Adventures with Wine and Sheetrock

And cheese. And holidays.

When we moved to France in 1992, I was a vegetarian. I hardly remember why I decided to do that, except it surely had something to do with seeing how my brother, who was a rancher and used feedlots, treated his animals. I do remember it was hard to get grass fed or organic in those days, but for whatever reason I swore off meat for almost twenty years.

France is not exactly vegetarian friendly — not then, not now. Although vegetarianism does exist in France, it’s not as practiced as in the States.

I also didn’t drink, not for moral constraints, but because I didn’t enjoy the taste of anything I tried. I knew nothing about food/wine combinations and less than nothing about Vin Jaune, Vin de Paille, local bubbly French wines called Cremant , or the much wider choices of foods that exist in France than here in the States.

The French have evolved methods for producing delicious meals out of a vast array of sources, for example, snails, frogs’ legs, foie gras, couilles de mouton and pigs’ feet. The country passed through periods of starvation, and they got inventive.

I had a lot to learn, and I was married to a woman who wanted the full French experience, not just the language. It goes without saying that she was a thousand percent right. She showed me a France I…