Locavore Temporarily Transplanted

I’ve been on hiatus from the blog, but not from eating locally.  Just this past week I’ve been eating locally in a completely different locale—my in-laws’ home in the Pays de la Loire region of France.  We were visiting to help them celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary, an incredible milestone, and an attestation to their work for the relationship, their longstanding sense of humor, and their strong love for each other.  As I could fill an entire blog entry on the dinner of that celebration, I will save it until later, but every day leading up to it exposed me to local foods and wines.  Being a locavore is not a novelty in rural France, but a long tradition that still lives today.  The classic French homemaker knows what’s in season and what’s not.  She generally has pots of herbs and a “jardin potager”, and the vegetables flourish with France’s long growing season advantage.  She knows what seafood is available in the market, what herbs should go in which sauce in autumn, what makes a winter meal hearty and a summer meal light.  She knows how to preserve the fruits of summer for the long and gloomy winter days.

We arrived to blessedly sunny September weather with cool evenings.  Having gotten off a plane that served us the usual mystery meat with flaccid vegetables, and having driven nonstop from Paris, I was hungry.  Dinner is served at around 8:30, and only the children get a formal “gouter” or snack at around 5:00.  No worries, though; I simply had to wander my in-laws’ couple of acres’ worth of fruit trees and bushes to find my own delectable snack. It doesn’t get much more local than one’s own back yard. First stop, plums.

These little beauties are called “quetsches” or “prunes bleues.”  My mother-in-law whispered in my ear that they’re also locally called “les couilles du pape.”  The pope’s balls; for obvious reasons, especially when they’re more….let’s say….ripe and wrinkled.  France has so many great varieties of plums—mirabelles, reine-claudes, and pruneaux.  The quetsche is best eaten while still firm.  The flesh softens quickly and loses its sweetness.

Next, I moved to the apple trees.  Three different varieties, none of which I knew the name of.  One had skin like a paper bag, but was juicy and sweet-tart on the inside.  Others blushed red in the sunset.  A third variety looked like a distant cousin to our Granny Smith, robust and firm.

My father-in-law led me to his favorite, the peaches.  This particular peach was small and white-fleshed and incredibly sweet.  He showed me two more trees in the middle of the vegetable garden that had come up volunteer; their branches were bowed with the weight of the fruit.

The pears came in different shapes and sizes, many of them long and tapered.  Usually I don’t like the skin of a pear, but it didn’t stop me at this moment from plucking a juicy specimen from the tree and gulping and slurping my way into the middle.

Sad remains of the blackberries

We passed by the cherry trees, which had not really produced this year, my in-laws reported with a wistful tone.  I didn’t know how one would miss them with all this other fruit!  Bits of brilliant red caught my eye as I wandered over to the raspberry bushes.  As they were in their second run for the  season, I could pull off ripe ones by the handful, but the blackberry bushes were finished for the year.

I could get used to this, I thought.  My mother-in-law reminded me that they were loads of maintenance, however.  Pruning the trees, picking, cleaning and preserving the fruit, all of this takes time and great effort.  On her cellar shelves sits the proof:  over 200 quart-sized jars of fruit jams and preserves, requiring hours and days and weeks to can.  The next morning I sampled plum, pear and raspberry preserves on my bread, and, oh! I could taste the sunshine in the jar.