Cooking Only Home Interest

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31774, 3 September 1968, Page 2

Cooking Only Home Interest

Cooking is the only aspect of housekeeping that interests Mrs Monique Thoraval, whose husband is professor of French literature at the University of Rennes, Brittany.

“I don’t sew and cooking is fhe only thing I find cerative in the house,” she said in Christchurch yesterday. “Hap pily, my whole family is very indulgent, although I always warn them when I am going to try a new dish.” - In New Zealand for six weeks, Mrs Thoraval has already become a fan for paviova and New Zealand lamb. At home, she has a woman to work in the house for a few hours each day but does the cooking herjelf. Mrs Thoraval likes to cook Indian-type dishes from the island of Mauritius, where she was born. It was there she learned to speak English. Lessons at school were in English, although French was always spoken at home. At the age of 19, Mrs Thoraval left fo: four years study at the Sor’bonne University in Paris, gaining a degree in French literature, French philology (grammar) and English. She returned to Mauritius to teach at a secondary school for two years, saving enough money to go back to France. Met Husband

Mrs Thoraval met her husband, a widower, when she was doing post-graduate study at Rennes and they were married a year later. She has three step-children. The eldest, a girl, is married with two children of her own, and

the others, a boy and a girl, are students. Since her marriage seven years ago, Mrs Thoraval has travelled widely with her husband during the course of his work. They have been to South-East Asia, the United States, Canada, Africa and Australia. When travelling, she sometimes interprets for her husband.

“The level of the English taught in schools in France is now very good, but it was not as good when my husband studied English,” Mrs Thora val said.