Engaging Your Senses

To create a richer embodied experience during your Virtual Pilgrimage, here are ways to bring Southern France into your home.

Throughout France, the air is perfumed with lavender, citrus and rose. Order essential oils, soaps and lotions readily available online at L'Occitane en Provence or Maison du Savon.

Stock your pantry with these essential ingredients, all staples of cuisine in the Dordogne: walnuts and walnut oil, hazelnuts, strawberries, figs, melons, rosemary and thyme, wild mushrooms, dried truffles and truffle infused oil. Cheese is an entire course in France, and there are hundreds of varieties in this region. Try goat cheese (especially the soft and creamy rounds of Rocamadour, named for one of the villages we will journey to), Bleu des Causses (fabulous when paired with pears and wine) or walnut infused Trappe d’Echourgnac, made for over 150 years by monks at the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Bonne Espérance

3. Try your hand at cooking one of these recipes and savor after one of our classes:

Here is a recent National Geographic article about this magical region

My daughter and I were lucky enough to stay in the ancestral home of Danielle Mazet- Delpeuch, a great wise woman who was the personal chef of French President Francois Mitterand and then chef for an expedition to Antartica before retiring to the Dordogne to her ancestral lands. I will never forget the cooking class we had with her and the sprit of Occitania she embodied. Her life story has become the subject of film, Les Saveurs du Palais, or (in America) Haute Cuisine. . Here is a 2017 article about her.