As a young girl while staying summer months with my grandparents, I recall visiting their friends living at the foot of “the big hill” below the Midwest College on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi.
But, what I especially recall were yummy smells and busy yet graceful movements around their large French country-style kitchen and the foods and tastes that emerged. Both were French language teachers, their home had the lovely enveloping feel of a country farmhouse on all three levels.
From the kitchen, placed in the lower level built into the hillside, you walked out of the single farm door into a beautiful and meticulously laid out herb garden with brick paths, hand written labels and abundant healthy, flourishing herbs, all growing like one could almost see them grow, reaching out and up towards the sun high above; the scent would waif, enveloping you, inviting you to cook – and I would sit, read and dream….. of food.
Many times, I placed myself in the small kitchen nook, on a well-padded window seat, not unlike a large oak paneled phone booth, surrounded above with bookshelves filled with well-used, worn and loved cookbooks…. And I would read them. Reading recipes quietly for hours, looking at glossy yummy photographs, I would think to myself I want to create that, try this and change some. I want to learn, to taste and to do.
I would watch the lady of the house swiftly flowing amongst hanging copper pots over and around the very large chopping woodblock in the center island. This seemed like bliss, a world to lose oneself in where there was no boundary to experimentation or yummy flavours or ingredients.

And a love affair with flavours begins….