“If it’s for your personal consumption, you can bring anything on the plane,” he said. When we started questioning the difference between fresh meats and canned meats, he insisted that as long as the merchandise was for our personal use, US Customs wouldn’t be a problem. Really, we asked? “But of course,” he responded. “And this is a good deal.”
“He” is René, a sixty-six-year-old retired geologist who lives, with his wife Martine, in the Provence region of France. After spending decades working for the French oil corporation Total, René now works as a consultant whenever he chooses for whomever he chooses wherever he chooses. It was my good fortune, as well as that of my “meilleurs amie” Cami, that René was not off on a consulting gig somewhere else in the world like Mexico, Angola, Thailand, Africa, or who knows where.
The “good deal” was five dried sausages for 10 euros. Or was it five for 20? In either event, we couldn’t believe our good fortune. This was charcuterie at its finest: duck, pork, donkey, boar, and something else with the occasional spice or cracked pepper covering. It was a true meat eaters delight. René encouraged us to explore the rest of the market at Lourmarin, perhaps even have lunch, before making our purchase. And so we did. We walked the vendor stalls snacking on samples of cheese and sausage, sampling wine from vineyards in the region, trying on hats, caressing the linens, and ooo-ing and ah-ing over the abundant fresh fruits and vegetables, spices, soaps, cheeses (the cheeses!) and all varieties of delicacies. It was like experiencing Whole Foods for the first time, but en plein aire. If you have an image of Provence in your mind that includes fields of lavender and sun flowers, olive farms, and vineyards, you won’t be disappointed by the unbelievably picturesque qualities of Provence. Ultimately, we met Martine at one of their favorite restaurants, Restaurant La Recreation / Salon de The, for a traditional French lunch, complete with a carafe of rosé. OK: two carafes.
When we returned to the market, René found a better deal: purchase five sausages for 10 euros and get an additional one free. Cami and I hesitated, preferring the larger, plumper sausages we discovered earlier over these nugget sausages. “As you like,” René said, shrugging his shoulders, and off we went to purchase our first pick.
Let’s pause right here before I get lost in our adventures with René in Luberon to describe some of the French colloquialisms and customs our hosts taught us. “Bonne amie,” explained René, “does not mean ‘best friend,’ but ‘close friend’ as in a lover.” Here, René laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “If she (Cami) is your bonne amie, that’s ‘OK’ with me,” he winked. “Whatever you like! It takes all kinds! But if you mean ‘best friend,’ we say ‘meilleurs amie.’” Trust me, this is not something I ever learned in college French.
One glorious morning at their home in St. Cannat, with the intent to be complimentary and enthusiastic, I exclaimed “Je suis heureuse!” But René and Martine shook their collective heads and said, “No, you are not ‘heureuse.’ That’s nothing! It just means everything’s OK. You mean something more.” Later that day, I learned the phrase that truly described my mental state: J’ai un coeur qui battre chamade. Although I still don’t know an exact translation, it seems to mean that my heart is so full that it rocks with joy, “chamade.” I love this phrase. It might not be appropriate for my tombstone, but perhaps I could have it engraved somewhere else. A tattoo?
It turns out that our table manners were cause for consternation. We were admonished for resting our hands under the table on our laps rather than keeping them (and our elbows!) up on the table at mealtime. We were also encouraged to use our fingers, not toothpicks or forks, while sharing plates of olives, nuts, and the like. This practice, flying in the face of our cocktail manners 101, was weirdly liberating. Heaven forbid, however, that we used our bare hands to tear off a piece of baguette. The French have knives and cutting boards for such things, after all. As you might imagine, there was much shaking of heads and blowing of raspberries — yet another custom otherwise foreign and typically avoided by we Americans — throughout our visit in Provence.
René hurtled us through the landscape in his untopped jeep, but the breathtaking view of the provencal countryside made up for the unrelenting breeze and the hot sun. Periodically, René would point and yell “Roman!” or “Moyen Ages!” to indicate the periods associated with the ruins of arches, stone fences, and bridges. There was also the occasional “Napoleon! Not the first one, the THIRD one!” The grapes and olives in the region, he told us, were also the welcome remains of the Romans.
Periods and rulers and events and places might have been muddled in translation, but the drive west through the Luberon region from its southern edge in Lourmarin. A trip through the southern pass that divides the Grand Luberon from the Petit Luberon ranges and their dramatic rockscapes helped us understand why this area had been fairly remote until the twentieth century. Don’t get me wrong: these are not the Colorado Rockies, or even their foothills, but these ranges with their perched medieval villages were extraordinarily striking for their roads, views, and hospitality. Bonnieux, our destination– now home to the exceptional and renowned Bastide de Capelongue, Restaurant Edouard Loubet and cooking school – proved no exception!
A short detour to a hotel and French immersion school near the Natural Regional Parc of the Luberon, L’Auberge des Seguins, took us to a quiet valley that felt positively medieval. A massive cliff that towered above the valley protects the area from all sorts of invaders – people escaping religious persecution throughout the ages found sanctuary here and we found refuge from the more tourist-populated picturesque villages. Indeed, it seemed like such an excellent place to hide that I vowed to book a room at the auberge and to take the immersion course on my next trip. Who, after all, would travel in and around and through the Luberon ranges or scale the cliffs to reach the area except for those who planned to remain there? It seemed like the perfect hide-out for the return visit of this mother-of-two tots, wife-of-one.
Alors, like all good things, it was time to go home, all the way home to the US. L’eau de charcuterie made it impossible to consider smuggling our contraband through US Customs, even with multiple plastic baggies, so we determined honesty was the best policy and declared our contraband. Our return to the States, aside from our really snotty airline attendants on the Continental Flight #0057, was uneventful. In addition to the meats, we dutifully claimed our olive oil and wine and assorted gifts and the Customs officials dutifully confiscated everything with any pork products. It turns out that René was right: you can bring products back into the States if those products are for your personal conception. But those products need to be canned or freeze dried or otherwise contained. Of course, we could have saved ourselves the euros (and the baggies) had we thought about the threat our *porc* charcuterie posed in the midst of the 2009 pandemic swine flu, but then we wouldn’t have had the experience of racing through the market at Lourmarin and feeling like we were the most fortunate people on earth.
