Food is a powerful vessel to connect with the people around us, but also to connect with our actual physical surroundings. The sun, the air and the soil feed the food that we eat—which is why when we eat food produced locally, it gives us a sense of belonging and place. The simple act of eating links us directly back to the earth we are standing on. This is a primal fact that is all too often forgotten in our modern, hyper-processed civilization. We usually don’t know where our food comes from, so there is no longer a strong connection with that intimate and visceral understanding. By extension, it makes it easier to forget about caring for what is feeding us: the planet.
I didn’t know it then, but now that I’m an adult, I realize how lucky I was to grow up in an environment that fostered this understanding. Here is a story that encompasses it all for me.
I am about ten years old, standing on a beach on the serene Bay of Saint-Tropez, eating grilled sardines…
Throughout most of my childhood, I spent my summer vacations in a family house that one of my great-uncles bought back in the 1950s on the French Riviera. The little town is called “La Nartelle.” At the time, it was more like a hamlet, with houses spread along the foot of a gentle hill. It was unremarkable by any French standard yet totally charming and, most importantly, right on the tranquil Bay of Saint-Tropez. When I reflect on those summers, my five senses are immediately activated. Vivid sensations come rushing back, swirling, juxtaposing against one another like a five-dimensional kaleidoscope: the vibrant blues of the sea and sky; the smell of the lauriers roses (oleander flowers) and pin parasol trees (where pine nuts come from); the sound of the “grillons” (crickets); the touch of the sun burning my skin; the bittersweet taste of grilled sardines.
Our days would pass in rhythm with the sun. We got up early and found our way to the beach before it got too hot. It was not unusual for us to be the first ones there. I would spend my mornings in the water, only coming out to run along the small pier and throw myself back in or to lay on the wet sand right where the dying waves would gently crash into me. I could never get enough of that water.
Leaving the beach to return home for lunch, followed by the unavoidable “siesta,” always felt wrong. The sun was at its peak, and I liked its untenable heat. The sea would become a deeper blue, and the burning sand turned a glistering gold. Everything and everybody slowed down. But on some days, my grandmother, Madeleine (we called her Mamo), would say that we could stay on the beach and have lunch at Chez Henry. Those days were the absolute best.
Chez Henry was a little shack on the water at the end of a “plage privée” or private beach, lined with elegant umbrellas and daybeds one could rent for the day.
Henry was running the show. He was this 50-year-old monument of a man who had been in the Résistance during the German occupation. The flag flapping at the entrance of the beach was painted with a huge “Croix de Lorraine”—the symbol of Free France during World War II and the opposition to Nazism. After a few glasses of rosé, Henry would show off the medals he had been given for his merits at the end of the war, and he would tell stories. His personality was so energizing, and even though the tales were often tragic, Henry had a sense of humor and joie de vivre that always lifted everyone’s spirit.
At the time, I could not grasp all the jokes he cracked (probably for the best), but I didn’t care. Everyone seemed happy, and I was here for the grilled sardines. They had been caught the night before, and Henry would go to Sainte-Maxime, a larger village three miles away, to talk to the fishermen early in the morning and get the best of their catch. The sardines had been swimming in what, back then, was the crystal-clear water of the Mediterranean. Henry would serve them grilled, with a slice of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil. I ate them with my fingers so that their aroma would stay with me longer.
My grandmother would look at me and invariably start laughing uncontrollably, holding on to her belly and covering her mouth as she always did when she would have a crazy laugh. She enjoyed watching me devour my lunch and did not care that I was so messy. With my toes dunked in the sand, my gaze on the horizon, and my skin wrinkled after a long morning in that same water where the fishes swam the night before, each bite I took encompassed the microcosm where I was standing. I was biting into the sea and engulfing it inside me. Like swimming in its water, I could never get enough.
Many decades later, I spent some time in Upstate New York with my two then-teenage sons(now young adults), staying in a large sunny house flanked by a small hill overlooking a vibrant stream. Friends came and went as we spent many evenings cooking together. Lucas mastered the barbecue; Theo was responsible for desserts (berry almond crisp is our new favorite). Each guest brought a different style and unique recipes, but we all cooked with the bounty of what we found at the local farms.
I remember watching my boys inhale (most of) the food, hoping they had found their “sardines” that summer.
By extend, during any summer or in any place, they would forge somehow via food a sense of belonging, an understanding of rhythms, seasons & climate, so via a freshly shelled pea or a just-picked blueberry, they could feel a deep sense of belonging to the land and understand the responsibility to their surroundings, somehow tattooing their taste buds & their heart, so that later in life they could reach inside to that very intimate place to understand how life ebbs & flows.
And know how to come home to themselves.
We are all fractal, carrying and being a piece of the universe that surrounds us. By paying attention to the natural rhythm around me, even while living in the heart of NYC the entire time of my adulthood, I kept in touch with cycles and seasons, understanding when it is time to let things go when to open myself to newness, and how never to try to go against the natural beauty of what is meant to nourish and sustain us all.