A trip to the big city

Before anyone jumps to conclusions, we did not take off for Paris, Marseille, Nice, or even Avignon. The word “big,” we discover more and more, is a completely relative term and in this case “the big city” in our part of the Vaucluse means Carpentras, population 26,000. But, when you think about it, that’s ten times bigger than Bédoin and many times the population of nearby Saint-Pierre-de-Vassols which has a mere 467 people! We had heard about the market in Carpentras on Fridays, so despite the coldest temperatures yet, we took the 8:00 a.m. bus from the gare routière for the forty-minute ride.

As soon as we got downtown, we spotted a large group of people milling around in front of the Hôtel-Dieu, a former hospital. A marché aux truffes (truffle market), in addition to the weekly market, was in full swing, with people examining, sniffing, weighing, buying, and selling different shapes and sizes of the black fungus. November to mid-March, it turns out, is the high season and Carpentras is one of the main towns where the expensive product is sold. We knew about truffles from the Périgord in southwestern France, but had no idea that the Vaucluse, along with Alpes-Haute-Provence, la Drôme, and le Gard, account for 80% of the country’s annual production. With a small stand where folks could buy une brouillade aux truffes (frequently just referred to as une omelette aux truffes) and wine, it looked kind of like a marché de Noël only with truffles.

After experiencing several European vacations at and around Christmastime, we are used to what my husband refers to as tourisme à l’abri. “Sheltered sightseeing” in winter is often necessary in order to take refuge from the elements. Often this comes in the form of a nice tea room, so how bad can it be? Anyway, yesterday morning, we were thrilled to have so many opportunites for le lèche-vitrine (“window-shopping”), plus looking through the racks of postcards as well as the stalls of outdoor market vendors, that it took us awhile to notice the feeling of frost beginning to permeate our bones.

Lucky for us, we had spent a few hours in Carpentras the day we returned the car to Avignon about two weeks ago and remembered a tea room on the rue de l’Évêché. Jouvaud, which is a combination pastry shop, chocolate shop, tea room and boutique, has branches in Avignon and, of all surprising places, Tokyo. (I’d love to hear the story of how that came about, but I won't understand it if it's on that Japanese link!) Warming up having coffee, brioche, and pain aux raisins was just what we needed before tackling more of the marché and the rest of the town. Some other people seeking shelter and enjoying Jouvaud told us not to miss the chocolat chaud and the brioche au sucre on our next visit. No problem taking that advice.

Our last stop before catching the bus back home at noon was to pay a visit to Leclerc. Talk about big; picture a Wal-Mart supercenter à la française. You could find everything there—from food to cookware and dishes to office supplies. I commented to my husband that at least ten Shopis could fit inside this one grande surface. As a matter of fact, you might even be able to fit most of downtown Bédoin inside! We'll definitely take another trip to Carpentras before the truffle season is over.

Simple pleasures

Renowned French chef Paul Bocuse owns, among other wide-ranging businesses, a high-priced, elegant restaurant in Collonges au Mont d’Or, just outside of Lyon. But in the introduction to one of his cookbooks, Bocuse dans votre cuisine (Bocuse in Your Kitchen), he describes some of the best meals he’s ever had as being the most simple ones. Over the years, I’ve thought about this statement several times and realized that it’s true. Yet, “simple” does not necessarily imply “inexpensive”; it has more to do with getting basic ingredients of high quality, and preparing them in an uncomplicated way. We had such a dinner at home the other night.

Monday is le jour de marché (“outdoor market day”) on the main street in Bédoin and, even though the vendors are few at this time of the year, we make it a point to stop by and buy a few things. For two weeks in a row now, we’ve found two fishmongers or poissoniers side by side in the same spot on the rue de l’Abbé Durand, place des Écoles. Both have an array of fresh fish and shellfish, but we have bought from the second guy whose selections are more limited but whose prices are better. This week he had a nice big piece of a fish called lieu jaune that he would cut steaks off of for his customers. We had no idea what kind of fish it was (it turned out to be a type of pollock), but he assured us that it was fresh from la Bretagne and had not too strong a taste. From other vendors we also picked up some olives au piment (spicy olives that had some kind of yellow beans mixed in) and a nice big head of Boston lettuce.

