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Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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Fence with chain

Preserving Food Preserves Life, or, Mutton in the Pot

April 10, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

At first blush, it appears that people slaughtered sheep, being smaller than cattle or pigs, to cook and eat them in their entirety for feasts, or perhaps in times of famine. A closer look at the literature reveals that people also borrowed many of the methods used for preserving pork to mutton, including something called Macon, which took the place of bacon in Britain during the Second World War.* Many other ways for preserving mutton stem from the British Isles. […]

Categories: England, English Cooking, Food writing, Lamb, Mutton, Photography, Sheep • Tags: C. Anne Wilson, Darina Allen, David Hackett Fischer, Faroe Islands, Food Preservation, Hannah Glasse, Jennifer Stead, Lamb, Mutton, Peter Brears, Potted meat, Professor Gamgee

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Sweet Potato Slips (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

The Story Behind a Kitchen-Counter Sweet-Potato Patch

February 6, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

There’s something about sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) that I cannot seem to shake. Maybe there’s some sort of cellular memory thing going on, like perhaps my ancestors sat around somewhere, gratefully chewing on roasted sweet potatoes, surviving a dry spell in food production. A good reason to foster a sweet potato patch. We Americans now harvest far fewer sweet potatoes than 50 years ago – 190,000 acres in 1960 as opposed to 116,000 in 2010 according to statistics from the […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, Gardens, Local foods, Photography, Southern Food, Sweet Potatoes • Tags: Elinor Fettiplace, George Washington Carver, Hilary Spurling, John Gerard, John Parkinson, Sweet potato, Thomas Dawson

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Tomato and tomato gravy dark contrasts 2

* The Legacy of a Typo: A Meditation on Tomato Gravy

January 21, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Stirring the flour into bacon drippings, creating a blond roux, and sautéing finely chopped yellow onions in the mixture turned out to be quite an adventure. No, I didn’t burn myself – for once – on the lethal combination of hot fat and flour. No, in the seemingly simple and slow act of making tomato gravy, to serve over biscuits or fried chicken, I started thinking about the role of gravy in Southern cooking, and by extension, in American cooking […]

Categories: Cookbooks, England, Gardens, Local foods, Photography, Southern Food, Tomatoes • Tags: Colin Spencer, Cuisine of the Southern United States, Kate Burridge, Mary Randolph, Southern cooking, The Virginia House-wife, Thomas Jefferson, Tomatoes

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Lighthouse stairs, Corolla, NC (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

Fallow Time, or, The Rewards of Lying Low and Following Winding Paths

November 28, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The photographs said what I couldn’t. The winding paths on Roanoke Island, site of Raleigh’s Lost Colony, ending up in as-yet-unseen destinations, presented me with an unanticipated gift, fruit of the fallow time thrust upon me recently. What does it mean to be fallow? Uncultivated, unplowed, untilled, unseeded, unplanted, unsown, unsowed, empty, neglected, unused, idle, dormant, resting, inactive, inert, barren, unproductive, unyielding, unfructuous, unfruitful, fruitless, uncultivable, exhausted, depleted, worn out, impoverished, poor, bare, bald, arid, dry, waste – according to […]

Categories: England, Food writing, Photography • Tags: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Fallow time, Julia Cameron, Meditations, North Carolina, Outer Banks, Photography, Roanoke Island, Southern Food, The Lost Colony, Walter Raleigh

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Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Ode to the Great Pumpkin [Pie]: Speak, Memory*

October 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye, What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie? ~ John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Pumpkin,” 1850 Some people moan and descend straight into mourning with the first frost. Not me. You’ll find me in my kitchen, with clanging pans and steaming windows, eager to put aside the perpetual salads and raw cucumbers of summer. Yesterday afternoon, I baked my first pumpkin pie of the season. Yes, I confess: I basically […]

Categories: American Cooking, England, Food writing, Photography, Pies--Sweet, Pumpkin • Tags: John Greenleaf Whittier, Libby's, Photography, Pie, Pumpkin, Southern cooking

