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(First Published September 2011)

We just moved into our new house a few weeks ago, and during the period of our homelessness (traveling plus an extended stay at our North Conway, NH ski condo for the whole month of July) I thought a lot about good food.  Or lack thereof.  In such transition mode, it is hard to rely on some of the staples of good cooking.

Our transition had roughly three stages.  The first stage was called the eat out a lot stage.  The second stage was the cooking in the really tiny ski condo kitchen stage.  The third stage involved easing into our new kitchen with simple meals at first since we were unpacking, until finally, a return to cooking (and recipe following and wine drinking) commenced.

In the eating out stage, I realized how much I appreciate good food.  We traveled quite a bit and had to rely on convenience food (please, McDonald’s, come up with healthy food! Or why hasn’t someone developed healthy fast food???) Unripe tomatoes, overcooked meat, three pieces of shredded lettuce, dried out cheese, dressings and spreads with no flavor but three times the fat, and the most frequent offender:  disgusting bread.  You have to really try hard not to care as a restaurant to serve bad bread.  Nothing is as unsatisfying as bad bread.  Except for unripe tomatoes.  Especially in gazpacho.

So by the time we rolled into our condo, tiny kitchen and all, I was thrilled to get away from road food.  I can remember my first trip to the grocery store when we had settled.   I was like a kid in a candy store.  Fresh herbs! Asiago cheese! Artisanal bread!  Even the hummus and taboule felt like a luxury.  We were in flux, but at least we could eat well.

Quickly, however, I discovered that a kitchen in July of a second-story condo with 1 air conditioner made you want to do anything but cook.  I braved one night of a rosemary and garlic crusted pork tenderloin, but most of the time I chose a meal that would require the least amount of time in front of heat.  At least we had summer’s produce.  We lived on Caprese salad, cold cucumbers, salads, and sandwiches.

I found a local health food store and bought the local milk they sold.  Then we planned a trip to visit the farm where it came from.  Sherman Farm in Conway, NH is a beautiful, clean, pastoral vision.  It was so much fun to walk up to the cows and watch them eat their grass, lick their salt cubes, and moo.  The kids had a kick out of the animals freedom of expression of poop and bodily functions.  Especially the pig that got up to greet us and then promptly relieved himself.  Best of all, their pre-made dinners from farm fresh ingredients were the perfect solution to my dilemma of a warm kitchen and craving good food crew.   That and their delicious produce which sustained us for several weeks.

Finally, we moved into our house, and I fell in love (again) with the amazing storage and organization capacity of our new kitchen and pantry.  I was able to fill a whole room with mixers and food processors and cookie cutters and platters.  Having these items accessible is truly my biggest luxury of our new house (that and the great neighborhood families, of course).   We were actually able to have house guests the following week after moving in and, despite an unorganized spice cupboard, pull off relatively good meals like lobster and chowder and delicious homegrown tomatoes from our visitor (thanks Mark for making up for all the bad tomatoes I have eaten this summer).

But it wasn’t until this past weekend that I was finally able to cook with the music flowing, wine flowing, and delicious things simmering.  I made chicken stuffed with brie and spinach, a gemelli pasta with sausage and broccoli and ricotta, chicken noodle soup, and delicious turnips.  With both chicken stock and homemade chocolate sauce in the fridge, along with the wonderful smells throughout our new house, I knew we were finally home.  Oh, and there is half a bag of crusty rosemary & olive oil bread on the counter, too.

I have dreamed from time to time about what it would be like to live on a French farm, especially one from a century ago.  Life would be harder, sure, but quality ingredients – delicious, fresh, right outside my door, from May to October – would be something to experience.

I have started to call it my WWFFD fantasy, i.e., what would French farmers do?  This has become my go-to kitchen philosophy.  When I am stumped for a meal, I ask WWFFD? And the answer is always marvelous, like a warm goat cheese salad with champagne vinegar and Dijon mixed with good olive oil for a light dressing, or warm crusty bread with a simple vegetable soup, or even just an omelet with Gruyere, tomato, and herbs.  They might not have had the internet, but all that time they did not spend checking email, they spent on figuring out how to make food taste delicious.