Back home, I searched the Internet for pollock recipes and the only one I had the ingredients for called for browning the fish quickly in butter, removing it from the pan, and then making a kind of piccata sauce with butter, capers, olives, and lemon. My Internet search had told me that pollock was “a poor man’s lobster” and, while many Mainers might dispute that estimation, the fish itself was delicious. Served with basmati rice and the sauce, prepared with those spicy olives, it was a great plat principal.


The day before, after our long walk, I had started preparing dinner and realized we were short on olive oil. Ray went out to get some, but Shopi wasn’t open, so he had to opt for the smaller Vival across the street from the supermarket. The choices in oil were limited; he finally got home with an apologetic: “I just bought a bottle of olive oil that cost 14 euros 95!” We had never before—in France or the U.S.—purchased a medium-sized (50cl or about 17oz.) bottle of oil for the equivalent of nearly twenty dollars! This is obviously not a cooking oil, but Monday night’s salad, made only with lettuce and a plain vinaigrette, was terrific! Upon further research we learned that this particular olive oil from Nyons (the final "s" is pronounced, by the way), northeast of Vaison-la-Romaine, was the first ever to be awarded the A.O.C. designation. Well deserved, I’d say.

So there you have it: a piece of fish, rice, and a salad, served with an Alsatian Riesling from Klipfel. What could be simpler…or more delightful.

A look at our town’s past

Bédoin, as we know it today, is a small, but vibrant agricultural town of the Vaucluse in Provence, situated on the southern slopes of Mont Ventoux. But the town has been around for quite awhile. In fact, on the upper parts of the valley, prehistoric vestiges have been unearthed which indicate the presence of Neolithic people! The actual name of Beduinum has been confirmed as early as 993 when a noble donated some land to local Benedictine monks.


The soil in and around Bédoin is very rich and diversified. As the lady in the Cave Coopérative was explaining to us the other day, there is clay (argile), ocher (ochre), and sand (sable) in the various plots of land around—which, of course, affect the taste of the wines produced. In the Middle Ages, a whole industry of pottery developed because of these natural resources; in 1454, it seems that over a dozen workshops with six active potters’ wheels were producing pottery in the town. The clay found here is so fine, multicolored, and abundant that hundreds of thousands of kilos of it were regularly transported to Marseille. The pottery of the area was so well known that it prompted nineteenth century author Frédéric Mistral to comment in his dictionary of Provençal language Le Trésor du Félibrige: “aux gens de Bédoin il ne faut pas vendre de marmites” (“you shouldn’t sell pots to the people in Bédoin”); the whole bringing coal to Newcastle idea all over again. A walk around town confirms that the tradition of pottery-making and selling continues today—for people like Louis and Virginie Brueder, for example.

Two extremely difficult periods for the Bédoinais had to do, at least in part, with their loyalty to Catholicism. The era of religious wars (or “guerres de religion”) during the second half of the sixteenth century was disastrous for the whole region. In 1563, the town was occupied by an ironically-named Protestant lord, Gaspard Pape (“Pope”), from the Drôme who tortured and massacred hundreds of victims and vandalized Catholic buildings and relics. Gradually, however, people were able to wrest their territory back from wolves which had come in to claim it and rebuild the town through agriculture and the development of diverse industries such as silk, bricks, and, as previously mentioned, pottery.

By far, the worst episode for Bédoin was during the French Revolution. Called “la Vendée du Midi” (“the Vendée of the South”--in reference to the counterrevolutionary northern department of Pays-de-la-Loire), the town remained loyal to the Pope and the monarchy during the revolution; for this reason many were shot or sent to the guillotine and their town was once again destroyed. People were forced to flee to abandoned farms or into caves on Mont Ventoux in order to survive. It wasn’t until the end of la Terreur that the “vaste champ de ruines” (that vast field of ruins) of Bédoin was rebuilt and restored. The Chapelle Bécarras was built in honor of the victims of the revolution and a column was placed at the site of the guillotine on the present-day schoolyard.

A tale of three cheeses

France has a well-earned reputation as one of the great gastronomic centers of the world. In the area of cheese, the French are outstanding both in terms of quality and variety. To my knowledge, the total number of different varieties of cheeses produced here has never been accurately counted, though I’ve seen estimates range as high as a thousand! In Les Mots du Général (1962), Ernest Mignon cites former president Charles de Gaulle as having said: « Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays où il existe 246 variétés de fromage ? » ("How can you govern a country of 246 varieties of cheese?”) Apocryphal or not, the quotation points to the independence and diversity found in the people and products of the disparate regions of France.

