Talking at the French Table with Your Mouth Full
Champêtre: Conversations at My Table- but first, which table?
About Tables- more than a piece of furniture
Lifting the veil of nostalgia like an old lace tablecloth, I look back at all of my dining tables where, over the years, we have served each other, passed platters, eaten for hours, and talked long and loudly over the good French food that has nourished and given us so much pleasure.
First, there were the round wheelhouse and deck tables for four on the barge, followed by a small, squat, and sturdy oak kitchen table next to the kitchen woodstove that only seats six but magically expands somehow for more; next came the big round wine vat bottom found in the cellar and balanced on a cement culvert that can welcome ten squeezed elbow to elbow around its thick wide oak planks. Hundreds of guests have summered around this table set into the potager garden.
Another of the first pieces of furniture I bought in France was a delicate cherry wood gueridon, which has moved from place to place between barge and house until it now functions as my sunrise coffee spot by the Keeping Kitchen* window. The dining room, once the outside piggery, now honors the long teak dining table I bought for the barge and is our central family and holiday table. On the terrace, old barn doors on sawhorses can seat 8 to 16 and scattered around the garden, battered vintage metal garden tables circulate and puzzle together when a crowd arrives. I count eight outdoor tables and four tables inside. And yes, I have tablecloths enough and linen serviettes to set them all should I need to host a giant fête as we do from time to time.
From the earliest days of learning and then sharing the good food of Gascony, I knew that no matter how delicious and carefully prepared the food was, the most essential seasoning was for the convivial exchanges of conversation around these tables. I was once quoted in a documentary on food, “I don’t serve anything that doesn’t have a story.”
“Good stories make everything taste better.”
I will leave you with that now. Think of all those good stories you have told around your tables and let’s talk about why next.
After a short pause for some health-related issues, I will return in a couple of weeks with a series of some of my favorite Champêtre recipes with a story, conversations with guests, French potager garden plans, and more! In the meantime, why not hit the website and browse through some of my previous posts- there are over 250 of them! I am sure you will find something to inspire you . Like this…
Note: All paid subscriptions will be put on pause until I return. Merci for understanding!
Join me every week for a jaunt through the French countryside, in and out of the markets and garden, and into the warming kitchen of my creative residency The Relais de Camont. The Camont Journals are a chronicle of this country life in Southwest France: Champêtre: a Field Guide is the next adventure full of good food and slow living in France.
Finding France: A Memoir in Small Bites is also archived here for paying subscribers at The Camont Journals. You can read about these long adventures from arriving in France on her canal barge, the Julia Hoyt, to the gathering table here at the Relais de Camont. It’s all archived here: https://katehillfrance.substack.com/t/finding-france
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Love this quote, “Good stories make everything taste better.” I would typically say, it's delicious :) Warm healing thoughts sent your way.
Delightful. You reminded me how a home has personality. Collections of beautiful things tell a story, and provide sanctuary. In our (my) rush to get rid of “so much stuff,” we can sometimes throw the baby out with the bath water. Place is important. Home, especially.