My mother was tiny – less than 5ft tall – but she never let her height get in the way of a good meal.
I have so many memories of her leaping across her kitchen counters as she reached for a certain spice at the back of a cupboard.
She was still climbing for food in her nineties. When she was 94 I found her up a cherry tree, at the top of a ladder, picking the fruit.
But that was Maman Blanc. Unstoppable. My sons used to call her Mother Teresa on speed.
Our mothers often shape our lives and are always with us, even when they are not. My mother lived her whole life in Franche-Comté, the region of France where I was born.