The Flavor of the Day

By TAD BARTIMUS

In France, you get to meet your food up close and personal. No cellophane or Styrofoam separates me from what I'm about to eat. This was the way it was in my childhood, when I ate asparagus only in spring, strawberries just in summer and mushrooms only in the fall. Otherwise, they weren't in season.

It is the same in the France I'm visiting, which is much like rural America was 50 years ago, when my family grew our own vegetables and fruits out of need, and our cellar was full of home-canned jars at summer's end.

The efficiency, low cost and convenience of Safeway, Wegmans and Costco have divorced Americans from intimacy with their own food. Not so in France, where everybody from three-star Michelin chefs to picky Provencal housewives don't plan evening menus until they've bought the freshest ingredients at the morning market.

During my morning trips, I gently squeeze ripe tomatoes, sniff cantaloupes and select blonde potatoes the size of gumballs. My dainty carrots still have their leaves attached. Delicate green beans are speckled with dewdrops. Tender fennel bulbs join the rest of the handpicked (and, in the case of the raspberries, taste-tested) bounty in my straw market basket.

With a bow to the French preference for great taste over perfect shape, I add twisted sweet green peppers and sweet corn with missing kernels to my loot. I have bought just enough for lunch and supper. If I get any more, I won't have an excuse to return tomorrow.

Most of us are a mere generation or two removed from the family farm, but have little or no memory of it or connection to it. Not so in France, where thousands of villages -- some no larger than three ancient stone houses and a couple of dilapidated barns -- are encircled by rich agricultural lands bordered by stone walls and rows of sycamore trees. Fields here are tilled by extended families whose ancestors plowed the same spot hundreds of years ago.

Like their American counterparts, many French farmers barely make a living off of the land and are heavily subsidized by the government. They also grow diversified crops, especially fruits and vegetables, besides animal feed.

While sitting on a porch, watching a summer lightning storm over France and hoping for an end to the country's six-month drought, I realize all farmers are the same. Whether in Kansas, Vietnam, England or Africa -- they tilt their heads the same way as they look to the heavens and implore the gods to, just this once, give them what they need when they need it.

The thing about farmers is, they're half optimist, half pessimist, and 100 percent stubborn. They think the worst, hope for the best, and, in the face of disaster, say, "Well, there's always next year."

And being able to see the effects of this drought on the farmers and the produce at the local market connects me to the earth in a way that shopping at a supermarket never could. For better and worse, it makes me more aware of the environment.

While unloading the edible treasures I bought today, I hear a knock at the door; the wife of a nearby farmer tells me, by way of smiles and hand gestures, that she has just picked a bushel of perfect white peaches and would I care to buy a few? Yes, indeed. And how about some apricots, and a fig or two? You bet. Make it three.

My hometown Safeway won't ever seem the same.

© 2003 The Women Syndicate

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