Ooh La La Culinary Tour 2010 – Provence

The Mistral stopped on day three and the sun came out and shone as fiercely as the Mistral had blown. We swapped jackets for swimsuits and spent hours in and by the pool in the walled garden at Maison de Maitresse.

We did all the things we usually do on our culinary tours – check out the itinerary.

Our guests were all delightful, all high-powered women: one was a midwife, one the GM of three rehabilitation hospitals with 650 staff reporting to her, one an interior decorator to Melbourne’s A-listers. It’s always a surprise to see the mix of tour guests each year. One year we had all couples, another year 7 single woman and one man, another year a married couple and the rest singles, and yet another year a brother and sister duo and a married couple and some singles. But it always works, no matter the configuration.

Our dear friends Maurice and Françoise come to stay with us for the first four days of the tour and while Françoise cooked her rabbit in mustard cream sauce, frogs’ legs, and other specialities, Maurice entertained on the piano accordion.

We had visits to the local cafe, Table de Julien, a most unpretentious place but oh, my the food! Julien (owner/chef) presents such sublime food you have to stop yourself making little sex noises when you eat (oohing and aahing sounds, soft murmers, exuberant yelps…that sort of thing),(although I shouldn’t be so presumptuous as to imagine what sort of sex noises you make.)

Julien always goes the extra mile for us and puts on a special menu, featuring an amuse bouche (little palate opener) which he presents beautifully (a trio of tomato dishes in teeny bowls, the tomato crumble, memorable) and always a delicious starter (tempura prawns and asparagus) and then a generous main course (succulent pork with creamy mash and vegetables of perfect crunch) and then some silky sinful rich dessert served on a plate on which he has piped in chocolate: Ooh La La Tour 2010. People drive great distances to come to Table de Julien in St. Maximin and we just have to walk a few steps to it.

Relaxing in the pool at Maison de Maitresse

We had many glorious meals in the walled garden, on the upper terrace and down in the garden beneath the pergola of grape vines at Maison de Maitresse. John New Zealand, a regular guest chef on our tours (a New Zealand man who went to holiday in France, found love, lost love, but fathered a child in-between so decided to stay) took us to the Uzes markets where we trawled the stalls and then later ate oysters and drank a white wine variety called Pic Poul, made especially to go with oysters.

Our darling gay Michel came to us one night to make his special paella, wearing a new outfit bought on a holiday in Quay West: a tiny mini skirt, leopard print top, fishnet stockings, silver stilettos and a little band with a red rose over his bald head. He knows he looks camp and draggy but he loves to send himself up. His antics and his English in a gorgeous French accent endears him to everyone. And his paella is perfect.

Picnic by the Pont du Gard, without the baguettes

One one day we went kayaking down the Gard River to picnic by the mighty Pont du Gard, the 2,000 year old Roman bridge. I spent an age making up delicious baguettes to take for our picnic after our kayak: great big things full of juicy ham and tasty cheese. They were so big, it took me forever to wrap them in glad wrap. And then I left them sitting on the riverside in the flurry of activity to get everyone into life jackets and kayaks. Didn’t discover their loss until an hour and many kilometres up the river later when we arrived at the bridge and unpacked everything in great anticipation of a big baguette nosh. Catastrophe. But we had plenty of bottles of rose wine so Geoffrey quickly got alcohol into everyone while Amanda telephoned the woman back at the kayak place who assured us she had found the baguettes sitting in a bag on the ground and put them in the fridge. So we had a little swim in the deliciously cool water, posed for a group shot by the massive bridge, drank the wine and everyone pretended it was okay that I’d left the picnic food behind (kind, kind, lovely guests) and then we kayaked on to the pick-up spot, got driven back to the starting point where we rescued the baguettes from the fridge and then ate then sitting by the river in peace and tranquillity until a thousand school children arrived on kayaks and pulled up right next to us.

An aside: We all teamed up in couples to kayak and although no-one was very experienced, they all managed to paddle serenely down the river. Except me and my partner, dear Helen. We just could not get the hang of it and even though we paddled in unison, we kept going around in little circles, like doing wheelies on the water. Really terrible we were. Everyone had paddled ahead and I had asked brave Geoffrey to stay back with Helen and myself until we got it right and stopped doing wheelies.

Despite Geoffrey’s shouted instructions “the person at the back should steer, put the paddle brake on, work together” nothing Helen and I did could stop us going around in these wretched little circles. We kept facing the wrong way all the time and started to get testy with each other (not a good thing for a tour guide to get testy with her guest.) In the end, our saviour Geoffrey kayaking with one of the other guests, got us to the bank, and we all took off our life jackets and he made a towing rope out of them and hooked our kayak on to his and towed us all the way to the bridge. I was ultra embarrassed as we limped in behind Geoffrey and his partner, to find all the others waiting for us in shock and great mirth. (At that point I hadn’t realised I’d left the baguettes behind and further, bigger ultra embarrassment was to follow.) (Bad , bad tour guide on this day.)

But the kind, caring, understanding, lovely guests all thought the kayaking day was a great adventure. Being the best tour guide in the world is a hard thing to live up to.