MADAME VEUVE POINT, A SUNDAY IN BURGUNDY AT THE BEGINNING OF 1900 : Sunday morning in spring and summer was a time for walking and picking wild fruits and flowers. Jeanne Marie and Benoît would go to the Vergisson Rock to pick lilac which they would bring back to make pretty bouquets for the kitchen table. .
They also enjoyed walking to the top of the emblematic Solutré Rock. They would gather wild thyme for herbal teas, and once at the summit they could contemplate the view, a magical sight on a clear day. They would feast their eyes on the distant horizon, the peaks and the majestic Mont Blanc. How beautiful!
Sunday afternoons were a little different from the rest of the week, but nevertheless there were conserve jars to fill “conserve Apertisée” as they were known at the time. As a small boy Benoit played with the rubber seals of the jars while Jeanne Marie stirred the big pot cooking on the wood burning stove. In the living area – the kitchen cum dining room – there were no armchairs, that would come much later in Benoit’s life (in the seventies). The rest of the day was dedicated to drying the herbs and cleaning out the stables that gave onto the courtyard of the house. It was said that the horse regularly poked his head into the kitchen window, as his stable door was rarely shut…. …