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Fairclough 1 2

Cookbooks Tell Many Tales

June 25, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The doorbell rang with that eerie little tinkle, the one you hear when you’re watching a movie and a phone rings somewhere off camera, unseen and slightly unnerving. I jumped up and ran to the door and yanked it open. Tires churning, the UPS truck took off, throwing gravel at a speed that would be criminal, provided a policeman lurked in the bushes, as they are wont to do around here. I glanced down at my feet. The box lying […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Europe, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Alexander Hamilton Sands, Archie Graham-Palmer, Auguste Escoffier, Charles Herman Senn, Gloucester Road School of Cookery, M. A. Fairclough, The Ideal Cookery Book

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Elizabeth David photo

The Dame* with a Pot and a Pen

June 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

She’s a little bit like liver, you see. You either hate her or love her. Elizabeth David, according to this blog post from The Dabbler in the U.K., deserves a lot more kudos than she’s getting: I confess to having fallen just a little in love with David since I first discovered her books a few years ago. She was wilful, adventurous, determined and uncompromising. But for more than anything, I love her for significantly improving the quality of my […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Cooking of Provincial France, Elizabeth David, French Provincial Cooking, Haiti, M. F. K. Fisher, Order of the British Empire, The Dabbler

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White Hart Inn

Recipes from the White Hart Inn: An 18th-Century Cookbook for Today’s Cook

May 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The writing of cookbooks often becomes fraught with injured egos and accusations bordering on the libelous. William Verral’s Recipes from the White Hart Inn provides a splendid example of that truism. During the heyday of Whig political power in eighteenth-century England, the Duke of Newcastle enjoyed the services of a chef named M. Pierre de St.-Clouet until that gentleman decided to cut and run to the service of another, William Keppel (Earl of Albemarle), the Duke’s friend and then the British ambassador […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cookbooks, Critic's Corner, England, English Cooking, Europe, France, French Cooking • Tags: A Complete System of Cookery, Clouet, Duke of Newcastle, Earl of Albemarle, Recipes from the White Hart Inn, Thomas Gray, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Whig Party, White Hart, William Keppel, William Verral

Captain Warren's Cooking Pot

Captain Warren’s Cooking Pot

February 6, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A type of pot used during the colonial era, as well as in Victorian England in general, Captain Warren’s Cooking Pot served many purposes. Mrs. Beeton wrote of it, giving dimensions and prices, in her Book of Household Management. The pot closely resembles the couscousière, a pot used in North Africa for making couscous and familiar to the French there, and an Asian bamboo steamer, another utensil familiar to the French. Probably by means of this invention less food is wasted […]

Categories: Cooking, England, English Cooking, Food Science, France, French Cooking, Lamb • Tags: Captain Warren's Cooking Pot, Colonial era, Cooking, Cooking equipment, Cookware, Culinary History, England, Food History

French cooks Hand-Writing-upon-the-Wall-Gillray

Feeding France’s Grande Armée: A Pictorial Tribute for Memorial Day

May 30, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

An army marches on its stomach. ~~Napoleon Bonaparte~~ And Napoleon Bonaparte would know. He, like Adolph Hitler in another time, tried unsuccessfully to conquer Russia. What he fed his soldiers in large part depended upon the invention of a Mr. Nicolas Appert, who invented a [relatively] safe way to preserve food by canning, or sealing in glass bottles, actually. Tins came later. War, a scourge that humans have yet to eliminate like smallpox, demanded weapons, yes, and men to carry […]

Categories: England, France, French Cooking, Paintings, Photography • Tags: Algeria, Banania, French Army, James Gillray, Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I, Napoleonic Wars, Nicolas Appert, Spahis, War photography, World War I

French cooks Verral  cook frontis 1759

Will Verral’s Masterpiece of 1759: A Complete System of Cookery

May 11, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The English could never catch a break in the kitchen. Why, as early as 1759, in A Complete System of Cookery, an innkeeper/author named Will Verral sniffed at the ragtag equipment that passed for a batterie de cuisine in even upper-class English households. Stir in the English and French antagonisms brought about by long enmity, and you have indeed a fine kettle of fish. Here’s what our Will said to the cook in one such establishment, he being hired to cater […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, England, English Cooking, Fish, France, French Cooking • Tags: A Complete System of Cookery, Cuisine Francaise, French Cooking, Pierre de St.-Clouet, Thomas Pelham-Holles, William Verral

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Photo credit: Wendi Dunlap

Why Bother with Culinary History?

