Provence
I’ve had a home in Provence, a modest one, for many years. I raised goats there and made goat’s milk cheese that I sold in the open market in Barjols and to nearby restaurants and families. My son was born there, and my neighbors of now more than 45 years, are like my family. Provence to me is more than a second home – it’s a second life.
A Pig in Provence
I get notes from people all over the world about my memoir, A Pig in Provence. It’s been translated into Dutch, Polish and Korean. Some relate to the our adventure of starting a small farm in a foreign country, others to the funny anecdotes surrounding raising goats and pigs and making and selling cheese. Some people even write and want to know what happened to my first husband or ask about Ethel. The people in the book have been my friends and neighbors since I was a young mother. However now, in 2024, many of them have departed this earth, leaving me only my memories. Much has changed since I wrote A Pig in Provence, but my deep roots and affection for the place and its people remain unchanged.
La Vie Rustic: Cooking and Living in the French Style
I loved writing this book because I was able to express the way I think about cooking and living in Provence, how each season and each meal revolves around what is available from the barnyard, the potager, the orchards, and in the wild forests and hillsides, from the rivers and seas. And that is how I organized the book, beginning with the Potager. My daughter, Ethel Brennan and her (and my)photographer friend, Sara Remington, are responsible for the photos. I spent the summer they photographed foraging for such things as wild fennel, mulberries, purslane and dandelions. When Ethel and Sara were photographing in spring, I brought fava leaves and flowering herbs to the studio from my garden, strawberries from my farmer neighbors, along with my homemade merguez. It was a labor of love to cook and to write the recipes, and tell the stories that fill the sidebars. In one story, a friend defends his truffle patch, sitting out all night under a tree, waiting for the poachers. In another, I get to tell the history of the transhumance in Provence, the centuries-old tradition of taking the sheep from the valleys of southern France to the mountains to summer in the high pastures, returning again in September to shelter and lamb in the valleys.
Paris to Provence: Childhood Memories of Food and France
This isn’t my book but my daughter, Ethel Brennan’s and photographer Sara Remington’s book. I wrote the forward for them, at their request, and even went on some photography excursions with them. The stories are their childhood stories of summers spent in France, a decade apart, and the recipes are those they remember from those long summer days and nights when they were children and I was a young mother. Ethel and Sara met a few years ago while working on a photo shoot and discovered they had similar experiences growing up. Filled with recipes, stories, and lush photographs, it is truly special.
The Food and Flavors of Haute Provence
Conceiving and writing The Food and Flavors of Haute Provence gave me so much joy. I was able to interview a number of people of for this book, and listen to their first hand experiences about learning to hunt truffles between the wars, about the once flourishing chestnut forests, the time before Lac St. Croix became a reality and flooded a valley and a village, when farmhouses were left abandoned when the men didn’t come home from the World Wars that ravaged the country. As an ardent student of history, being able to research and write this book was a dream come true. Individuals shared recipes and sometimes we cooked together. I went truffle hunting with dogs and once with a pig, and to a grand communal truffle feast for 600 people. And, of course, I drew deeply on my own experiences of living in rural Provence. I was deeply moved when the book received a James Beard Award for Best International Cookbook of the Year. 