Since arriving here ten days ago, we have taken on the enviable task of “researching” the area of cheese. While in Carpentras last Saturday, we found our #1 choice for purchasing cheese since we lived in Lyon: a dedicated cheese shop. Owned by Madame Claudine Vigier, La Fromagerie du Comtat, has two rooms and several large cases full of all sorts of cheese, fromage blanc, crème fraîche, and the like—making decisions very difficult for the buyer. We finally chose an old favorite, Saint Félicien, both because it looked so delicious and because our friend Julia had just mentioned it this summer as being a favorite of hers. A “close cousin” of Saint Marcellin (a very religious family of cheeses, it seems!), Saint Félicien is a soft, somewhat mild and creamy cow’s milk cheese from a region just south of Lyon. It was hard to refrain from eating the whole thing after dinner at home that night.

In Bédoin, the cool and (as of late) rainy weather has prevented me from exploring as much as I’d like in town for places to buy cheese. Just like in the U.S., there are “industrial cheeses” (as they call them here) which are available on the dairy shelves at our supermarket, Shopi. Interestingly, the butcher case at the supérette ("mini-market") also contains a selection of “fromages traditionnels.” But so far the best shop we’ve found is just up the street from Shopi at the Boucherie du Mont Ventoux. The shop owner/butcher Jeannette also has a case devoted to cheese. This week we’ve tried two new cheeses from the Boucherie and have been pleased with each.

A creamy goat cheese of northern Provence, Banon first attracted our attention by its unusual wrapping, une feuille de châtaignier (or a chestnut tree leaf), and by a sticker proclaiming that it had won the Ministry of Agriculture and Fishing’s silver medal in Paris 2008. Jeannette told us it was très fort (very strong) and right she was. In terms of taste and smell, Banon is definitely not for faint-hearted types who find cheddar exotic. Especially on day two there was a strong taste not only of the cheese, but of the chestnut leaf as well. Banon, which may date from the Gallo-Roman era, has also received the designation A.O.C. (for appellation d’origine contrôlée), a classification that certifies that certain foodstuffs such as wines, ciders, cheeses, and honey come from a specific region.

Our final adventure in cheese tasting this week was trying another goat’s milk cheese, Picodon. Also rated A.O.C. and made just north of here in la Drôme, this was perhaps the most subtle of the three and very delicious as well. I might add that all of these above-mentioned products are made from raw milk, which, although viewed with disfavor in the U.S., doesn’t seem to harm Europeans and makes for extremely tasty cheese.

Loto fun!

Walking around this weekend, we noticed several signs indicating that Loto was going on at the cultural center on Sunday at 2:30 and that big prizes were going to be awarded. Since we don’t have much of a social life here and intrigued by what kind of lottery it could be (I imagined a sort of Chinese auction), we took the two-minute walk over there. There are always challenges in a new place and our first this time was to find the right door in! The place really looked closed up tight, but then on the other side we spotted two women smoking outside a door. Sure enough, we were at the right place at the right time. As soon as we got to the Loto room we realized that this was not a lottery at all, but a Bingo gathering! I didn’t really want to spend the afternoon playing Bingo, but the people were so nice—explaining how their version of the game works and finding two adjoining places for us at a table—that we decided to stay.

The room was quite large and absolutely packed with people. Both of us noticed right away that the average age of the group was at least sixty-five; we only found out later that it was a “loto du club du 3ème âge” or a Bingo club for the elderly. On the stage were three people—a man whose job was to spin the basket (boule de sphère) with the numbered balls in it; a lady who reads out the numbers as they come up; and a woman “helper” who writes down the winners’ names and distributes the gifts. The lineup of gifts was quite impressive; there were at least ten of them, including a not-very-good painting to a digital camera, a special kind of steam iron, and a microwave. Besides that, at the entr’acte (or intermission) there was a tombola (a raffle that we missed out on by arriving a bit late) which contained individual prizes of, among other things, various liquors and liqueurs, a big ham, a trip to Menton (that we would’ve loved to win), and a big TV.

