Category Archives: Herbs

With Time and Frost, Things Fall Apart

November 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fall can be a bittersweet time, a time to look forward to cool-crisp nights, hearty meat-and root-vegetable stews, and the smell of burning leaves, that is, you’re allowed to burn them where you live. On the other hand, the coming of fall and frost signifies the end of the growing season, and the beginning of fallow time. The life force fades from the trees as their iridescent leaves drop. But it’s in the garden where the change in temperature registers […]

Categories: Agriculture, Chile Peppers, Gardens, Herbs, Photography, Tomatoes • Tags: Gardens, Jalapeños, Lavender, Photography, Tomatoes

Lavender, France’s Balm for the Soul

September 26, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The lavender lingers on my sloping hillside, autumn rain running in rivulets between the dying leaves. At summer’s peak, the purple flowers tantalized the bees and butterflies and me, the glorious scent perfuming the air of evening and morning both. No lambs frolicked in the lavender this year, but maybe someday a friend’s weanlings will lie in the hot sun, their tails flicking, noses pressed to the mauve blossoms, savoring the taste of this ancient nard. Like the lambs, I […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Herbs, Photography, Poetry • Tags: Flowers, France, French Cooking, Herbs, Lavender, Photography

Idylls of Cuisine, #62

May 16, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: China, Herbs, Photography • Tags: Ba Bao Cha, China, Chinese Herbs, Eight Treasures Tea, Food Photography, Herbal Tea, Herbs

Sour and Bitter Blended in the Soup of Wu:* Very Early Chinese Herbals

May 13, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

For years, I’ve been carting around a number of books about Chinese medicine and food, fascinated by the ancient linkage of food with medicine (similar in some regards to the Ayurvedic system of India). As you can imagine, getting down to the bone on this matter is not an easy proposition, given the lack of fully accessible written material for non-Mandarin speakers. The inability to read the original texts proves to be a huge drawback to pursuing questions in the […]

Categories: Asia, China, Herbs • Tags: Ch'uTz'u: The Songs of the South, China, David Hawkes, E. N. Anderson, Herbals, Huang Di Nei Jing (Su Wen), Imre Galambos, Mawangdui, Shen Nung Pen Ts'ao Ching, Yellow Emperor

Lavender Fields Forever

April 30, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

No smell of cow patties flitted through the air, thank goodness. After all, just before lunch who wants to contemplate biting into a sandwich perfumed with the stench of manure? We stood on the knoll about the Maison Beliveau and watched the black-furred cattle, including two hefty bulls, running down the hill, hell-bent on cozying up to some people foolish enough to walk into the pasture. The animals no doubt hoped for a morsel of food other than the grass […]

Categories: Cattle, Cookbooks, Cooking, Gardens, Herbs • Tags: Gardens, Herbs, Lavender, Madame de Sévigné

John Evelyn: Cook, Or, the 17th C. Man Who Would Be a Locavore

February 1, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Omnia explorate; meliora retinete (Explore everything; keep the best.) ~~ Evelyn family motto Somehow, and how I wish it were so, it would be nice to time-travel, to sit at table with the people I’m meeting through their words, written by long-dead hands with quill pens and India ink. One of my new “acquaintances,” if such a word be the correct way of putting things, went (goes?) by the name of John Evelyn. Seventeenth-century English author John Evelyn chronicled upper-class […]

Categories: Agriculture, Books, Cookbooks, Cooking, Desserts, Eggs, England, English Cooking, Gardens, Herbs, Local foods, Locavores, Milk, Pies--Sweet • Tags: Cheesecake, Chess Pie, Cooking, Cooks, Eggs, Eliza Smith, England, John Evelyn, John Nott, Rennet, Robert May

The Gift of the Bees: Mead

September 30, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With a small tweak of the imagination, it’s not hard to see the scenario: a little rain and some honey accidentally left in a hollowed-out piece of wood. For our early ancestors, it was — once tasted — a seemingly divine elixir. And no cooking required. In other words, mead, the first fermented drink. And so fermentation crops up again, a boon to the human race in so many ways. The tale’s been told a myriad of times, in a […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Asia, Cookbooks, Cooking, English Cooking, Herbs • Tags: England, Hilda M. Ransome, Mead, Metheglin, Sir Kenelme Digby, The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore

The Random Herbalist: Into the Setting Sun

August 5, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

For the moment, the end of the series of notes on monks and their gardens.

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Gardens, Herb Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries

The Random Herbalist: The Church as Farmer

August 4, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The Catholic Church influenced many things, even (especially?) agriculture, as this passage from History of the English Landed Interest: Its Customs, Laws, and Agriculture, by Russell Montague Garnier (1908) 2nd. ed, vol. 1, implies. The monastery libraries also held much treasure, opening up the monks to the wonders of old knowledge and enabling them to forgo reinventing the wheel, so to speak: The agriculture of the neighbouring Church lands would be closely watched and imitated by the lay farmers. Advice […]

Categories: Agriculture, Herbs, Middle Ages, Monasteries • Tags: Agriculture, Farming, Herbs, Middle Ages, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens, Monks

