Ellise Pierce - Cowgirl Chef: Texas Cooking with a French Accent

I had completely given up. Given up on the relationship I had moved halfway across the world for. Given up on learning the language. Given up on myself.

My freelance writing career was all but over. Magazines that Id written for had merged with others, stopped using outside contributors, or simply gone under. The future of journalism looked bleak, and mine looked worse. I had less than 100 euros in my bank account, and my credit card was maxed out. I needed to do something and quick.

I wanted to move back to Texas, but couldnt afford the plane ticket.

Home was horse country, a college town called Denton, about a half-hour north of Dallas and Fort Worth, where I learned to ride bareback, fearlessly and at full gallop, after school.

Back then, Denton was still a small town, with its old-fashioned square and turn-of-the-century courthouse. It had one high school, two movie theaters (plus a drive-in on the north side of town), a hamburger joint called Johnnys, a Sonic, and Lubys cafeteria, where wed sometimes go for chicken-fried steak.

I always felt like Denton lived in the shadow of the two bigger, more interesting cities to the south: Dallas, with its flashy glass buildings and air of sophistication, and Fort Worth, with its deep western roots and frontier confidence. I wanted to be like both of those places. I wanted to get out of Denton. I wanted something more.

Early on, I learned that I could explore a world beyond my own through food. Traveling to go out to eat was something that my family did on a fairly regular basisDallas for Greek or Italian, Fort Worth for Chinese or Tex-Mexand closer to home, in elementary school, when other kids were playing kickball, Id hop on my bike to go to Dairy Queen for a Buster Bar, or to Leroys Drive-In Grocery for a chopped beef barbecue sandwich. It was my early recognition of eating as adventure.

I saw cooking as its own adventure, too. By junior high, when I was baking batches of chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies, or making my own fudge, Id lose myself in the process of it all, captivated by the magic that happens along the way when this becomes that with a little heat from the stove or the oven.

When I wasnt cooking, my mom was. Id sit on a stool and watch while she spun her beaters around a big Tupperware bowl in clockwise and counterclockwise motion, thumping them against the sides. We usually had homemade cakes for dessert after dinner, and the table was always set the same as it would be if we were having company: the forks, knives, and spoons, lined up and in their proper places. Bread always had a basket, and its own plate. Food was passed from the left to the right. It didnt matter whether we were having Beef Stroganoff or black-eyed peas and cornbread, it was always like this. I never knew any other way.

Dinnertime was an event, and the food, no matter how simple, was always the star.

By the time I was twelve, I had a subscription to Gourmet.

In the spring of 2005, through the same friends who had introduced us 10 years before, Xavier (the Frenchman known hereafter as X) and I finally hit it off. We drove to a friends wedding in Muskogee, Oklahoma, singing to the Isley Brothers in the car with the windows rolled down. We drank Champagne and giggled and laughed all weekend. We danced all night.

When he left to go back to Paris, I thought he was the one.

For the next two years, we flew back and forth to see each other every couple of months, for a week or two at a time. Each visit unfolded like the pages of a clichd romance novel, with gifts of French chocolates and lingering dinners over wine in tiny French bistros, followed by walks along the Seine, and a stop on the Pont des Arts (a.k.a. the Lovers Bridge) for a kiss. Then came the goodbyes, a blur of jetlag and heartache, the time apart, the missed phone calls. The seven-hour time difference was difficult, the stretches of time between visits unbearable.

Finally I ran out of frequent-flier miles. We both decided that one of us had to move or we needed to break up.

X had a full-time job. I was a freelance writer. I could work from anywhere, I figured. Why not from Paris?

So I rented out my house, packed up my cowboy boots and Cuisinarts big and small, and called the movers.

February is the coldest month of the year in Paris. At least it was when I arrived in 2007.

But if it was bitter outside, it was warm in our new apartment. X and I picked out paint for the walls, and bought rugs and furniture to make things cozy. We settled in.

Sort of. Feeling at home in a foreign country has a lot less to do with unpacking books and cookware, and a lot more to do with speaking the language; and on that front, I was failing miserably. My French was a mishmash of words that I remembered from college and high school, which was useless because I couldnt string them together in a way that made any sense. At the local boulangerie Id be harshly corrected by the old woman behind the countershe pretended she didnt understand and made me repeat myself two, sometimes, three times. It was humiliating. I stopped buying bread there.