Provence

These little sweets, each one stamped with a raised flower, are almost too pretty to eat. The strawberry/raspberry flavor is subtle and sophisticated - so very French. A lovely gift. Eggceptional Make soft-, medium-, or hard-boiled eggs in the microwave with Boiley. Pierce a hole in the shell to prevent eggsplosions. It's especially nice for singles making single eggs.    

"It's in the little towns that one discovers a country, in the kind of knowledge that comes from small days and nights. " - James Salter in "A Sport and a Pastime" The last time we visited Provence, we hit the bold-faced places - Avignon, Aix, Arles, Nimes - but after seven years the memories had dimmed: scarce parking during some Avignon fete, those almond candies in Aix, the Roman amphitheater in Arles, and the blazing heat and...

Peter Mayle is the English-speaking concierge of France's loamiest corner, Provence, where truffle trafficking, chevre culturing and skirt chasing are all competitive sports, and wine is the civic religion. His latest novel, A Good Year, in which a wet London workaholic resists the lure of Provence's sun-kissed stone houses and vineyards, was inspired by an idea from neighbor Ridley Scott, who in turn has made it into a not-so-good movie. As one who likes Russell Crowe, romantic comedy and Provence, this is a puzzlement.

If Peter Mayle's publisher had predicted correctly, A Year in Provence would have spent a couple of days under the Christmas tree and been forgotten as quickly as an old bottle of pastis. So convinced was the publisher that the book wouldn't sell well that he said Mayle would probably wind up sending unsold copies out as Christmas presents. Famous last words. Or in this case, famous first words that led to a chateau industry of seemingly endless words about toute la Provence.

The first fact of life in Provence is the sun, wrote Waverly Root in his authoritative book, The Food of France (Vintage Books). The sun not only lured such stellar painters as van Gogh and Matisse to Provence's brilliant countryside, but it helped create a unique, heady cuisine as well. Provence is known for rose wines that Alexis Lichine - author of Guide to the Wines & Vineyards of France (Knopf) - described as having "a certain roughness combined with liveliness and gaiety and with a high enough alcoholic content that the drinker is apt soon to take on the same characteristics.

Even from the outside, you can guess that you will find a somewhat unusual dining experience at Manon. With its yellow, green and salmon exterior, the tiny restaurant in the middle of Lambertville is hard to miss. The interior decor is just as distinctive. Manon was opened 14 months ago by Jean Michel Dumas, formerly chef at the nearby Inn at Phillips Mill in Bucks County. His considerable culinary skill celebrates the lively southern French cuisine of Provence. Seating only 28 diners in cheek-to-cheek fashion, the one-room restaurant is typical of a Provencal restaurant.

BRIGHT SUNSHINE in cloudless blue skies. The sparkling Mediterranean Sea. Waving lavender fields. Lush orchards. This is Provence, France, geographical muse to post-Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne. One of the most influential painters of the late 19th century, he was credited with inspiring "students" such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. The region has another great attribute that Cezanne also knew very well and celebrated in many of his paintings: food. The abundant produce, seafood and herbs in the area around his hometown of Aix-en-Provence were subjects in hundreds of still-life paintings Cezanne created from early in his career until his death in 1906.

Every day for two weeks, my daughter and I left our small auberge outside the nearby city of Arles and trundled off in a rented car to explore the small-scale, but intensely personal, countryside of Provence. Somewhere in the middle of this odyssey, we started out quite early one morning for Les Baux, moving through a landscape of olive trees, red-tiled houses and fields of ruminative sheep to the base of the jagged white Alpilles. There, rising sharply above the Val d'Enfer (the Valley of Hell)

Provençal rosé is doing the quick fade, at least when it comes to color. Popularity of the refreshing southern French pink, in fact, has never been stronger, with a 62 percent growth in U.S. imports between 2010 and 2011, according to the French customs agency Ubifrance. "It started with the yacht crowd in the Hamptons," one distributor told me, "and spread from there. " The fashion among Provence's modern rosés, however, has been to make them as pale as possible, and the best, like Château D'Esclans, manage to achieve this without sacrificing fullness of flavor.

