All the leaves are brown, the food too

This week, I drink Beaujolais nouveau in the rain, make a new friend, and cook more brown food. Because it’s the best.

If you’re a new subscriber (hello, I love you) and you want to find out what these weekend posts are about, I wrote an introduction here.

It’s like I’m trying to sabotage myself, isn’t it? In a world of glossy, seductive, lickable food photography, I am bringing you an endless diet of brown food. In part, this is because it’s autumn. Or is it winter yet? It’s certainly been cold enough this past week in Département 34.

We went to our local wine shop to celebrate the arrival of Beaujolais nouveau on Thursday. A gang of us sat at trestle tables on the pavement, eating charcuterie and cheese off paper plates as the rain hammered down on the white awning. None of us was deterred by the damp, though it meant the music was cancelled because instruments don’t love water.

I sat opposite my new friend, Georges. I met him a while ago at the gate as I was coming out of the house, but we hadn’t properly talked, other than the usual good morning lovely day how are you sort of bread-and-butter conversation. He told me he’d worked in catering for over twenty years (restauration I love that. It sounds so much more soul-feeding than catering, which implies an endless and slightly joyless fettling, tin trays and heat lamps). His told me about his daughter, who is an oyster farmer outside of Mèze, and his son who is a wine maker just outside the village. Then he got out his phone and showed me pictures of a boeuf bourguignon he’d made over the course of two days. He makes a tapenade that our mutual friend Soraya says is the best she’s ever tasted, too good to share with guests. By the end, he was promising me a jar of his apricot jam and I offered a jar of my marmalade in return. We toasted to friendship and then a car sped past, spraying our table with a wave of freezing water. Time, ladies and gentlemen, please.

But I digress. I do that. Someone, a friend, recently described my newsletter as “meandering”. He’s right. Sorry for the delay. I often think life, pleasure, is too important to rush to the point.