I'm a fan of food memoirs that focus mostly on the food and this was one of those. She describes the different types of meals and dishes and learning to cook in the regional French way with great detail and a fluidity that was very easy to read. I can't wait to try some of the easier recipes. ( )

A delightful slice of life, food, family and friends based on the author's extended residencies in Provence. It makes you long for a simpler, more authentic way of life where the relationship with food, its production, preparation, cooking and eating is bound up with the day to day fabric of surviving and enjoying what the earth has to offer, and not complicated and endlessly overblown by what's trendy or fashionable. Focused primarily on food and cooking, it gives glimpses into the author's family life and relationships with two husbands as well as many good friends, but it's not a memoir, unless you want to define it as a food memoir. If you love books like "Under the Tuscan Sun", "A Year in Provence" and so on, you'll love this one ( )

This book has made me drool and slaver and happily refer to the recipes. Imagine escaping from the US's involvement from the Vietnam War by fleeing to Provence with a small daughter and a plan to learn how to herd goats and make cheese. The modern reader is daunted by this lackadaisical plan for generating income. Imagine making all that work out on faith and no Google or Wikipedia.

Liked the idea that the older residents are still proud of having been partisans during WWII, and furthermore are quite satisfied with having kicked the occupying German soldiers back to the curb.

I want mushrooms, red wine, garlic bread and bouillabaisse soooo bad and I am not even half way through this book.

Much, much later: in 2018 I came back to finish reading this book. I wanted to read about the pleasure of food after "Surviving Paradise," because a year of eating not much but plain white rice in the Marshall Islands sounds just terrible. I had no idea that a tropical paradise can be a food desert.