Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humor, and like enough to consent. - William Shakespeare I love the holidays. Halloween comes and goes swathed in orange and black, tiny marzipan jack-o’-lanterns and chocolate skeletons dancing across supermarket shelves and shop windows. Thanksgiving arrives sharp on its heels in a burst ...
Homegrown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes What would life be like without homegrown tomatoes? Only two things that money can't buy That's true love and homegrown tomatoes. - John Denver, 'Home Grown Tomatoes' Raymonde stands in the lobby of the hotel legs slightly apart, vaguely military, hands clasped behind her back when not stretched out in front of her punctuating her ...
I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. - Vincent Van Gogh Six months we have owned and been running the Hôtel Diderot and I have rarely slept through the night. Knowing that my alarm will ring at six sharp, that I prefer to be (need to ...
Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake, and here is one of them. – Nancy Mitford I sit next to Jane comfortably and convivially at the white plastic picnic table in the shade of the overhang, a tangle of branches heaped upon the table. We each have a plastic ...
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut Shortly after I married, I began working as an interpreter in a large, prestigious cooking school in the center of Paris. The gentleman for whom I worked had created the Anglophone section at said cooking school ...
“Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way." - Truman Capote, Summer Crossing, 1943 High season. It’s been hectic, to say the least, to put it mildly, and I don’t know where I find the energy. Commitment to the project, to the team, to my own sense of self. Thirty, thirty-five, forty ...
A small town is a place where there's no place to go where you shouldn't. - Burt Bacharach I like the small-townness of Chinon. Everyone seems to know one another but not in an American small-town way; the knowing is very discreet, a restrained nod of the head in passing, a simple acknowledgement of recognition, of ...
Wild Goose Chase Moricette. I don’t call her Moricette, I call her Mme. Lainel, but my husband refers to her as Moricette, her first name, when he speaks of her, fondly. Because it is such an old-fashioned, musical name. And she is such an old-fashioned, delightful woman. Mme. and M. Lainel were the first owners of ...
It wasn’t so much the 31 breakfasts that wreaked havoc on my nerves. It was the cleanup after the 31 breakfasts – in the middle of which I had to dash to the market to pick up the cheese I had ordered - that turned my mood sour. I don’t serve breakfasts alone, I have ...
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. - Pablo Picasso It’s astonishing how quickly one can become acclimated to something new: a new life, new schedule, new job, even a new profession. I have been feeling lately that starting over in life is like being ...
I'm Jamie; welcome to the new Life's a Feast!
I run a hotel in Chinon, France, and write about life, culture, modern day living and food.
My passion is to create vibrant and unique experiences.
