Patricia Sands

Author

General Travel

Truffle season begins!

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If it’s Friday, it must be France …

In France, for certain enthusiasts, the celebration this week will be all about musky-smelling, subterranean fungi … truffles.

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On November 15, the historic walled town of Richerenches, will open its famous market for black truffles, the largest in France, with the proclamation of le Ban des Truffes. This official opening of the market by members of the Brotherhood of Black Diamond and Gastronomy, begins the truffle season which lasts until at least March. Foodies around the world rejoice!

Photo credit - Richerenches, Bureau de Tourisme
Photo credit – Richerenches, Bureau de Tourisme

Truffle sellers often work out of the back of their cars and vans around the corner from the regular market with sellers and buyers from restaurants and other agents, negotiating prices and making deals. If you know your truffles (often referred to as black diamonds), you are welcome to join in!

book-cover-small-1My friend, author and journalist Anne-Marie Simons, has an excellent chapter on the subject in her book Taking Root in Provence.

I wrote about Anne-Marie and her husband, Oscar, in a blog post a while ago. Great examples of being possibilitarians (my favourite word, as you know), wait until you read what Oscar does now! They retired to Aix-en-Provence in 1998 and began a fabulous new chapter in their lives. If you haven’t read Taking Root In Provence, I highly recommend it!

Click here for the link! It’s also available in paperback.

A while ago I was delighted to hear from the owners of Les Pastras.0_0_0_0_230_346_csupload_49165624

Johann and Lisa Pepin, are a Franco-American couple who left their corporate careers in Chicago to take over the Pepin family vineyard in the south of France in 2003. They wrote me about living their dream and I was instantly intrigued. Here’s a bit of information from their website and I think you will want to know more too.  At this time of year, truffle-hunting forays are the highlights.

“Our 11 hectares produce grapes, olives, apricots, cherries, plums, apples, pears, pomegranates, figs, almonds, hazelnuts and black winter truffles. We offer truffle-hunting tours of the property when in season. Tours include a sampling of fresh truffle hors d’oeuvres, Champagne and a taste of our organic Les Pastras olive and truffle oil.

Fine food enthusiasts can adopt a tree at Les Pastras and receive a yearly shipment of olive oil or truffles. The perfect gift! Visitors can even choose their own tree during their truffle-hunting tour.

And for every tree adopted, Les Pastras buys a fruit tree for the One Family orphanage in Haiti.”

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How cool is that? With the gift-giving holidays just around the corner, how about an olive tree for the person on your list who has everything? My late father-in-law gave us this as a gift a few years ago and it was so much fun to receive our delivery of oil, we kept adopting for several years!

There is an excellent article about Johann and Lisa in The Good Life France along with all their important links. Go on over there and read it, you’ll be glad you did!

How do you feel about truffles? Have you ever tasted them? Are you a fan? Would you adopt an olive tree or give one as a gift?

Who’s the winner?

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If it’s Friday, it must be France …

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Félicitations, Bernadette Ryan!  Yay! You are the winner of Wolfsangel by Liza Perrat from the giveaway we talked about here two weeks ago.

Bernadette, I know you are going to feel this story is as gripping as I found it! Please email me your contact information and Liza Perrat will get in touch with you. Thanks to everyone else who joined in the fun and, with ebooks so reasonably priced, you might want to pop online and pick up your own copy.

And … yes, Bernadette … you were absolutely correct when you identified the photo in question as Place de la Mairie in beautiful Roussillon! You know your Provence!

I love that village and so did the women on our Womens Travel Network tours last summer. We will be spending a day there again on our 2015 tour. Who’s coming with us? I’ve written a short post about the tours in the latest edition of my favourite website The Good Life France. Click right here to see it.

If you entered the other giveaway of Wolfsangel that was in my newsletter, you’ve still got a chance!  I hope to send the letter off by the end of next week and want to thank Liza for donating two copies of her novel. It’s such a pleasure to give away books!

LA TOUSSAINT – On November 1, this bank holiday was observed throughout France.

All Saints Day, Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead ~ A special day to remember the deceased, this holiday is recognized in many countries around the world. The roots of the celebration of Hallowe’en began with this holiday, but that’s another story.

