Welcome to Book Club and Episode 2246 of the Italian Wine Podcast with Richard Hough. Today Richard is in conversation with Steve Hoffman to discuss his book, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France

Amongst other things, the conversion covers Steve’s career as a tax preparer, the surprising diversity of American cuisine, and what he learned about himself when he relocated his family to a remote part of southern France.

On the bookshelf:

Discover more about some of the topics discussed in the podcast:

Steve Hoffman’s award-winning article, “What is Northern Food”:

https://www.sjrhoffman.com/work/2018/6/8/what-is-northern-food

Obituary of Richard Olney, American painter, cook, food writer, editor, and memoirist, best known for his books of French country cooking:

https://archive.nytimes.com/tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/fabulous-dead-people-richard-olney/

Intermezzo, a 2024 novel by Sally Rooney

PG Woodhouse’s Jeeves canon is a series of comedic stories following Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves, consisting of 35 short stories and 11 novels.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

One Thousand Vines: A New Way to Understand Wine by Pascaline Lepeltier

More about today’s guest:

Steve Hoffman is a Minnesota tax preparer and food writer. When he dies, the tax-preparer-food-writer industry will die with him. He is a French speaker and shameless Francophile. His writing has won multiple awards, including the 2019 James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food & Wine, The Washington Post, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Artful Living magazine. His first book, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France, was published in July 2024, edited by Francis Lam. It is the story of his family's gradual (then precipitous) acceptance into a tiny Languedoc winemaking village, of his bottom-up education in Mediterranean food and wine, of a father’s agonized love for two very different children, and of a hard-won self-acceptance in mid-life.

Connect:

Website: https://www.sjrhoffman.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sjrhoffman/

More about the host:

Richard Hough is the editor, translator and project curator behind Wine Democracy and Vine and Prejudice. He has also published several books about life in Verona, chronicling the city’s history, culture and daily life, not forgetting, of course, its wine! With a long-standing passion for whisky and beer, he’s a relative newcomer to the world of wine and is now desperately trying to make up for lost time! He is the host of Book Club on the Italian Wine Podcast.

Connect:

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rickhough.bsky.social

Instagram: www.instagram.com/ricksnotesfromverona

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickhough/

Coming soon:

Next month’s guest is Mike Madaio and we’ll be discussing his book “A History of Philadelphia Sandwiches: Steaks, Hoagies, Iconic Eateries & More”.

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