Jo Maeder

Author

SOCCA!

by 2 Comments

Somewhere in my Opposites Attack research of foods popular in the South of France, I read about socca, a flat bread/pancake/crêpe made from chick pea (a.k.a. garbanzo bean) flour. It sounded more like a Latin-American dance than something you would eat. One passage stuck in my head about a man at a big outdoor market […]

LEARN MORE

WILD BOAR DAUBE FEAST (PART FOUR) – MORE COOKING & DEVOURING

by 2 Comments

When I decided to dive into this challenge with the same naive pluck as Alyce, the heroine in Opposites Attack, I thought what was the worst that could happen? It would be awful, we’d order pizza and drinks lots of French wine. In the end it’s about the company. Fortunately, pizza was never delivered. You’ve […]

LEARN MORE

WILD BOAR DAUBE FEAST (PART TWO) – MARINATING

by Leave a Comment

ALLOW AT LEAST THREE DAYS TO PREPARE THIS MEAL, FOUR EVEN BETTER. A few words about how I came up with this wild boar daube recipe. While writing Opposites Attack, I studied many French cookbooks and let my taste buds guide me as I cooked the recipes in my head. Now, years later, many readers […]

LEARN MORE

WILD BOAR DAUBE FEAST (PART ONE) – PROCURING

by 2 Comments

In my novel Opposites Attack, our heroine Alyce slays a wild boar in self-defense, has a butcher cut it up and invites over a large group of students from the French school she’s attending for a boar daube (the French version of stew). It’s a turning point for her. While intrepid in many ways, her self-esteem […]

LEARN MORE

PETANQUE, SMOCK, AND RIVALRY

by Leave a Comment

I recently went searching for the pétanque set I bought in 2001 when I returned from my own total-immersion experience in Hyères, France. Just like Alyce, pétanque was the only thing taught to me in which I showed any immediate aptitude. Pronounced “pay-tonk,” it’s a type of boules and has been described as a cousin […]

LEARN MORE

HOLIDAY REMINISCENCES AND REGRETS

by Leave a Comment

An adapted excerpt from the chapter “Watching a Photograph Slowly Fade” from When I Married My Mother “Are we putting up a Christmas tree this year?” Mama Jo asked when our third Thanksgiving as roommates rolled around. I groaned and was sorry I did. The first year we lived together, after uncovering the ornaments of […]

LEARN MORE