My favorite Madeleine Kamman story if from When French Women Cook. She was living in Paris with her grandmother. She was quite young. The live snails had been put into a clay pot and covered with a weighted plate to force them to "build their window".:
"One boring Sunday afternoon I succumbed to the temptation to remove the weight. By 7 o'clock when we came back from some venture the walls were decorated with the visible trails of climbing snails. I got spanked, hated live snails forever for doing me in, and felt vindicated when they appeared in soups or sizzling in pastry shells"
