Prologue

THIS IS A BOOK about my childhood, and it grew out of the gratitude and affection I have always felt for my maternal grandparents, Camille and Marcel Cadeillan, and out of my memories of their colourful and eccentric characters and the visits I used to make as a boy to their farm in a small village in central Gascony. My grandparents were peasant farmers, and the book tells of the seasons, of animals and crops, and of ploughing and harvesting; but above all it tells of the country food and the cooking of my grandmother. It describes the ducks and hares which we roasted on spits before the wide log fire in her kitchen; the endless soups and garbures she made in her thick iron pot; her jams, preserves and confits; the poule au pot we ate at harvest lunches in the summer and the quails wrapped in vine leaves or cooked over hot, glowing embers.