Sublime

There is something about lunch in France that never fails to overcome any small reserves of willpower that I possess. I can sit down, resolved to be moderate, determined to eat and drink lightly, and be there three hours later, nursing my wine and still open to temptation. I don’t think it’s greed. I think it’s the atmosphere generated by a roomful

He came to a gurgling river, a freshwater tributary that fed into the vast loch. The water frothed at the edges for the richness of the minerals in it. It swirled around boulders, and here and there it was thick with schools of brown fish, darting and happy and unbothered.

one final choice:

able to outsmart, outhunt and outlast the bigger, stronger and faster members of the animal kingdom.

Each table had its white paper cover and two unlabeled bottles of wine, a red and a pink, from the Bonnieux cooperative two hundred yards away on the other side of the road. There was no written menu. Madame cooked five meals a week, lunch from Monday to Friday, and customers ate what she decided they would eat. Her daughter brought us a basket of

rigmarole,

The guide takes out a cutting board and starts slicing a garlicky summer sausage and opens a jar of pickled boar (they run in the hills nearby). He cuts up some sharp cheese with a knife that seems slightly too large. He lays it all out and it’s impressive. This is the picada, the traditional Argentinian board. It makes a lovely lunch. Then he

I couldn’t afford to become injured and therefore resilience and durability were just as important.