Adventure lies in organic
Karine and Jeff’s story could have been written in the shade of plane trees or on the edge of the ocean. From journey to journey, from land to land and from dream to dream, from shared moments to pleasures forever reinvented, Karine and Jeff have embraced a way of living and working that brings them joy, balance and serenity.
Dance for Karine, music for Jeff
Picture a shy little girl with a passion for dance. And a young girl, no less reserved, vibrant with the desire to learn. Throughout her teenage years, Karine was absorbed in watching the great dancers. An idea gradually settled in her mind until it became a certainty:
“to feel pleasure, you have to be creative”.
From then on, Karine created her own choreographies, which she performed with delight for entire afternoons.
Now picture a boy with a passion for the guitar, for whom music symbolised Art above all else. Jeff would follow this artistic path for ten years, becoming a professional musician. Twenty years later, he still marvels with the same fervour:
“music made me sensitive to beauty, taught me how to listen, and gave me the chance to create freely and with pleasure”.
A piece for four hands
One fine day, a romance blossomed between the dancer and the musician. For the withdrawn young girl who had little confidence in herself, “the doors of the world opened”. Karine and Jeff transformed each other. He was deeply moved by this young girl who turned his daily life upside down, and felt in harmony with her, as he did with music. She discovered the ideal partner. When they married, she was 18 and he was 27… Time would only strengthen this union: after thirty years of marriage, they are still side by side, supporting each other, setting ambitious goals and taking on new challenges which they rise to, of course, together.
Around the world in eighty flavours and more…
In their twenties, Jeff and Karine were already aware of the overconsumption we indulge in across our Western societies. Without yet knowing that they would become leading players in organic production, they sensed the importance that nature and respect for the environment would have in their future working lives.
However, Jeff, who earned his living in a shop selling musical instruments, would happily have lived on love and fresh air, while Karine, already daring, dreamed of freedom and decided to join a dance school in Los Angeles. The young musician agreed to follow his muse and, from this decision, their first journey together was born. Next stop Central America, then South America!
It was the beginning of a shared passion for discovering landscapes, cultures and the cuisines of the world, for meeting people, sensibilities, colours, emotions… Travel meant adventures, some more pleasant than others, but always fruitful. Karine and Jeff discovered the joy of living and working abroad.
A second great journey and a third child at the end of the road…
However, they had to come home… These were difficult years, when boredom threatened to creep in at any moment, in a life imposed by conformity and by values that were not Karine and Jeff’s own. City life resumed, Jeff went back to selling musical instruments in the shop, and Karine raised her children, already striving to give them the balance they needed. A lover of freedom, she schooled them by correspondence.
Very soon, though, Karine and Jeff decided to set off again. This time, it would be a crossing of Europe and then the Near East, where their third child was born in Jordan, and finally a crossing of Africa all the way to the Cape of Good Hope. It was after this last journey that the couple began seriously considering a shared professional project. They searched, they thought, they dreamed. And the answer became obvious: what had always fascinated them, what they had always done together, was cooking. They realised that, throughout their successive journeys around the world, they had been perfectly happy whenever they were creating recipes for the restaurants where they worked.
