The Essay: My Life in Food

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The Essay: My Life in Food: Fate

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My Life in Food

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Joanna Robertson now lives in France, but more despite the food than because of it. 

Joanna Robertson has a deep connection with food that has shaped her life and relationships in several countries. Now she lives in France, not because of the food but despite it. 

Joanna Robertson's earliest childhood memory is that of the baker calling at noon each day, with a basket full of fragrant buns, cakes and bread. It was the first indication of what was to develop into a lifelong love affair with food.
For Joanna, food has never just been about nourishment. It has shaped her life in highly personal as well as professional ways, with surprising, funny or poignant results. 
So much so, that telling her food stories in these Essays amounts to sharing an intimate and revealing autobiography, with deeply personal insights into her life, the places she has lived and worked in, and the people she has met through food.

In the final programme, Joanna is living in Paris. Fortune has smiled on her in the shape of a second daughter, but when it comes to food, her luck seems to have run out, as neither her children's school lunches nor local restaurants' menus live up to Joanna's expectations which had been stoked by food writers of the calibre of Elizabeth David and MFK Fisher whom Joanna read avidly as a teenager. Now it's chips with everything it seems. Fate has one good surprise in store however: Joanna's local baker, where she gets her daily morning bread, has just been crowned the best baguette maker in Paris.

Joanna Robertson is a journalist who has lived in several countries and is now based in Paris. 

Produced by Arlene Gregorius.

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Joanna Robertson shares five personal tales about the food that has shaped her life.

Over five programmes of surprising, entertaining and poignant tales about food eaten and cooked in Britain and elsewhere, Joanna Robertson shares the story of her life - in food.

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