May 9, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A friend recently asked me, “Why is culinary history important?” Actually, her words came out of her mouth a little more harsh sounding than that:  ”Why are you wasting so much of your time on that stuff? Why don’t you just write up some recipes, like how to make that great bread you always make?” Momentarily speechless, I realized she asked me the question that I periodically ask myself. What difference does it make if we know about French chefs […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, France, Lit & Food, Methods • Tags: Cookbooks, Culinary History, England, English Cooking, France, French Cooking, French cuisine, Rick Bayless, Tom Jaine, Virginia Woolf

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French cooks Duke of Newcastle and his cook

The Duke of Newcastle’s Pique, or, A Good Chef is Hard to Find

May 7, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The diarist Samuel Pepys,  no mean observer of human foibles that relieve the monotony of day-to-day human life, recorded — almost in real-time —  the Francophilic transformation of the English nobility after the 1660 Restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Since Pepys devoted a portion of his library to cookery, it’s not surprising that his diary records some of  the culinary aspects of the Restoration. One of Pepy’s most favored books bore the title L’école parfaite des officiers de bouche, written […]

Categories: Chefs, England, English Cooking, France, French Cooking, Methods • Tags: Cuisine Francaise, Duke of Newcastle, Earl of Albemarle, France, French cuisine, London, Pierre St.-Clouet, Samuel Pepys, Tammany Hall, Thomas Pelham-Holles 1st Duke of Newcastle, William Keppel

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French cooks Newcastle house

French Chefs Abroad: Clouet to Newcastle, Part I

May 2, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Once upon a time, every duke and lord in the kingdom coveted his neighbor’s French cook (or chef). And no duke showed his ire and disappointment more than did the Duke of Newcastle [Thomas Pelham-Holles, British Secretary of State for 30 years and later Prime Minister] when chef Pierre de St.-Clouet left the duke’s entourage. By way of introduction to this most fascinating of tabloid-worthy stories, Elizabeth Robins Pennell*, an oft-quoted culinary bibliographer, wrote a small blurb about these gentlemen […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, England, English Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: A Complete System of Cookery, Duke of Newcastle, Elizabeth Robins Pennell, My Cookery Books, Pierre Clouet, Thomas Pelham-Holles, William Verral

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French cooks Alexis Soyer Alcide

French Chefs Abroad: Alexis Soyer and His Irish Famine Soup Kitchen

April 26, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It is to be regretted that men of science do not interest themselves more than they do on a subject of such vast magnitude as this; for I feel confident that the food of a country might be increased at least one-third, if the culinary science was properly developed, instead of its being slighted as it is now. ~~ Alexis Soyer, A Shilling Cookbook (1855) Jamie Oliver’s fight to bring nutritional nirvana to West Virginia might remind you of somebody. […]

Categories: Beef, Chefs, Cooking, England, France, French Cooking, Nutrition, Soup • Tags: Alcide Mirobolant, Alexis Benoît Soyer, Cuisine Francaise, England, Famine Soup, France, French cuisine, Irish Famine, Pendennis, Reform Club, William Makepeace Thackeray

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Chef Alexis Soyer

News and Views

April 25, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

First of, I would like to point out a new feature on “Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons & Tomatoes.” Go to the sidebar on the right and scroll down until you see ALL 700+ POSTS – CLICK ON THE BOX AND USE DOWN ARROW KEY This feature gives you the ability to browse through a listing of every single one of the past posts on ”Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons & Tomatoes.” I’d like to thank Jan Whitaker for alerting me […]

Categories: England, France, French Cooking, Ireland • Tags: Alexis Soyer, England, Famine, France, Ireland, Soup Kitchens

Christmas French soldier

Idylls of Cuisine, #92

December 19, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: England, English Cooking, France • Tags: Christmas in wartime, Christmas pudding, England, English Cooking, France, French soldiers, Guerre mondial, Soldats françaises, World War I

Beeton grave

Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: Isabella Beeton (Part II)

August 26, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(Continued from August 23, 2010): Brillat-Savarin’s comments about the English being the worst cooks in the world drew a sniff from the proper Isabella, sure that her book would right that situation. In spite of the moralizing tone, and the plagiarism, BOHM became a runaway bestseller. Readers and critics considered the soup, fish, sauce chapters the best. Quantities of food served at dinner now seem phenomenal. But Isabella emphasized strict economy,  sometimes distressingly so, especially with family meals. She tackled […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, England, English Cooking • Tags: Book of Household Management, Cookbooks, Cooks, English cookery, Food, Isabella Beeton, Rare Books

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mrsbeeton11

Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: Isabella Beeton (Part I)

August 23, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Today in Britain, “Mrs. Beeton” is a culinary trademark not unlike “Betty Crocker,” whom General Mills created in a Frankensteinian moment to boost sales by appealing to Every Housewife.

