However, I will have to be excused this week, because I got a phone call today to tell me that my birth mother died very peacefully this morning (see Elsewoman). Soon I'll be heading off for the funeral. In past times she would have relished hearing all about it and seeing my photos. So I will tell you my stories about it next week instead, imagining I'm telling her too. But just not right now.
What I will tell you briefly, though, is what I was able to tell my mostly sister and one or two brother bloggers at the dinner on Friday night. The food memoir I've been writing for three years is going to be published early next year by Awa Press as their first "e-riginal" - an original e-book. Here's what I said on Friday, with a first tiny taste of the book itself. It's a little memorial for my birth mother too - she loved eating and cooking, and one of our greatest pleasures was eating out together.
"I love reading food memoirs, and I’ve loved writing
this one. I’ve set out to conjure up a lifetime of experiences related to food.
So it covers a lot of ground. It moves from the everyday fare of suburban Mount
Eden in the 1950s to the pitfalls and pleasures of learning to cook as a 19
year old bride who had never lifted a pan in my life; on to discovering the
exotic dishes of Albania in the 1970s, and at last getting to grips with French
food in all its glory.
But of course, food never stands alone. From the
beginning, it’s tied up with our deepest feelings and desires. So for me,
writing about food has also meant writing about finding a long-lost mother, losing
a son, sharing the kitchen and table with a beloved husband - and finally, over
the last eighteen months, learning for the first time how to cook and eat
alone.
I want be in touch with you all again in the next few
months about my book...But for now, to go with this great dinner, here’s a
tiny advance taste.
I’d never had any French bread, but
I knew what it looked like from the pictures. I imagined a thin dark-haired
girl like Lesley Caron in Gigi, opening a paper bag and taking out a piece of
baguette and a few squares of dark chocolate. (Somehow I always thought of it
as dark like Cadbury’s Energy, not pale brown like Dairy Milk).
But I wasn’t sure what happened
next – did she eat these things one at a time, in alternating bites, or did she
put the chocolate into the bread and eat it like a chocolate sandwich?
It took me seventeen years to
find out. On my first morning in Paris , I ate my first warm, flaky, buttery, melting pain au
chocolat, and knew that this was what those schoolgirls in En Route had been eating all along."
5 comments:
Anne, so sorry to hear about your mother. I hope she has a fitting farewell.
I am very much looking forward to reading your book!
Sorry to hear your sad news. Lovely to meet you last week & look forward to the book!
Sorry to hear about your loss, a big hug.
It was lovely to hear your story, but maybe you will find amusing to learn that bread and chocolate (and I mean two slices of bread with a bar of chocolate in the middle) it is indeed a children snack in places like Italy and France. In fact often we could not have our bars of chocolate unless we ate it with bread! :-)
I still like to have bread and chocolate now, pane e cioccolata!
Thank you for your warm messages, they are such a help. Alessandra, that's fascinating - in other words my first imagined picture was right! I'm just revising my ms now, I will have to fit this in!
I enjoyed your post and sad about your mother. My newish food blog is often about my mother (and late father) and the funny ways she does things - all very important to record this as she gets older. Best of luck.
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