Today we’re talking about chrysanthemums ~ les chrysanthèmes in France.canstockphoto11193499 The appearance of these bright blooms in Canada is one of the signals that autumn is on the way. We love to plant them in our gardens and fill our patio planters with them as the summer annuals begin to fade away. Often we bring them as hostess gifts at this time of year. Please don’t do this in France because these blooms are known as the flower of the dead. Their symbolism is very special.

 

Markets are full of these colourful plants and roadside stands trade the melons of summer for pots of les chrysanthèmes, which families leave in cemeteries to honour the deceased. I’m not certain how the tradition began but these fall-blooming flowers were first left on the graves of World War One soldiers and the tradition  has continued. Cemeteries throughout the country flow with colour for weeks after this special day.

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The traditional flower of la Toussaint. Do you plant ‘mums’ in your garden or put pots of them on your patios in autumn? I do! 

Let’s all say bienvenue and welcome back to my friend Margo Lestz, who lives in Nice. She’s been traveling for a few months and is back posting on her blog, The Curious Rambler. Her site has been given a brand new makeover and looks fantastique! Her posts are always informative and entertaining … pop over and visit!

 

Bon weekend tout le monde!

 

Travel theme ~ AUTUMN

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The beauty of autumn is too tempting for my shutter to resist. The blends of reds, rusts, golds and browns remind me of the ochre shades of the village of Roussillon that I love to visit and photograph.

The colours, patterns and textures of the pumpkins, squashes and gourds are magnets to my eye. They are cucurbits. Who knew? And sometimes they ride like this through small towns.

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But I’m not in France right now and spending the autumn months in and around Toronto was a pleasure this year. The colours were among the best I’ve seen in a while.

By chance I happened to visit The Artful Garden just outside Bracebridge, ON, on a lovely fall day a few weeks ago. Not only is this a magical setting of inspired plantings, it is also the pottery studio of the talented and visionary property owners, Jon and Suzann Partridge.

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The images all around us were irresistible and Suzann was gracious in allowing me to indulge my photo fetish.

You know photo challenge sites are favourites of mine and Ailsa’s travel theme of “Autumn” this week is the perfect opportunity to share a few of these images. Enjoy … and if you are visiting Muskoka, drop by this welcoming property. It’s an easy 3-hour drive north of Toronto.

Stroll  … erm … scroll with me now.

 

 

When you have some time, visit Where’s My Backpack to see other photographers’ expressions of autumn.  How do you feel about this season?

1967 ~ That’s when it all began …

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If it’s Friday, it must be France …

la Colombe d'Or ~ Saint Paul de Vence

See those cushions in the small alcove along the back wall? Settle in there today and let me share a few memories.

You may think these seats don’t look comfortable, but they are! More importantly though, is the overwhelming atmosphere of art and history that surrounds a visitor to this intimate bar. It’s one of our favourite places to stop by when we are in the area and I’ll tell you more about it in a later post. If you recognize it, let me know in your comment and we can reminisce!

Reminiscing is what I’m doing today, so I’m sharing a post I wrote for The Good Life France (my favourite online place to visit France!) last year.

It begins here …

The Summer of Love, 1967, was a special time to be young and in Europe. Canadian author Patricia Sands looks back at the time when she knew she was falling in love with France…

Backed by an endless soundtrack of psychedelic music and rock from the Beatles, the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the Doors, to name just a few, and fuelled by the writing of Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation, hordes of young people began to travel the world. Affordable airfare from North America and Europe on $5.00 a day made it all possible for many of us. My best friend and I backpacked through Europe, tattered Eurail passes guaranteeing our transportation: a rite of passage for many Canadians in those days. After spending a few months in England, we crossed the channel to Amsterdam by ferry. Meeting up with friends, we set off in our rented Volkswagen van to explore our way through France to the Costa Del Sol in Spain.

It seems to me that the moment we crossed the border, a major event entering every single country in those days, I fell in love with everything about France. I was 21 years old.

To read more, please click right here.

Did you enter our giveaway contest last week for Liza Perrat’s “unputdownable” historical fiction novel Wolfsangel? If not, you have one more week to do so. Just click here. The lucky winner will be announced next week!