The difference between the two ladies is that Mrs. Beeton was a real, breathing, living personage who wrote a monster of a book with a monster of a title: The Book of Household Management Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc.—also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort, BOHM for short.

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, England, English Cooking • Tags: Book of Household Management, Cookbooks, Cooks, English cookery, Food, Isabella Beeton, Rare Books

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Dick and Jane

See Jane Cook:* A Word About Sophie Grigson’s Mum

July 7, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Jane Grigson is the nearest thing that we have on this side of the great green bouillabaisse to M.F.K. Fisher, with learning and wit that are rarely devoted to such a banausic subject as stuffing food down one’s cake hole. ~~ Philip Howard No wonder I’m feeling a bit green. The annual Oxford Food Symposium begins in a few days and this year’s theme trumpets “Cured, Fermented, and Smoked Foods.” Now, for foodists, foodies, gastronomes, and just plain folks, this […]

Categories: England, English Cooking, Food writing, French Cooking • Tags: Charcuterie, English cookery, English Cooking, Fermentation, Jane Grigson, Oxford Food Symposium, Sophie Grigson

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Herbals sage

Of Herbs and Other Country Messes

May 11, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When the  sage comes to life again, after its long, lonely slumber in the freezing winter, I always just stop for a moment and marvel. How could this happen? Left outside the kitchen door, the sage bows before the relentless blasts of icy winds and heavy snow. Its leaves and branches shrivel to skeletal silhouettes, as the soil in the cracked terracotta pot contracts into something better suited for building material than for sustaining life. And yet, come April, tiny […]

Categories: Art, Books, Cookbooks, England, Europe, Greece, Middle Ages, Paintings • Tags: De materia Medica, Dioscorides, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, Herbals, Herbs

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Lavender bunches

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme … and Lavender

May 5, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

First, a pinch of etymology. The Greeks called lavender nardus after the Syrian city of Naardus, from which comes the word “spikenard.” (More on spikenard in a second.) As for our word, “lavender,” we must once again thank the Latin language for lavare, meaning, “to wash.” A member of the mint family, and cousin to rosemary, lavender can be used like rosemary in many dishes. Its blossoms form little spiked shoots sprouting flowers of many hues, not just purple. Cooking […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Cookbooks, England, Europe, Middle Ages, Middle East, Monasteries, Spain • Tags: Al-Andalus cookbook, Arab cooking, Charles Perry, Hildegard of Bingen, Lavender, Mary Magdalene, Mukhallal, Scarborough Fair, Spikenard

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Kvass

From Mother Russia with Love: Great Lent, the Beginning

March 22, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Many years ago, a high school history teacher of mine asked our class to write down everything we knew about Russia within the space of about 30 minutes. Most people wrote a brief paragraph, describing the red Communist flag with its hammer and sickle. Some delved a little into the cruelty of the tsars and others brought up the dark and heavy literature of Dostoevsky. Still others spouted all the Cold War propaganda about the dangerous spread of Communism. I […]

Categories: Beer, Cooking, England, Lent, Russia • Tags: Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Redesdale, Great Lent, Kvass, Mitford family, Russia

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Simnel+Cake+1

Idylls of Cuisine, #54

March 14, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Cakes, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Lent, Photography • Tags: Food Photography, Mothering Sunday, Simnel Cake

Lent noumbles for Lent

A Bloody Fish Story

March 2, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The price of fish is something nice — for fishmongers through the centuries, that is. And over the years, observers noted the rise and fall in the cost of fish according to the liturgical season and changes in the rules of the Roman Catholic Church.* Because of the price of fish, or even the mere existence of fish in an otherwise protein-scarce environment, people utilized every bit of the fish in the same way they used the carcasses of pigs […]

