Marmalade and the Woman in my Dining Room

Years ago when we first moved to the south of France, we wandered into a charming little art gallery on a pedestrian street in San Remo, Italy and found this painting of a beautiful woman.  Hubby and I fell in love with her instantly so after an hour or so of spirited Italian-style haggling, she was ours.

For 12 years now, she's been quietly overseeing dinners we host in our dining room and I always make it a point of seating my guests on the south side of the dining room table so they can see her while they dine.  Especially the men!

There she is, smiling enigmatically while dinner progresses from appetizers to dessert to espresso, and then hours later with full and happy bellies, we part ways and drift en masse to the salon.

It's a lovely painting but the thing I find most striking about it is the contrast between her face and the other elements of the painting.  She's no spring chicken yet her pose, her basket of luscious blood oranges and her exposed breast all say youth and sensual bounty yet her face says maturity and wisdom.

I was thinking about her and how much she reminded me of fruit trees we have growing in our garden in France.   Some of the trees are 50-100 years old, what would be considered quite young for fruit trees yet year after year they produce a prolific number of luscious fruit, with little or no assistance.  It's quite magical.

Every summer when I return to Ottawa for an annual visit, I fill a suitcase with home made citrus marmalade to sell at the incomparable annual Great Glebe Garage sale in our old neighbourhood to raise funds for the Nepal Youth Foundation. The marmalade is made from bitter oranges, lemons, kumquats and mandarins from these mature citrus trees in our terraced gardens that hug the mountainside overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

I hope that under our guardianship the trees remain healthy for years to come.  And just like the woman in the painting,  the contrast between the mature age of our trees and the fresh, and delicious bounty they produce is one in the same.  And a pleasure to share.

Related Posts:

Recipe for Mixed Citrus and Mandarin Marmalade 

Rescuing Mandarins.

On June 28, 1919, Madame Alasia Bought Bread and Milk

"Book of Accounts belonging to...."

 

On June 28th, 1919, the same day that the Treaty of Versailles was being signed to end the First World War, Madame Catherine Alasia was writing in her Ledger Book of Deliveries and Purchases, "lait" and "3 livre du pain."  Total, 2.30 French Francs.  

Her purchase of milk and 3 pounds of bread  was a modest and prosaic task considering the gravity of what was taking place in Versailles to the north of her.

I found Mme Alasia's little 3"x5" account book at a local flea market and for the past few months, I've been picking it up, leafing through it, putting it down, and wondering what it all meant as I was seduced into the past whenever I opened it.  I paid a mere €2 for it, a complete steal considering its age and how it's stirred my imagination.

One sunny afternoon, my French friend and I sat in my kitchen and pored over it, page by page, she with an innate understanding of French culture and me as a curious time traveller.  We were both eager to decipher what I considered to be a romantic food find.  Together we pieced together the closest we could come to the truth without having been there.

Mme Alasia's entries began in 1917 and ended in 1920.  Most likely, she was a cook for a Catholic residential school or an orphanage in Beausoleil or somewhere between Menton, France and Monaco.  

In her 30 page ledger book, she recorded her purchases and deliveries, and frequent travelling expenses of 3.60FF to Beausoleil near Monaco and to other nearby villages.  We assume that she had many children to feed based on her almost daily purchases of vast quantities of milk.  I imagine that many children were orphaned in the war and perhaps these children fell under her guardianship.

Why Catholic?  Mme Alasia mentions "Mother Superior" and "the sisters" in one of her entries and my French friend noted that every year around Easter, Mme Alasia bought lamb which is traditionally eaten by Catholics at Easter.

Milk, bread, flour, and butter were her most frequent purchases.  Entries for vegetables, fruit, and meat were rare but one entry for soulier (shoes), pantoufle (slippers) and patin was intriguing.   

Patin were felt booties that you would slip on over your shoes or directly on your feet, and then polish your wood floors by sliding around in them.  I'm not sure who would have worn the patin at the time, perhaps Mme Alasia or an energetic child but the idea of someone slipping on patin and sliding around to polish floors is utterly charming to me.

I'm glad I found this little book and that I could share it with you.  

I think it's a remarkable and intriguing little time capsule of what must have been a difficult and austere time to be living in France.

"Receive, dear Mother Superior, our best wishes for the holidays and hello to the sisters"

March 4-8, 1920:  "trip, bread, flour, stamp, milk, flour, return to Beausoleil, butter, meat. Total, 19.85 FF"

Eating in the Car

I don't know about you but when I was a kid, eating on the car was strictly verboten.  Even in the summer when my dad brought us to the Dairy Queen for ice cream cones we had to sit at a picnic table in the parking lot, our sticky hands and faces a safe distance from the car.

Fast forward 20 years to when hubby and I started dating.  I got conditional permission to eat McIntosh apples in the fall in his sports car while we toodled around town but in the spring, this permission was rescinded along with a stern lecture, when he discovered one of my apple cores had overwintered under the passenger seat.  Oops.

To make up for such a strict upbringing, I've been known to eat all kinds of stuff in the car as an adult.  My favourite is strawberries from road side stands and I'm very careful to never leave a mess except what drips occasionally on my own clothing.

On a recent trip to the town of Antibes, just down the coast from Monaco, I bought a kilo of peas and I decided to make the best use of my time so I shelled them in the car while we were zipping home on the highway.  How's that for multi tasking?  Preparing dinner and snacking on strawberries at the same time!

When we arrived home, I had a full half kilo of shelled peas, less losses due to sampling of course.    I think my dad would approve.

Oh, and I checked under the seats just to be sure I didn't drop any.