For
ABC Wednesday, where the week’s letter is
O, I am taking you to a small medieval town in Provence, France. (I’d rather have posted something
O about my recent trip in Guangdong, but my creative juices couldn't take me there.)
Prior to making my way to Asia in May 1985, I spent about half a year with my parents in their tiny apartment in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue; it was a mini-chapter between major chapters of my life. I had turned my back on a career in law and was experiencing a bad (and recurring) case of the
what-do-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up blues. In hindsight, living among charms provençal was a terrific space to sort out the color of my parachute. (I now only wish I'd had a camera then.)
Flash forward twenty years, long after my parents had moved to a larger nearby city (and my father was no more), I returned for a quick visit... with my early model digital point-n-shoot. There's much I could say about Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, including that this 13th Century town sits among seven tributaries of the river named Sorgue and has a few lovely waterwheels... but I must get on to the letter
O.
Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, 2005
Among the attractions to the town is its Sunday market. Along the river in temporary covered stalls an immense range of local and not-so-local products - fresh, cooked, processed and manufactured - are for sale.
It is here one fine Sunday that I found one of my favorite foods:
olives. From the unripe green French
picholine to the ripe black Greek
kalamata, there are thousands of
cultivars.
Olives are cured/marinated and packed a gazillion delicious ways - such as with herbs, garlic or salt-brine - and I pretty much like them all (except the flat tasteless canned ones).
Just thinking about spiced olives in Moroccan cuisine or an olive tapenade appetizer and I begin to salivate! And of course no other oils but olive oil go in my salads. In Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, the selection is almost overwhelming.
