I found the book you mentioned - A Dinner of Herbs by John Verney. Looks good. Somewhat confusingly there is another book called Dinner of Herbs by Carla Griss

I found the book you mentioned - A Dinner of Herbs by John Verney. Looks good. Somewhat confusingly there is another book called Dinner of Herbs by Carla Grissman which is also a travelogue describing close contact with 'peasants', but this time in Anatolia in the 60s. It also looks good. (There's even another book with the same title, but it's a fiction novel by Catherine Cookson). Edit: I've just found that the title is a reference to Proverbs 15:17, ‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than feasting on a fattened ox where hatred also dwells’, which explains its multiple use.