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       The Opening up of On Rue Tatin

      It had been five years since we’d moved to rue Tatin in Louviers, northwest of Paris. The house was habitable, though hearty draughts still tugged at the curtains, and attic rooms remained as they were when we bought the place: dry but in sad repair. We used them to store things, like the dozen or more beautiful antique doors that were in the house when we acquired it, building materials and electrical supplies, as well as the general flotsam and jetsam that collectors such as Michael and I accumulate.

      We had pretty much adjusted to the schedule of Joe’s school, accepting that – just as we’d feel we were getting into our individual rhythms – it seemed to be time for another vacation. Professional demands dictated that we rarely went on holiday, so we would divide our days in two. Michael would generally be with Joe in the morning while I worked, and I would take Joe in the afternoon while Michael worked. Joe would have friends over now and then, but the French don’t share their children in the way Americans do, so it was less often than either we or Joe liked. We had put Joe in a local school, thinking he’d make friends in the neighbourhood but, as luck would have it, most of his friends lived in other towns, and the few boys his age who lived locally were kept hidden somewhere; we’d see them only on their way to school.

      Michael and I were settling in with a close group of friends that included Edith and Bernard, Christian and Nadine, Babette and Jean Lou, Chantal and Michel, our neighbour Patrick and Anne-Marie and Patrick. We’d even met two Franco-American families who lived in towns nearby, which provided us with some comic relief when we got together and shared evenings, laughing at each other’s jokes because – for a change – we understood them. We had friends in Paris, too, which occasioned going there regularly for dinner, driving back in the wee hours when the roads were empty. I always say it takes an hour to get to Louviers from Paris, but at 1 a.m. it’s an easy forty-five minute trip.

      We were, all in all, beginning to understand how things worked in France, and to feel comfortable as the only American family in Louviers. Louviers, and France, were beginning to feel like home.

      My French Farmhouse Cookbook had been published, and I was currently involved in developing and testing recipes for an important American cookbook that was a collaborative effort by many of my colleagues. I was also doing research and testing for the Italian Farmhouse Cookbook, which for two years took me to Italy for long periods of time. I loved doing both projects, particularly the Italian book, since it gave me an insight into a country, people and culture with which I was unfamiliar. I wanted it to be my last farm book, as I felt I’d said what I could say about farming, and I knew that just writing books would no longer be enough to support our family. I began thinking about what would be next. I wouldn’t stop writing books, because it is something I am made to do. But I wanted to use our home for a business, and the business I’d always imagined operating was a cooking school. Way back when we had lived in Seattle I’d wanted to do the same sort of thing, but the situation there hadn’t been right. This time, it just might be.

      My inspiration to open up our home came initially from the time Michael lived on a farm in the Dordogne with the Dubois family – nearly twenty years ago. Danie Dubois, in an effort to augment her income and give herself an interest outside their isolated little village, decided she would take in paying guests for meals and the night, and would offer ‘cooking weekends’ using local specialties as ingredients. By the time Michael went to live with them, Danie’s business was prospering. She not only made endless meals to satisfy her guests, but she also offered pig and foie gras weekends.

      For her ‘weekend de cochon’, she and her guests turned an entire

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