I want to be the girl who makes outlandishly delicious dishes for friends everyone is secretly jealous of.

For quite a while I have longed to be the kind of person who knows which type of cheese is best simply by the smell. However, it’s an oldie but goldie, a book that, despite its popularity when it first was published-Julia Child even said she loved this book, which pretty much puts it on my recommendation list for life- has remained largely unread by the current crowd of college foodies.Īh, I’ve now brought us to the ‘foodie.’ What an elusive term for something that should be so easy. This book, and its two award-winning sequels, “Encore Provence” and “Toujours Provence,” embodies what perhaps was the start of my early gastronomical fantasies.Īlthough I usually make a point to review newly published books, this review will have to be called the vintage edition, since “A Year in Provence” was written in 1989. In the spirit of nodding to this dream of mine, I present a book review of the delectable, hilarious and heartwarming travel memoir book, “A Year in Provence,” by Peter Mayle. However, like a glowing bubble of irrational positivity, my retirement goals of one day settling down in France to eat all the fancy bread, wine and cheese my stomach can handle remains nestled firmly in my brain, undaunted. Now in college, my dreams have morphed a bit to make room for the harsh reality that simply becoming a food critic is a highly rare career to land, and traveling takes more money than I could have possibly planned for. I wanted to travel the world, end up in France and become an esteemed food critic.

When I was in middle school, with grand ideas about the world and my career path, I had a vague long-term plan.

A year in provence book review