We Begin in Provence

sunflowers, outside Saint-Saturnin-lès-Avignon, France © charlotte david

Provence seemed like an obvious starting point for this blog: this is summer, and that's where we go to spend our summers.

vineyard, st. jean, gIGONDAS, FRANCE © charlotte david

I sort of have a thing about France (but that’s a story for another time). Back in 1995, I was desperately missing being there, so I convinced my husband, Mark, to vacation in Provence. With our little four-year-old daughter, Charlotte, we flew over and spent a month at a house in the tiny village of Bédoin, at the foot of Mont Ventoux. It was an instant hit with the whole family, and we've spent almost every summer there since.

Our home-away-from-home is the Haut Vaucluse: a patchwork of vineyards, olive groves, lavender and sunflower fields, cherry and apricot orchards, dotted with sleepy villages. We like to stay in the north; it's quieter, cooler and less traveled by tourists. We always rent a gite (vacation rental on an owner's property) in Gigondas - famous for having its own marvelous wine appellation - despite being one of the rare towns without its own boulangerie (bakery)!

lièvre = hare.

Mark, although not fluent in French, speaks "menu". Meaning, he knows what every dish on the menu is, and what it's made up of. He easily navigates our local outdoor marché (market), buying everything from a lièvre (hare) to rattes (potatoes), for the wonderful meals he cooks while we’re there.

Rattes (pronounced RATS) are small potatoes with a nutty flavor and smooth, buttery texture.  Read more about rattes in America...

My husband says...

I’ve grown to think that there are two kinds of vacations. One is the kind where you go somewhere you’ve not been before, move around a lot, see its sights, taste its foods authentically for the first time, and generally try to gather in as much strange new experience as you can. Provence, for us, is not that kind. There’s something very comforting, and far more relaxing about a vacation where you know where to go to buy toilet paper, how to drive home without consulting a map, which drawer the corkscrew is in. Although I still can’t figure out where in the grocery store the French keep the damn yeast.

The first couple of years, of course, were a bit more interesting. I knew zero French. Karen valiantly translated for me for two weeks, then she got fed up with that. Through pure survival mechanisms, I’ve picked up enough to get by, barely. Here’s a hint – learning prepositions is far more important than conjugating verbs. You can order an entire restaurant meal, compliment the chef, and thank the waiter without ever touching a verb and they’ll love you in Provence. But mix up your prepositions and say something like “I live under that house”, and you’ll get some very strange looks, indeed. For many years, when a French person would approach and ask me a question, I would respond, “Pardon, je ne pas parles”. Sort of means, “Sorry, I don’t speak.” Oh, well.

sault, FRANCE © charlotte david

 Another thing we had to learn about was eating out. The area is generally quite rural; there are many excellent restaurants, but the café, bistro or pizzeria type places for a light meal are concentrated in the few larger cities. The menus in the country consist of very robust hare, rabbit, duck, pork, chicken and the occasional fish preparation. You have an appetizer, main course, salad and cheese or dessert with every meal. And, of course, wine. One just can’t do that twice a day every day, as we initially attempted, without some serious health consequences, not to mention the budgetary issues. Fortunately, we always had a kitchen and I like to cook. So I learned how to do Provencal cuisine, and how to navigate the marché; now we go out for a big meal once a week or so, plus a fun meal of pizza and frites in the nearest larger town now and then.

 But after all that time, Provence has become an indispensable part of our life. We made new friends with the tenants of the neighboring gites, who like us visited at the same time every year. We’ve challenged them to frequent and endless pétanque tournaments. We’ve shared countless communal dinners with them, and our dear, late, proprietor. We still see and correspond with his lovely daughter and grand daughter. We’ve been to all the restaurants, shopped at every marché. Karen has made curtains and more from the local fabric. Charlotte now speaks fluent French, is 24 and hopes to live in Paris at some point. It’s impossible to overstate the huge portion of our life that is made up of memories of the time we spent, and continue to spend there.

st. jean, gIGONDAS, FRANCE © charlotte david