Sunflower Seed Pesto
Looks like it’s time to harvest the basil in my container garden before the bugs do. This is the first year in Cancale that I’ve actually had a crop of basil worth harvesting [...]
Zucchini Ribbon Salad
For the past four summers, I’ve been doing cooking demonstrations at a local farmers’ market. The conditions are lovely—extraordinarily good produce, cheese, meats, and cider [...]
Wild Plum Compote
I have been wracking my brain for a way to make ‘compote’ sound sexy. Exciting. Like something you want to jump out of your chair and make immediately. And I keep coming up w [...]
“Gin Martini” Green Olive Tapenade
Southern France, meet the American South, or at least the South I know where summer evenings smell of heat, humidity, freshly-mown grass…and gin. When I was little, the gin s [...]
Village Life on the Port de la Houle
I live in a village. Cancale proper is a town of about 6000 people, but le Port de la Houle is a little warren of narrow streets and stone houses with a year-round population [...]
“Pièce de Résistance” Artichokes
An 80-year-old neighbor in Cancale introduced me to a revolutionary concept: Eating a whole, steamed artichoke as a main course, not just an appetizer. We were chatting about [...]