The Random Herbalist: Charlemagne, St. Gall, and the History of Medicine

August 3, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The history of medicine, a fascinating subject, shows how people began to understand more and more about the corporeal body. Herbs played a big role in the evolution of this understanding, and medieval monasteries encapsulated this knowledge: The curriculum of these cathedral schools embraced originally the Trivium, (arithmetic, grammar, music), and the Quadrivium (dialectics, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy). Charlemagne, in the Capitulary of Thionvillc (805), ordained, however, that medicine also should be taught (as already stated) under the name of Physic. […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Middle Ages, Monasteries • Tags: Charlemagne, Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Monks, St. Gall

The Random Herbalist: Monks and Plant Migration

July 31, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Along with dill, which we’ve briefly brushed by, other plants also traveled with the monks as they made their way across Europe: To the monks, who in their way were great gardeners, we are indebted for the introduction of several plants ; and since in many cases the ancient monastery has disappeared, the flowers which were wont to grow in its garden are often taken for wild ones. Among others, the Snowdrop was a favourite flower in a monastic garden, […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Middle Ages, Monasteries • Tags: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Monks, Snowdrop

The Random Herbalist: The Roman Influence on Monastic Gardens

July 30, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With this post, I celebrate a year of writing “Gherkins & Tomatoes!” Thank you so much to everyone who visits the blog. I look forward to the coming year! The Romans wielded profound influence on the architecture and organization of monasteries … and, hence, on us … centuries later. According to Viollet-le-Duc : —* ” It is probable that the first cloisters were porticoes of the same kind as those of antiquity, that is to say;— origin, a sloping roof […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Monks, Roman Empire, Romans

The Random Herbalist: St. Gall, A Model Garden Plan?

July 29, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[NOTE: I'd like to thank the readers of Gherkins & Tomatoes for their patience this summer --- in the last few weeks I've moved from a house where I've lived for fourteen years, my favorite cat died, and I've been writing under deadline for an article for an encyclopedia as well as for a local magazine. And now I'm currently attending a family reunion. I promise to be more fully "present" to the blog and all reader comments soon. Meaning […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens, Monks

The Random Herbalist: The Hortus Eremitje

July 28, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Charlemagne had a shovel in every monastic garden, or so it seems:* As early as the days of Charles the Great (Charlemagne) the cloister owned outside property, and just as at Canterbury we must conclude that the plan of St. Gall meant the orchards and vineyards to be outside. The whole time of Charles the Great— and the St. Gall plan may be supposed to belong to it — was of great importance for horticulture. Charles himself encouraged personally the […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Capitulare de Villis, Charlemagne, Gardens, Herbs, History of Garden Art, Marie-Luise Gothein, Medieval Gardens, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens, Monks, Purslane

The Random Herbalist: Books About Monastic and Medieval Gardens

July 27, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I find the following books enlightening, soothing, and motivating. My plan is to create/design a medieval/monastic herb garden over the upcoming winter and plant it starting next spring.* Monastic Gardens, by Mick Hales (2000) Private worlds glimpsed by a privileged few, monasteries have long maintained an aura of mystery. Outsiders imagine the silent seclusion, the austere settings, the rigorous routines of a religious life. But these sacred places share a common bond with the secular realm. Monks and nuns, too, […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Bibliographies, Brother Cadfael, Chicken, Fennel, Gardens, Herbs, Hildegard of Bingen, Medieval Gardens, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens, Monks

The Random Herbalist: An Introduction to Early Monastic Gardens

July 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A series on monastery cooks (“At the Tables of the Monks“)*, and a recent comment on the impact of medieval monks on the spread of dill throughout Europe, led me to reflect in more detail on the influence of monks on early European agricultural practices. For the next several days, I will be sharing notes from my reading. Thus within the walls of the Benedictine monasteries were large gardens cultivated by the monks in common, and often smaller ones assigned […]

Categories: English Cooking, Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Gardens, Monasteries, Monks

The Random Herbalist: Dill

July 21, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“I think pickles are cucumbers that sold out. They sold their soul to the devil, and the devil is dill…” Unknown Ethel always grabbed the dill plants by the lower stems and yanked hard, shaking off the clumps of dirt clinging to the roots. “You need the seedy kind,” she’d say, intent on making those cucumber pickles so necessary for the dishes she cooked for my Danish father-in-law. And her garden in town, so small compared to her farm garden, […]

Categories: Herbs, Middle Ages, Norway, Scandinavian Cooking • Tags: Dill, Herbs, John Gerard, Scandinavian Cooking

Flavor Principles Out of Africa: The Basics

June 3, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

What Flavor Principles Exist in the Cooking Found in Africa? Africa consists of 53 countries, all with their own culinary cultures. Certainly some similarities exist, but – for the most part – each country, and certainly each region, prepares its own trademark taste. What defines the cuisines of Africa?[1] And what flavor principles highlight those cuisines? Flavor principles signify more than just spicing a dish or adding herbs. Flavor comes from things other than just seasonings. Cooking techniques also change […]

Categories: Africa, Herbs, Spices • Tags: Africa, Cooking, Elisabeth Rozin, Flavor Principles, Herbs, Spices

Idylls of Cuisine #15

May 24, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.] And a Web site on medieval herb gardens, for the perennially curious …

Categories: France, Gardens, Herbs, Photography • Tags: Abbeys, France, Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Mont St. Michel

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life