Their discoveries with the egg alone leave me in awe. So what did that point in time when someone discovered Mayonnaise look like?  It probably wasn’t that romantic: half-starved peasants had to eat their stores of potatoes and turnips again.  In the middle of a week-long storm when they worried that their barn roof would blow off, they had to come up with something to keep their spirit from dimming.  Behold the mixture of egg yolks and oil.  And that is just one of their egg creations – Hollandaise sauce, soufflés, custards, bread pudding, dressings, and omelettes each could have their own meditation given to them.

Then there is the chicken.  The priest who married us is of French lineage, and during dinner one night he told me that the best memory of his late twin brother was when they made roast chicken. He so struck me with his description of that meal that it had to be one of the first married meals I made.  It was a revelation, and so simple.  I followed Julia’s technique, down to massaging the bird with the butter, and it was easily one of the best meals I have ever had.  I understood why that would have been the most memorable of his last evenings with his brother. I think of French farmers, who didn’t just buy a plastic covered ball of pink flesh with an ink price tag. They no doubt raised that bird on grain that they grew and harvested. Then the bird grew and was harvested.  The night that bird was roasted had to be so joyful. The satisfaction of your mind and heart and tastebuds must be up there in the list of life’s pleasures.  We might not experience all of those aspects of a birds life, but we can at least buy organic chicken. It is amazing to me how much more flavorful organic meat is compared to its massed produced counterpart. I am pretty sure what a French farmer would not do, and it is everything the poultry feeding mills do to the growth hormone, antibiotic injected birds in their dark warehouses.

I try to make stock each time I make or buy a chicken.  I think of the farmers then, what they had in their gardens in abundance or how they tried to use up what they had so it wasn’t wasted.  The onions, carrots, and celery, making up the French mire poix flavor base.  The garlic and salt and peppercorns, thyme and rosemary and bay all grew around their home.  Then they added the time to simmer it for hours.

No doubt the allure of time is part of the French fantasy.  The time to grow and harvest your own food, and taste its freshness. But mostly it is just bringing out the delicious goodness of simple food. If we lack time in our modern lifestyle, how close can we come to capturing their way of eating?  Great products like Cheeses from Vermont, produce from local farmers, and organic meat is as close as we can come. It might take some planning, for sure, but the results are memorable.

But there is something more to it as well, something that the French Culture infuses in its habits of eating (as do the Italians, of course.  One could easily alter my French farmer fantasy to an Italian Farmer one).  It is simply the passion for its food.  One example of this is the concept of terroir, which is that the earth a plant is grown in – be it grapes for wine, coffee, even the grass that an animal eats that then flavors its milk and cheese – gives unique characteristics to the plant itself.  Since the earth can produce a special uniqueness in the fruits it bears, a sense of place takes on an even deeper dimension for those intimately involved with the quality of the food a region is producing.

(Anyone remotely interested in food or travel has probably heard of Italian families arguing over whose town produces better olive oil.)  This concept is most commonly thrown around between wine connoisseurs but it is now so broad I first learned of it from Vermont cheese makers.  It really captures me for some reason, and makes me want to take a tour around France, tasting everything.  (All I can remember from my visit there is that the yogurt and butter there are unbelievably better that ours.) Since I am not bringing my three small children there anytime soon, I’ll have to try to notice the terroir of New England instead.

The French farmer fantasy, at its heart, is just about taking the time to notice such subtle qualities in your food.  Their emphasis on good food might be more extreme then our lives allow, but it invites us to taste our food more deeply, to slow down and pay attention to it. Good food is always a map, always about a sense of place. We can use food to notice our own lives. Our own rhythms. Our own terroir.