I was a teenager when we moved to America. On my first day at school in Phoenix, Arizona, I learnt that a quart of Diet Pepsi is a perfectly acceptable breakfast, and iceberg salad 'dressing on the side, thanks' the only acceptable lunch item for popular girls. Shy and bookish, I observed but spoke little, an awkward foreign body longing to integrate. On her farm in the Béarn region of the Pyrénées, my grandmother raised - and force fed ducks for foie gras. I loved foie gras as a kid. And brains, blood pancakes, sweet fritters of acacia flowers in spring. How on earth would I end up with a severe eating disorder at age 17? Cramming into my parents' Peugeot for weekend trips to the Auvergne, we'd pack wheels of St Nectaire cheese and the blue-streaked Roquefort revered by my father. How, then, did I figure at age 22 that sticking two fingers down my throat was just the thing to do after a meal? Marianne LEFT HER HOME in Tucson, Arizona... French-born Tucson chanteuse Marianne Dissard recorded and toured worldwide with members of alt-Americana bands Calexico and Giant Sand.