The people sitting around us were very friendly and welcoming; they explained that there would be a two single quines (where you win if you get one row covered each time) followed by a carton plein (where the whole board is covered). If there are two winners at the same time, they draw a number out of a bag (tirer la ballotte) to determine the winner of the big prize; the other one gets a tin of cookies, so all is not lost. Gisèle, the lady across from Ray, told us that she had actually been to Boston to visit her daughter who lived in Arlington at the time. She was obviously a seasoned Loto player, having orange pions magnétiques and a little wand (une baguette or attrape-pions) that picks them up as you sweep it across the board! Gisèle’s husband, also named Raymond, was quite a character—un vrai personnage. The word curmudgeon comes to mind whenever I think of him; a cantankerous fellow with a gloomy look and a gravelly voice who’s funny even though he doesn’t always intend to be! The first thing he said when we told the group that we're American is: “Vous n’êtes pas obèses!” (“You’re not obese”—a comment that we could only laugh at.) All in all it was an enjoyable way to spend a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.

Our first excursion

Inspired by a copy of The Most Beautiful Villages of Provence that I’d seen at my friend Marjorie’s and then found on a bookcase in La Maison Rose, we did our first exploration of the area on Friday. Taking off in our rental car after lunch, we visited the three small villages perchés of Venasque, Roussillon, and Gordes. Our first challenge was finding the right road off of D974, even though we had a map of the area. We headed back toward Carpentras as planned but somehow got lost several times, ending up in Mazan and Pernes-les-Fontaines before getting on the route towards Venasque. The roads between towns were small and twisty with a lot of “nature” up close and personal. Venasque proved to be a very small, quiet town without even an open café at this time of the year. We did catch sight of the eleventh century Romanesque church Notre-Dame and its gargoyles as well as pretty flower boxes in windows throughout the town.

Heading off toward Roussillon, the road became mountainous, one of those with hairpin turns and beautiful panoramas of the valley below, but you’re almost too terrified to look!
Our next stop was Roussillon, which did not disappoint in any way. Site of the famous sociological study by Lawrence Wylie, Village in the Vaucluse (1957), Roussillon is a tourist mecca, with medieval walls and beautiful multi-colored ochre land and buildings. The landscape reminds me of the mountains of Sedona, Arizona that we saw with our family during the 2007 Christmas vacation. Strolling through town, my husband snapped a picture of a 150-year-old vine. Fortunately for us, there were also things to do besides walk around: a bookstore was open as well as a small café.

Finally, we took the short drive from Roussillon to Gordes, a place you’d swear was in its original sixteenth century condition. Apparently, though, the entire town had to be rebuilt after the Germans destroyed it in 1944. Another thing we didn’t realize about Gordes is that the most striking view of it is from the road coming in to town, where you can see houses built into the entire south side of the cliff. Next time we’ll get a picture going in to town. It’s going to be fun to keep discovering le Vaucluse!

After one very long day...

January 13th and 14th of this new year seemed to blend into one, filled with lots of modes of transportation--a taxi ride to Logan airport, two flights (to Philly and Paris), a CDG Val "shuttle" subway (interestingly not called une navette!), a TGV to Avignon, and finally a one-hour car ride, mostly in the dark to Bédoin. So far we’ve been impressed with the kindness and friendliness of the people we’ve met in the Vaucluse. The clerk at EuropCar let us use her phone, when we asked where we could find a cabine to phone Loïc and Marianne in Bédoin. Then last night at the crêperie Ty Mad where we had dinner, both the owner and another couple tried to help us figure out how to get back from dropping off the car Saturday in Avignon.

We really like our “new home”, la Maison Rose. It’s bigger than we thought and well-laid out, which will allow us both to do our work without falling over one another. We also slept well last night, thanks to exhaustion, a comfortable bed, and the darkness and quiet of the town.

Thursday dawned with blue skies and lots of sun, if not very warm temperatures; it's about 45 degrees, which might feel balmy to folks back home. (Everyone keeps writing about the current single-digit temps in the Capital District.) After buying groceries at Shopi and having an omelette for lunch at home, we spent about an hour walking around the town--checking out the banks, the tourist office (where the agent told us there's not much to do here--not really promoting the town!), and the library. All in all, it's been a positive start to our semester in Provence.