No one knows better than I the phobia of exposing anything culinary to a Frenchman’s chauvinistic palate. I don’t mean to criticize anyone else’s manners, but for people who have fits if you can’t finish everything they load onto your plate, the French sure are quick to express disdain for anything you offer them. Once in Tahiti, when I served my French friends there my most fêted cake covered with rich, gooey icing, two of them actually gagged on the sugar, a reflex for which I have never forgiven their entire nation. So I gave my mother a quick dose of therapy: “Don’t worry. As long as you don’t make any cakes, you should be fine. He’s dying to try real Southern food, that’s all he’s talked about. Biscuits, cornbread, cookies, brownies, some good grilling, fried green tomatoes. I think fried green tomatoes are the real reason he’s making the trip over here.”

“It was a good film,” Mom admitted, distracted.

“Food,” Dad said. “You think food is a problem?” He had attended a philosophy conference in Paris when I was a baby and never quite recovered. My dad was a white-haired Socrates, half his sons’ size, confident, and troublemaking. He had the brightest blue eyes in the family, and usually they were puckish with mischief. But right now, they held the tense, suppressed look of a man on the brink of desperation. “What wine should I get?”

I guess it’s a good thing I never became a psychotherapist, because I couldn’t think of a single encouraging thing to say in response to that. “Don’t even try; you’re doomed,” seemed negative. I remembered Sébastien’s tendency to compare American beer unfavorably to his cat’s little carpet accidents and smiled a malicious smile. “He said he wants the authentic Southern experience, Dad. I’m sure he’d love a nice cold beer.”

My dad looked at me incredulously, and right then I knew that one-week conference in France twenty-seven years ago had scarred him even more than I thought. “He’s French,” he said despairingly.

Sébastien decided to bring his own wine, ostensibly as a gift but more likely in self-protection. “Don’t go overboard,” I told him on the phone. “My brothers are mostly beer drinkers, you know; and you can only bring two bottles through customs, anyway.”

“Umm,” he said.

“I’m warning you. When I bring back wine with me, they don’t even drink it all. A few sips, and the bottle gets shoved into some corner, half-full.”

“That wine you pick out at the big tasting shows?”

“Yes.” I loved the frequent wine expositions in Paris, and I went to a lot of effort to pick out the most interesting reds and whites for those in my family who wanted to become wine connoisseurs.

“Umm,” he said.