Product Description

Food - meals eaten together in many different places and circumstances - is the common thread of this book whose underlying idea is that the family at the table is the source of its strength. The book recounts the Luard family's life in a cork-oak forest in southern Spain, a snow-bound farmhouse in Languedoc or a sheep-farm in Northamptonshire. Containing anecdote, humour and curious food-lore, this book is written by the author of "European Festival Food" and "The Barricaded Larder". Elizabeth Luard features in a TV series based upon her book "European Peasant Cookery".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #197608 in Books
• Published on: 1996-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 329 pages

From the Back Cover
Not everyone goes to school on a donkey, keeps an eagle owl in the spare bedroom cupboard, or plays chess for the French Foreign Legion. But for the four Luard children, all this was perfectly normal. As normal as taking the scrap bucket across the stream to feed the household pig, or knowing how to hitch up a mulecart.

Elisabeth Luard's not-so-simple tale captures the spirit of bringing up four children as they travel across Europe, their lives a series of old-fashioned adventures. Littered with anecdotes and a scattering of their favourite recipes, this book is a celebration of family life. But no family is immune from tragedy - still less one which lives life to the full. In Francesca, the eldest of the three daughters, we find a true heroine. Passionate, honest, perceptive, she tells her own story - until that moment when she can tell it no more.

About the Author
Elisabeth Luard
Elisabeth Luard, food writer and novelist, has always been a free spirit. In 1963 and just turned twenty-one, she married Nicholas Luard, novelist and co-founder of Private Eye. Within six years, she had had four children and had moved to a remote valley in southern Spain. Twelve years later, in a bid for independence, she turned to full-time writing. She is the author of a number of successful cookery books, including European Peasant Cookery, The Flavours of Andalucia, for which she won the Glenfiddich Award in 1992, Saffron and Sunshine, Family Life (which won the Guild of Food Writers Book of the Year for 1996) and Still Life. She is a regular contributor to various magazines and newspapers, including the Scotsman, the Sunday Telegraph, Waitrose Food Illustrated, Decanter and Gourment Magazines, and was until recently cookery editor of Woman's Journal. Elisabeth now divides her time between London, the Hebrides and a hill farm in Wales.

Customer Reviews

food and family in interesting places
A thoroughly good read if you like food and dream of living the good life somewhere near the Mediterranean. Life is not a breeze for the Luard family, but mother Elizabeth lets us share the meals and the fun as well as the difficulties. The death of her daughter is a shock, but is lovingly and honestly described.

An inspiring account of family life
Family Life tells of the author's years bringing up her family in England, Spain and France, and is a cross between autobiography and travel book with a few recipes thrown in. I found Luard's rather unconventional attitude to bringing up children refreshing compared to todays trend for wrapping them up in cotton wool - her son and three daughters certainly seemed to grow up fairly well-rounded anyway. The final chapters deal movingly with Luard's eldest daughter Francesca's illness and give a poignant account of how she and the rest of her family come to terms with it, and I must confess to shedding a few tears by the end of the book.I look forward to reading the next instalment - Still Life.

a cultural, family and gastronomic "medley of flavours"
I was given this book while living in England, and it came highly recommended. It is not heard of very much here, in Canada, where I now live. I read the first half whilst on holiday in Southern Spain, thinking it would be appropriate to read it while in the book's setting. I honestly found it rather slow at first, though very well-written, and a dry wit which pervades until the very last chapter, which becomes more tragedy than comedy. By the second half of the book, I was enamoured, and loved the description of family life in Spain, the titillating recipes from Spain and France, and the in-depth look into a Spanish psyche, from flamenco to food...as it is a biography of the Luard family, the last chapter is the factual tragedy of the death of their daughter, and I was reading and weeping late at night to finish it...I would highly recommend the book!! I will look for more Elizabeth Luard titles.