Thanks to a very generous friend, my family and I own an oak tree in Provence. Nestled in the thickly wooded hills of the Luberon between Lourmarin and Cadenet, is a large organic farm called Les Pastras (which means “the pastures,” in Langue d’Oc, the old Provençal language). There, grows our little tree. Les Pastras is now under the diligent care of Lisa and Johann Pepin, having taken the reins from Johann’s grandparents who purchased the farm some forty-five years earlier. It is comprised 11 hectares (27 acres) of gently rolling, verdant green meadows framed by a luxuriant forest. Clusters of fruit trees are scattered…

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In: Food, Truffles

In all the summers we’ve spent in Provence, I have never seen any mention of summer truffles. Maybe I was drinking too much rosé to notice something I thought only surfaced in the winter—silly me—but, this summer, Tubera aestiva were on my radar…and on my plate! I began the summer with a truffle hunt, later went to a truffle fête, and then tried (in vain) to squeeze in a visit to Carpentras—long famous for their winter truffle market—to see their first endeavor at a summer truffle market. Living in the Luberon in late fall and winter, one can’t help but cross paths with a winter…

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In: Food, People

I am immensely grateful to Pamela J. O’Neill for her reporting and photographs of this event. Aups, the small Provence village renowned for its weekly truffle market (every Thursday morning from mid-November through February), was the place to be last Sunday—it was the site of the 21st annual “Journée de la Truffe Noire d’Aups.” Held the fourth Sunday of January each year, this truffle festival draws hundreds of people who come to eat, drink, and “root” for their favorite dog in the truffle hunting contest. This year, attendees also had the pleasure of meeting one of the Var’s last remaining truffle-hunting pigs. Fresh truffles are,…

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In: Events, Food

  Chapelle St-Sixte As one drives toward Les Alpilles, along the D24 between the tiny villages of Orgon and Eygalières, about 30 minutes from Lourmarin, there’s a very tiny chapel. Framed by lovely cypress trees van Gogh surely would have painted had he ventured a little further from the hospital in St Remy, the 12th century chapel stands atop a stony knoll now dotted with olive and almond trees and an occasional patch of grass. Chapelle St-Sixte was erected on the site of a pagan temple that was built in reverence to a nearby spring. Rituals involving that spring still exist today: a couple must…

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In: Culture, Food, Places, Restaurants