Categories: Cooking, England, English Cooking, Fish, Lent • Tags: Blood-thickened sauces, Chaudron sauce, Chawdon sauce, Chawdron sauce, English cookery, Fish, Forme of Cury, Lent, Medieval Cookery, Samuel Pegge

Glasse eel soup

The Eels of Hannah, Or, Hannah Glasse’s Lenten Recipes

February 19, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Poor Hannah Glasse. Literally. Except for Martha Stewart, she may be the only cookery book writer who did hard time for financial woes. Author of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, this eighteenth-century woman lived a life that her contemporary Jane Austen could have invented in one of her novels. You know, young illegitimate daughter of a moneyed gentleman marries n’er-do-well rogue, bears eight children, and ends up on the scrap heap, faced with the need to make […]

Categories: Books, Cookbooks, Cooking, England • Tags: Eels, England, English Cooking, Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy

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Photo credit: Chris Blakeley

The Black Fast, a Mortification of the Appetite

February 10, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With Lent fast approaching (February 17, 2010), an examination of fasting and other fleshly challenges seems apropos. Religious-based fasting, in the history of English speakers anyway, belies its importance in the commonly used word for the first meal of the day: breakfast or “break fast.” After all, for much of Western European history, almost half the days of the year counted as times of fasting. Locavores and vegetarians today will find much to inspire them in the dishes created to […]

Categories: Bread, England, English Cooking, France, French Cooking, Lent, Middle Ages, Monasteries, Soup • Tags: Bread Soup, Brian M. Fagan, Cod: A Biography, Fasting, Fish on Friday, Lent, Marc Meneau, Mark Kurlansky, Roman Catholic Church

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Pikliz (Photo credit: Trina Sargalski)

Ats Jaar: A Little Taste of Southeast Asia in the Antebellum South

February 4, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A little prickle of recognition, a sense of déjà vu — that’s what happened when I turned to page 86 of A Colonial Plantation Cookbook: The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770 (1984, edited by historian Richard J. Hooker*). There it was: “Ats Jaar, or Pucholilla.” My first thought was, “What is an Indian (as in India) pickle recipe doing in a cookbook from colonial South Carolina?” And then I read this, in a footnote provided by the editor: […]

Categories: Asia, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, India, Methods, Science of cooking, Southern Food • Tags: Colonial Plantation Cookbook, Fermentation, Hannah Glasse, Harriott Pinckney Horry, Pickling, Richard Briggs, Richard J. Hooker, Southern cooking

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Evelyn John Cook Book

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

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Dig for Victory 1

Dig for Victory! Locavorism in Eons Past

December 31, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Looking at the past almost always calls up that old adage: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”* Take locavorism’s wartime antecedents … As these WWII posters from England’s “Dig for Victory!” campaign prove, the idea of local foods is not one whose time has come, but whose time has come again. Aimed at encouraging the civilian population to grow their own gardens, “Dig for Victory” freed up commercially grown food for the troops.  The “Dig for Victory” program began in […]

Categories: Agriculture, American Cooking, Art, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Europe, Gardens, Hunger, Local foods, Locavores, Posters, United States • Tags: Art, Cooking, England, Food, Posters, Propaganda, United States, Victory Gardens, Wartime, World War II

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Christmas goose

Cooking One’s Goose

December 24, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The traditional English Christmas goose didn’t really make it over here on the other side of the Atlantic, chiefly because the native (and meatier) turkey prevailed. Neither did the other traditional dish of the English Christmas  season — roasted boar — with its tusked furry head, mouth filled with an apple. [That's a pagan custom, incidentally, handed down since the Druids, or so some authors claim. We'll delve into that one later. After all, we have until January 6th, 2010 […]

Categories: Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Middle Ages, Poultry, Recipes • Tags: Christmas, Cookbooks, Curye on Inglysch, Goose, Recipes

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Mulled Wine (Photo credt:  )

Mulled Wine, a Timeless Taste of the Divine?

