OLLI 0151 - Bitter Sweet: A Wartime Journal and Heirloom Recipes from Occupied France
Course Description
Award-winning author Kitty Morse was born in Casablanca, Morocco, of a French mother and British father. She emigrated to the United States at age seventeen and studied for her Master's Degree at UWM. When Kitty came across a tattered leather valise hidden behind a crocheted comforter on the top shelf of her late mother's closet, she had no idea what was inside. Her talk will center around her new memoir, “Bitter Sweet: A Wartime Journal and Heirloom Recipes from Occupied France,” based on the history she uncovered after opening the valise and finding a vintage portrait of her great-grandmother Blanche in traditional Alsatian costume (Blanche, her daughter and son-in-law would die at Auschwitz in 1944.), the journal of her husband, Prosper, chronicling the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Europe from April to December 1940, and a notebook written in Blanche's hand, listing 160 heirloom recipes. Part Holocaust history, part memoir, part cookbook, you won’t want to miss this talk!
Presenter(s)
Kitty Morse
Kitty Morse was born in Casablanca, Morocco, of a French mother and British father, and emigrated to the United States in 1964. She began catering Moroccan parties while studying for her Master’s Degree in French at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Catering and giving Moroccan cooking classes eventually led to writing nine cookbooks, five of them on the cooking of Morocco, including Cooking at the Kasbah: Recipes from my Moroccan Kitchen, and her first memoir, Mint Tea and Minarets: A Banquet of Moroccan Memories.
The discovery of heretofore hidden family documents after her mother's death in 2017, including her great grandfather’s war journal and his wife’s family recipes, provided Kitty with the inspiration for her latest memoir, "Bitter Sweet: A Wartime Journal and Heirloom Recipes from Occupied France," to commemorate the lives of her Alsatian ancestors, victims of the Holocaust. In April 2023, she visited their native Alsace/Lorraine and located most of the sites mentioned in the journal, including the tunnel where they hid during the bombing of Nancy.
Kitty’s career as a French instructor, food columnist, travel writer, presenter, and gastronomic tour leader to Morocco and beyond, spans more than three decades. She was once a columnist for the Los Angeles Times in San Diego, has contributed articles in French and English to leading publications in the US and abroad, and has been a guest on local and national television. One of the highlights of her career was cooking alongside Julia Child to benefit the International Association of Culinary Professionals. The Kasbah Chronicles, her newsletter on Substack, is now in its 14th year of publication. Kitty has lived in San Diego County since 1979.