"It's in the little towns that one discovers a country, in the kind of knowledge that comes from small days and nights. " - James Salter in "A Sport and a Pastime" The last time we visited Provence, we hit the bold-faced places - Avignon, Aix, Arles, Nimes - but after seven years the memories had dimmed: scarce parking during some Avignon fete, those almond candies in Aix, the Roman amphitheater in Arles, and the blazing heat and...

These little sweets, each one stamped with a raised flower, are almost too pretty to eat. The strawberry/raspberry flavor is subtle and sophisticated - so very French. A lovely gift. Eggceptional Make soft-, medium-, or hard-boiled eggs in the microwave with Boiley. Pierce a hole in the shell to prevent eggsplosions. It's especially nice for singles making single eggs.    

For the second year in a row, I was for sale. Well, not me exactly, but dinner with me. And not just dinner with me, worse - a dinner for eight (six plus my husband, Dan, and me) that I would cook. The fact that six people pooled money for this opportunity proves two things: The world is full of people seeking penance; what people will do for charity knows no bounds. The "Dinner With a Writer" fund-raiser benefited the Denver Women's Press Club, which, like any organization involved with the press these days, needs some charity.

BRIGHT SUNSHINE in cloudless blue skies. The sparkling Mediterranean Sea. Waving lavender fields. Lush orchards. This is Provence, France, geographical muse to post-Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne. One of the most influential painters of the late 19th century, he was credited with inspiring "students" such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. The region has another great attribute that Cezanne also knew very well and celebrated in many of his paintings: food. The abundant produce, seafood and herbs in the area around his hometown of Aix-en-Provence were subjects in hundreds of still-life paintings Cezanne created from early in his career until his death in 1906.

Directed by Eric Guirado. With Nicolas Cazale, Clotilde Hesme, Daniel Duval and Jeanne Goupil. Distributed by Film Movement. In French with subtitles. 1 hour, 36 mins. No MPAA rating (sex, nudity, profanity, adult themes). Playing at: Ritz Five. It's not the Provence of Peter Mayle, not the one the tourists flock to, and at first, in The Grocer's Son, it's not a place where the gruff, scruffy protagonist - a 30-year-old city slacker named Antoine - wants to be. But as Eric Guirado's small, seductive movie rolls along, Antoine (Nicolas Cazale)

Peter Mayle is the English-speaking concierge of France's loamiest corner, Provence, where truffle trafficking, chevre culturing and skirt chasing are all competitive sports, and wine is the civic religion. His latest novel, A Good Year, in which a wet London workaholic resists the lure of Provence's sun-kissed stone houses and vineyards, was inspired by an idea from neighbor Ridley Scott, who in turn has made it into a not-so-good movie. As one who likes Russell Crowe, romantic comedy and Provence, this is a puzzlement.

"Who said 'comedy is king'?" wonders Ridley Scott. Well, whoever it was, Sir Ridley is trying on the crown to see if it fits. For the first time in his 17-picture, 30-year career, the man who triggered mass spasms of dread with Alien, who conjured a noirish future in Blade Runner, who re-staged the ill-fated U.S. military mission in Somalia with Black Hawk Down, is playing it for laughs. And he's brought along his fierce and fearsome Gladiator star, Russell Crowe. In A Good Year (which opens Friday)

While the pseudo-documentary Death of a President - a digitally rigged, speculative account of the assassination of George W. Bush and its aftermath - caused the biggest stir and longest lines at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was hardly the only movie people were talking about. At press and industry screenings for the festival, which closed last night, and at premieres around town, the buzz was buzzing for the German-made The Lives of Others; Alejandro Gonzalez I??rritu's Babel (with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett)