will cask me to repeat the sentence (usually because my response was not a sentence). In person to person conversations, I know that I get a lot of cues from watching the face and body language of the person with whom I am speaking. None of that is available – unless you are using Skype with a webcam – when you are talking on the phone.

The way French women say “Au Revoir” on the phone seems to be pretty much a universal phenomenon. Whether the woman is older than I or younger than I, from Vaison or from Paris, the lilt seems to be the same…

Women say “Au Revoir” VERY differently in person-to-person situations. Maybe it is the situations – I most often see women across the counter of a grocery or a shop. It is more matter of fact – more friendly than “Have a nice day” sounds in the US but just a few degrees from warm. Sort of like the difference between kissing a loved one and kissing your aunt…

Dining in France: What Restaurant Should We Try Next?

“Well, I can no longer say that I’ve never had a bad meal in France! “

This was Ellen’s pronouncement as we left a small vegetarian restaurant – and she was right: the vegetables were over-cooked and without the advantage of herbs, the cauliflower sauce was gummy, the pasta was bland and there was nothing memorable about the food or the presentation. I could have sucked on old tennis shoes with more flavor. It made me think of the contrast of how wonderful were the vegetarian meals we had in Cairo over the Christmas holidays where they know how to use spices and herbs to enhance flavors.

Our friend Cindy pointed out that no one in the restaurant was overweight – an observation that was easy to comprehend because no one would have wanted to  “clean the plate.” It was a waste of time to have spent a meal there but we had walked out to the “lunch only” restaurant called “Auberge de la Brocante” and it was “complet” (sold out). Since we passed the veggie restaurant on our way back, I agreed that we stop there when Ellen said she had always wondered how the food there was so we decided to try it. . . It turned out to be a BIG mistake--BIG. We all agreed on that. (My bad!)

In contrast to this disappointing experience, we went to La Lyriste  in Vaison la Romaine for Ellen’s birthday and chef Benoit created another menu that was superb. After amuses bouches of hummus and olive tapenade, we had an entrée of his foie gras with salade frisée and a crème brulée . The main dish was salmon with sesame seeds en brochette and shredded fennel in an orange sauce. Cheeses came from the Vaison cheese shop – the best of which was the Reblochon. Dessert was a parfait of pear mousse, chocolate mousse and a final layer of pear mousse and pear chunks.

Happy birthday, Ellen.

SNOW - Encore

Ellen’s good friend Cindy left the snow and grey of Michigan and came to spend a week with us. So far, she has discovered how mean the Mistral winds can be and today, on March 7, she has been served a healthy portion of snow – approximately five inches of “Lake effect-type” snow. Meanwhile, the temperatures in Michigan are higher than here and the “spring thaw” of Lansing appears to be in full swing. As our Lansing neighbor Jeff commented a while ago: “It's 30 degrees, the sun is blazing, and folks are coatless and drivin' w/ the windows open. Must be mid-Michigan! “

Welcome to Provence, Cindy!

 From the “So what?” department: It was two months ago (January 8) that we had 20 cm of snow in Vaison la Romaine.

On Wednesday when she arrived I told Cindy that she and I would need to get pictures of the almond tree blossoms to post at this blog. Now, the blossoms are covered with snow and since they are so white/light pink, it will be a while before they are visible again (if they dare open their petals ever again). Before it snowed, she did get to see the Roman ruins, the medieval village, the olives of Nyons (at Huilerie Richard) and, today, a French dog show in Valence.

We may be an ocean away from the US, but I can now report that dog shows are the same on both sides of the Atlantic. Dog shows are held in large, poorly ventilated buildings into which the organizers try to make space for too many show rings. Then the people come – dog lovers all – and squeeze into the spaces between the owners, the breeders and the plethora of dogs.

I thought it would be fun to take Ellen to the dog show. It has been almost five months since we had Smokey and Braise visiting us and Ellen has been missing our deerhounds. So, we drove to Valence to the dog show at which there were NO deerhounds! But, we got to spend time with the wolfhounds and the Ibizan hounds and, in small measure, Ellen got her dog fix.

QUAIL

Tonight I made dinner for Ellen and our good friends Phil and Margaret. I made quail with root vegetables. Ellen made her green beans à la Patricia Wells (The Provence Cookbook, 2004. p. 193-4) – a recipe that Ellen learned from our Lansing friend Brian. We then had salad, cheeses and a light dessert. Not to mention, a lot of good local wine: Vacqueyras, Cotes du Rhone, Vinsobres.

At one level, this is no news at all. Since we have been in France, I have cooked with quail, pheasant, free-range chickens and turkeys, rabbit and a wide variety of fish. I have commented on how the flavors are so much broader/deeper/real here in previous posts, I don’t want to get redundant or boring.

At another level, this is amazing in that I don’t have a clue as to where I would need to shop to actually find quail or pheasant in the US. (I have found rabbit at Goodrich’s in East Lansing – frozen and from China – and US turkey is so engineered to have a big breast that it is so far from what we get to purchase and cook here.)

Ironic, isn’t it? To have spent my teen years thinking about big breasts and now suggesting that French small-breasted turkeys are better??? Go figure… better yet, go taste the difference!

At a third level (don’t worry, this is where it ends. I will not take you down to the depths that Dante explored) it surprises me how much I have come to enjoy cooking and the little compliments that come from a meal well-prepared. The quail was good (better than usual) tonight because I took the time to braise/sear the quails well before adding the root vegetables. My previous cooking was either soups – always better the next day – or microwave cooking. In previous attempts at this menu, I was always impatient and stopped the braising process too soon. Tonight, I let the hot pan really brown the quails before I removed them to deglaze the pan with a good red wine.

I remember a conversation with my mother at a time when Ellen was living in Austin, TX working on her PhD. My mom asked me what I was having for dinner and I replied that I didn’t know. She asked: “How can you not know?” I said: “I look at the back of the box and find out how long it has to cook. I don’t look at the name of what I am cooking.”

I have changed. My goals are few: I want to cook with the creativity of Dan, the finesse and great flavors of Brian, the artistry of Benoit and the celebration of Provence found in Patricia Wells’ cookbooks.  – I guess that I should have started learning about 70 years ago…

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day

We got back from Paris around 10:00 AM after spending 10 days with Ellen's brother and sister-in-law (the last three of which were in Paris). During their visit, we covered a lot of ground – including a day trip to Carcassonne to see our long-time friends Daniel and Irene.

Paris was cold and it was snowing and on the day that we went to the Eiffel Tower it was snowing AND blowing AND cold! We left Paris at 0:dark 30 to get a 7:30 AM train back to Avignon. As we were making our way to the metro, we saw a lot of people who were just leaving the bars – early Valentine ’s Day partiers?

On the train, we got “Happy Valentine’s Day” wishes from the cupids in the picture.

We were back in time to have lunch with Phil and Margaret, rest and then go to La Lyriste for dinner. It was the best meal that I have ever enjoyed at Benoit’s place. It was the Valentine's Day menu and more expensive than usual, but we enjoyed:

"Mise en bouche:" - Benoit's own foie gras (the best!) plus a goat cheese/cream cheese with scallions wrapped with magret de canard.

Entre: Cannelloni de Saumon Farci à la chair de crabe, légumes craquant, brochettes de Gambas Grillées. (vegetables, crab and herbs wrapped in smoked salmon; lettuce and grilled shrimp.)

Plat: Aiguillettes de canard rôties, croustillant de Risotto, Spaghetti Végétale. This was the dish to see. Ben put the Risotto cooked as a crispy round cake on the plate. He then added three aiguillettes that he had rolled into tight spirals and then put on a "hat" of grilled tortilla on which he placed the vegetables-cut-like-spaghetti. Gorgeous presentation, delicious flavors.

The cheeses came from the local fromagerie and included brie, Roquefort and goat cheese. I plan to go to the shop and ask the cheese shop owner what she chose for Ben's menu - and then buy them.

The dessert was a macaroon (pink), dark chocolate ice cream, some kind of marscapone filling in a sugar shell and a piece of cake that had been marinating in some "eau de vie"...

What a wonderful meal. Only once before had we enjoyed a similar Valentine ’s Day meal and, by coincidence, it was at a restaurant only 8 km away in Sablet. It was a restaurant that Brian knew about and we went there with him for a memorable Valentine’s Day lunch.

In the news

A few weeks ago, I met a free-lance reporter who had just finished an article on the crèche. She had seen me working there and had asked the director about me. (I imagine that she asked “Who is the old guy with the American accent?”) She said she wanted to do an article on me because it was rare to see a volunteer and she wanted to learn more about me and my interest in volunteering.


We met at one of the local cafés and, over espresso, I answered her questions. I like her article and hope you will, too.

Vaucluse Matin Vendredi 5 février 2010 

     

     by: Sophie Grebel

Translation: A happy volunteer in France

            Marc Sullivan comes from Michigan. For the past two years, he and his wife spend six months in Vaison and six months in the United States. Since last March Marc works as a volunteer two afternoons per week at “Gingerbread”, the program for young children in Vaison.

            He tells stories, sings songs in his language and tries to be helpful wherever he can. The children have accepted him totally. They correct his French when he makes mistakes and say “bye bye” when he leaves.

            For him, nothing makes him happier. Now as a regular, he enjoys his time and comes home to tell his wife about the events of the day that he shared with the children and the staff of professionals with whom he works (and enjoys).

            His decision? Before joining the program, he had to explain in a letter that he was retired and wanted to return to working with young children, the focus of his career. He had to provide a police record and other documents related to his work.

            From the time he was in college, he volunteered his time working in child care programs for poor children (Head Start). And, after teaching in Chad, he found work in child care, ending his career as the director of a child care trade association for Michigan which organized training programs and where he worked to find funding to continue to offer the programs.

            The work became more administrative and that is why today he is pleased to be able to have meaningful contact with young children. Living next door to “Gingerbread” Marc adds “even when I am not there, I can hear the kids, I can watch them play outside and it makes me smile.”