The French
Captured Completely

A Travel Memoir

In 2004 author Cree Forman completed a labor of love, publishing her first book in memory of her husband. Phil and the French Country Inn was one part cookbook and two parts culinary memoir. It celebrated Cree’s and her husband Phil’s passion for French cuisine and their adoration of the French culture. Over three trips in a span of 11 years, they explored the countryside and brought back to NC the distinct flavors that for decades made their restaurant a popular destination for patrons.

In The French Captured Completely, Forman narrates a travelogue rich in experience and observation, detailing six more trips to France taken between 1988 and 2007. Readers who embraced Cree’s first book will enjoy this memoir as a delightful extension of the first, offering keen eye and ear for the sighs and sounds that uniquely define France.

“Those were working vacations. Therefore our minds were more on the food and happenings in the different restaurants out in the privinces of France,” Cree says of the first three trips to France detailed in the first book. “The trips here focus more on places and people.”

French chef Phil Forman's widow, Cree, spent nine years becoming a writer to complete his Cookbook, Phil and The French Country Inn.  She added historic facts and a French travelogue of their life running an authentic French Provincial restaurant in the heart of tobacco country, Selma, North Carolina.

Phil and The French Country Inn is an inspirational, practical, love story. Follow the story of Phil Forman from his childhood in Mt. Kisco, NY, to his stint in the Navy, to his college years and career as Sales Representative for a major pharmaceutical company. Applaud his decision to take early retirement and pursue his life long desire to cook.

Share his success as he establishes a world-renown French Restaurant in the heart of North Carolina tobacco country. Meet the family who supported him and worked at his side. Travel with them to France and explore the secrets of its cuisine, countryside and citizenry.

Most of all, learn from this inquisitive, self-taught man that the impossible dream can be possible, at any age.

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