« Would you be our chef of honour for the Floralies Gourmand?” the ACPIP84 committee asked. ACPIP stands for  ASSOCIATION CULINAIRE POUR LA PROMOTION DE L’IDENTITE PROVENCALE, an association that promotes Provençale gastronomy and its people. I felt and feel so honored. We set out to create interaction, dialogue through food so we organized a couple of free workshops and with a few days we had 10 people who signed up. Curious people, vegans and curious omnivores alike. It led to beautiful encounters between people from very different walks of life. To discoveries of techniques like pressing down mushrooms to create a more crunchy textures to finding out that it actually is really easy to cook healthy, sumptuous whole food, plant-based meals. And that is exactly my goals: to promote the rustic Provençal familial cuisine that shares so many similarities with the cuisine I grew up on. The cuisine that invites you to cherish the flavors and textures of the produce, that makes you look forward to dance through the next season and that awakens memories. As one of the participants said: “Cooking and food for me are a language of love, and ode to life”. And so it is. 

I cannot thank ACPIP84 and the lovely participants enough for this wonderful collaboration, to be repeated many times over!