Growing up, I spent many summers and school vacations at my father's house in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina (aka Mount Pilot on The Andy Griffith show - it's a real place. So is Mayberry: real name Mount Airy).
My father's live-in girlfriend had studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris for a while and so she took little me under her wing and taught me a whole lot about French cooking and the French language.
Really weird dynamic there, by the way.
When you tell people your sort of stepmother spent time and studied in Paris, the assumption immediately becomes "ooh, fancy people" which is the complete opposite of what she and my father were. She was formerly married to a rich guy and so she was a FFP - former fancy person. (I knew from the get-go that she was an FPP because she used to work 'davenport' instead of couch or sofa.)
I can't remember why she divorced the rich guy or how she wound up with my father, but in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, they were just two ordinary people, lying to everyone about being married*, and very much living paycheck to paycheck (my father's paycheck, she did not have a job outside the home).
Anyway, while other little kids were outside playing kickball in this tiny NC town, I was inside whipping up a coq au vin, practicing my French, and dreaming about Paris.
Tiny Sharon, the Francophile.
The truth is that those Pilot Mountain days were idyllic and were probably the only time I had any semblance of normalcy and stability in my very dysfunctional childhood - although things got weird there, too, from time to time. Like the time my father was supposed to put me on a plane to go back to NJ when vacation was over but decided, instead, to keep me and then the sheriff showed up at the door the next day. I'll write about that adventure at a later date.
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| Little Sharon, as depicted with baguette, beret and French flag |
Anyway, today I decided I am going to revisit my youth by spending the summer cooking and baking French food just like I did all those years ago.
I started by throwing together this Tarte aux Fruits in my new tart pan.
(By the way, specialty pans bring abundant happiness and are worth the cost.)
It's pretty, so I decided to share its picture.
*They never married because she would have lost whatever money she received monthly from being the never remarried ex-wife of a rich guy. They lied about being married because back in the day it was very much frowned upon to 'live in sin' - especially in the area they lived in.
