last meals

at some point when my kids were small, i heard or read that you have to introduce some foods, especially those with bitter flavors, to kids as many at 82 times before they will consider them tasty, or appealing, or edible. my first dozen encounters with mackerel were a lot like a 4 year old being asked to eat spinach and canned peas. but this morning, i looked forward to the arrival of our fishmonger in the village square. and this evening, i ate hungrily a mackerel grilled over vinewood, with a couple of slices of lemon in his belly, and rubbed with olive oil and salt. he tasted like mackerel. and i loved him for who he was.

Mediterranean mackerel

14 snails

we just got some rain tonight. these snails have been perched on this wild fennel, dormant for several weeks. tomorrow morning, i expect they will be eating and drinking, and, of course, talking about the weather.

wild fennel with land snails

botticelli

aphrodite was born on cyprus and sailed to shore on a scallop shell, according to myth, and according to botticelli. if someone else is right, and botticelli is wrong, i don’t care. i’m stickimg with botticelli. also, before aprhodite steps into her shallow boat, i’d like to request that i get the little knob of white scallop flesh attached to the hull, in order to grill it, or sear it, with some good salted butter.

great scallop shells (coquille saint jacques)

fall crocus

these fall crocuses are called “safran des pres” or field saffron. i don’t know if they actually contain harvestable amounts of saffron, but i love the fact that that such wealth and abundance can still be referred to here in september and october, when back in minnesota we are bracing for the long sterility of winter.

wild crocus from the banks of the orb river neat avène

boys

as a tomboy, i am unwilling to cede much territory in the battle of the sexes. i have done a lot of boyish things over the years, mostly because i simply assumed i could. it helped me a lot to have that attitude. but there is a particular kind of play that feels boyish to me, in a way that i don’t know i could imitate, and that i think is probably important for my newly 16 year old son. it’s the horseplay, the arbitrary but good natured violence of my two boys, the sixteen year old and the 53 year old, that seems to reside somewhere in their genes, and couldn’t be replicated simply by making the effort. yesterday my two boys went fishing on the celestially beautiful orb river, and brought home a brown trout for dinner. then they threw baguette butts at each other, and did some swearing. it appeared deeply satisfying to them, and i was happy not to be asked to make sense of it.

wild-caught brown trout (Orb River near Avène, France)

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