December 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge’!” “Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried. “A Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. ~~~ A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens ~~~ OK, blame it on Charles Dickens, that literary […]

Categories: Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Wine • Tags: Christmas, Cider, Eliza Acton, Honoré Balzac, Isabella Beeton, Mulled Wine, The Cook's Oracle, The Peasants, William Kitchiner

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Christmas Wassail_Bowl

Wassailing Through

December 21, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Wassaile the trees, that they may beare You many a Plum and many a Peare: For more or lesse fruits they will bring, As you do give them Wassailing. A foot of snow presses against the front door, the presents glimmer under the Christmas tree, and Aunt Lillie’s sugar cookies lie temptingly in the old painted tin box. And the Wassail punch simmers slowly on the stove, the fragrance of cinnamon wafting through the house. On a dark, cold winter […]

Categories: Christmas, England, English Cooking, Video • Tags: Celtic Music, Christmas, England, English Cooking, Recipes, Twelfth Night, Wassail

Christmas Charles_Rennie_Mackintosh_-_The_Wassail_1900

Idylls of Cuisine, #42

December 20, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Art, Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking • Tags: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Christmas, England, Wassail

Butter Scott Silver Fern

Captain Robert Scott’s 97-Year-Old Butter

December 19, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Captain Robert Scott died in the Antarctic in 1912 as he and his fellow explorers tried to return from the South Pole. His camp, preserved by the Antarctic Heritage Trust, rendered up an interesting find: two large squares of butter, still labeled with the original labels and wrappers.  An article from The Times Online (December 17, 2009) states: The Antarctic hut used by Captain Robert Scott as his expedition base has released a surprising find, nearly 100 years after the […]

Categories: Butter, England • Tags: Antarctica, Butter, Captain Robert Scott, South Pole

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Fruitcake cartoon

Fruitcake, Fermentation by Another Name

December 15, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

We never eat fruitcake because it has rum, And one little slice puts a man on the bum. Oh, can you imagine the pitiful plight Of a man eating fruitcake until he gets tight? A man who eats fruitcake lives a terrible life. He`s mean to his children and beats on his wife. A man who eats fruitcake dies a terrible death, With the odor of raisins and rum on his breath! “Away with Rum,” Temperance Union (Aussie Band) Christmas […]

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cakes, Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Fermentation • Tags: Breads, Cakes, Christmas, English Cooking, Fermentation, Fruitcakes

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Butter Churn Lid

Buttering Up

December 14, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Peppermint flavoring, almond extract, gooey candied fruit, thick dark molasses, perfumey cardamom … the list could go mouth-wateringly on and on. Christmas cooking and Christmas baking demand many ingredients not normally used in everyday cooking. And that’s what makes the holiday season such a sheer delight for those besotted with all things culinary. But one ingredient stands out, essential in many Christmas dishes, and likely resting quietly in just about every refrigerator of every serious cook. Not because of its […]

Categories: Africa, American Cooking, Butter, Christmas, Cookies, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Morocco, Southern Food • Tags: American Cooking, Butter, Christmas, Edna Lewis, Harriott Pinckney Horry, Smen, Southern cooking, Sugar Cookies

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Christmas Nast_Civil_War_Christmas

Civil War Christmases

December 10, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 100 and 50 guns and plenty of ammunition, also about 25,000 bales of cotton. Telegram from William Tecumseh Sherman to Abraham Lincoln, December 22, 1864 Many authors write about the austerity of American Christmas celebrations prior to the Civil War (1861 – 1865), but that’s because those writers focus on the North’s Puritan heritage. Most of our current ways — mostly Germanic in origin — of […]

Categories: American Cooking, Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Menus, United States, Virginia • Tags: Accomplisht Cook, American Cooking, Christmas, Civil War, Eggnog, English Cooking, Menus, Robert May, Southern, Thomas Nast, Virginia

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Christmas Victorian_christmas

Idylls of Cuisine, #40

November 29, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Art, Christmas, England • Tags: England, Painting, Victorian Christmas

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Food forms the very essence of life, from the fruit fly to the elephant, with humans in between. So much of what we do revolves around cooking, eating, and the finding of food. Here you'll discover stories, meditations, and photographs celebrating the places that we call home. And, of course, the food that garnishes it all.

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What’s Cookin’ Here

  • A Bare Table is Like an Artist’s Canvas
  • “Stew’s so comforting on a rainy day.” *
  • Singkong, Manioc, Mandioca, Mandió, Tapioca, Yuca: Singing the Praises of Manihot esculenta (Cassava)
  • The Promise of Apple Blossoms

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