As for the interior, we cleaned, polished and dusted, and I put bouquets of flowers everywhere. We didn’t have an official bathroom downstairs, but a toilet hidden behind a wall. I hung a pretty curtain over the door and hoped for the best.
Finally, it was market day before the big lunch. Accompanied by my parents and Joe, I went to buy all the ingredients, loading myself down with the best butter and milk, the finest tomatoes and oysters, gorgeous little turnips and even some late-season raspberries that smelt like heaven. I wasn’t sure where they would fit in, but how could I resist?
I went home and began to prepare the meal, then was up at 6 a.m. the following morning to continue cooking. With my mother’s help I covered the table with an antique monogrammed white linen sheet, then curled a strand of ivy down the centre. Michael almost killed me when he saw the ivy; he had been at great pains to make our one ivy plant climb up a small section of brick wall near the ancient wooden door in our courtyard, and I had just trimmed off the longest pieces. He needn’t have worried, however, as the ivy on the brick still looked good. I knew his reaction resulted from being as nervous as I about this first lunch.
I printed up menus on parchment paper and set one at each place, along with sprigs of bay leaves, which guests could take home with them, silver cutlery, our amber and turquoise water glasses from Portugal, crystal wine glasses. I had recently found a stack of blue and white vintage Sarreguemines plates tucked away in a local brocante, second-hand market, and with these on the table it looked fit for royalty.
Our guests arrived at 12:30 p.m., right on time. They came into our courtyard exclaiming over the view, and over the aromas issuing from the front door. ‘We could smell this all the way down the street,’ said one of them. ‘We were hoping it was coming from here!’
The day was perfect: sunny and warm with that lovely autumn coolness that makes it perfect for sitting outside. We had put a lively cloth on our round, wrought-iron table in the garden, and set up the parasols so that we could sit outside for the aperitif. Michael gave each guest a glass of orange wine and we all toasted the day and each other, then our guests asked if I would give them a tour of the garden.
Michael had recently completed a low, curved stone wall that enclosed the largest part of my herb garden. It held a border of thyme plants, and behind them a trio of different sages. There was salad burnet and sweet cicely, summer savory, bronze fennel and garlic chives. An old-fashioned climbing rose was in its second stage of blooming, covering the house with its bright red flowers. At its foot was one of its favourite companions, tarragon, which had grown into a lacy bush.
Further away from the house was another herb garden. To get there we crossed a narrow brick walkway Michael had made with beautiful old, worn bricks, which divided the gravel and grassy portions of the courtyard. The grass was for Joe to play on and we had had to declare it sacred; otherwise it would have been so easy to keep expanding the herbs and flowers until they covered everything.
A small, ancient apple tree stood at one side of the grassy patch and an old pear tree stood at the other. We’d planted a rosemary hedge against the metal fence near the pavement, to afford us some privacy. Under the pear tree I’d planted an antique variety of strawberry that was still white when it was ripe, a handful of lily varieties, an ornamental sage whose tiny, fuchsia flowers bloomed almost all year, and a row of dahlias which lent their colour and spirit from mid-June through to November. We were planning to put in a row of espaliered apple trees as soon as the temperature dropped a bit, and these would shield us from our neighbours next door. A laurel nobilis reigned in the corner of the garden, supplying me with bay leaves to perfume sauces and soups, and I had both red and green sorrel in front of that, along with a rhubarb plant. The very foreground of this patch of garden was devoted to lettuces and tomatoes, and a handful of basil plants that were offering their last. I realized, with this tour of the garden, how I’d gathered all my botanical friends around me in the five years we’d lived in Louviers. The house wasn’t finished – and maybe it never would be – but the garden told me I was home.
We sat down to our aperitif and could easily have whiled away the afternoon as we nibbled and sipped, but lunch awaited. I excused myself to prepare the first course and get the turnips cooking, remove the duck from the oven so it could rest, and slice Michael’s loaf of freshly baked bread. Michael opened the St Véran, a golden and buttery white Burgundy, and my parents ushered our guests into the dining room. That occasioned more oohs and aahs and more photos. Michael and I were bubbling with excitement as we saw the reactions these strangers had to our home.
We ate our tomatoes confit, then I presented the whole ducks before returning to the kitchen to carve and arrange them in traditionally symmetrical fashion on a warmed platter. I arranged the golden turnips around them, garnished the plate with sprigs of salad burnet and garlic chives, and presented it. Michael poured the wine, a Sablet from the Côtes du Rhône.
As I knew they would be, the duck and the turnips were a marvellous success. In fact the lunch, from start to finish, was so friendly and delicious that we were all sorry when it was over. When our guests left, just before 6 p.m., Michael and I and my parents looked at each other with satisfaction, knowing it had been a stunning success. The house worked, the meal had been a real insider’s look at French country cuisine and the wonderful products available, and the conversation hadn’t stopped for a minute. Having people come for lunch as strangers and leave as friends was exactly the right use for our house and our talents.
A series of lunches followed, as interest was sparked by an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Patty Unterman, who came to test one of our lunches, as well as mentions in other top magazines. Each meal required as much work as the first one, since we stopped our lives to clean and organize both garden and house, but we did it with pleasurable anticipation. We ended up doing a dozen lunches over the next twelve months, for groups as large as twelve and as few as two, as we tried it on for size.
One of our favourite groups was made up of three generations of the same family. The grandmother organized the meal as a gift to her children and grandchildren, and she worked with me to make sure it was perfect. She wanted the youngest children in the group – who were about eight – to be occupied in some way, as she suspected they would tire of a long meal. I agreed, and arranged for them to be taken in hand by a young man I knew who babysat, spoke a modicum of English and had a driver’s licence. I called the Louviers pétanque club and asked if the children could watch a game; very kindly, the president offered to teach them how to play. I arranged a visit to a local farm to end the afternoon. The grandmother was delighted, and wanted to know if Joe would be interested in joining her grandchildren. She thought it might be nice for them to meet an American/French boy. I don’t push Joe into these situations, so I said we would wait and see. When the family arrived and he saw how boisterous and fun the children were, he joined right in.
The children sat down with us for the first course of pumpkin soup with freshly baked rolls, then they left with the babysitter and returned in time for dessert some four hours later. The lunch was a success except for the fresh chestnuts I’d carefully peeled and braised which are, to me, as prized as truffles. I was happily enjoying mine when I looked around and noticed that several of the guests hadn’t touched theirs. Maybe they didn’t know what they were, I thought, so I began talking about hunting the local chestnuts, about how to prepare them and how happy I was to have been able to offer them. This helped a bit, but many of the chestnuts were still on the plates when they returned to the kitchen. The grandmother confided to me later that not only did her children know what they were, but that they had always refused to eat them. She’d seen them at least try them today, which for her was a huge victory!
I had another lunch scheduled with two delightful women from Seattle. They arrived and we all sat down to lunch. I’d marinated a leg of wild boar for three days in a rich mélange of red wine and spices, then roasted it. I served slices of this as a first course, drizzled with the marinade that I’d reduced to a syrup, along with
