For the last few years I’ve been living and working in a small village in the French countryside. When I arrived it felt like I’d stepped back a few decades in time. Everything closes all day Sunday (and at noon on Saturday). The Internet is dial-up. The roads are terrible, and I’m always escaping from being run over by tractors.
The old fashioned way of life here can be a little annoying, but there’s one aspect of life here that I have no urge to give up: the kitchen.
My kitchen here is just incredible. The room itself is enormous, taking up a good portion of the house (the French prioritise well). There’s a huge range oven against one wall. A monstrous thick wooden table squats in the middle of the room, constantly loaded with fish waiting to be gutted and poultry waiting to be plucked. On a row of brass hooks hang a line of flour sack dish towels, each powdered in a layer of flour from the last time they were used to slide a fresh loaf of bread into the oven.
Kitchens these days seem to have become places geared towards speed and convenience. Gadgets are everywhere, and cookery is soulless. All I’d say is that you should come see my kitchen in the heart of France. You’ll fall in love with cookery all over again.
