Category Archives: Lent

The Meat of the Matter: A Question of Sacred Reverence

October 26, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Meat eating presents modern society with a bit of a dilemma. How to raise and slaughter large numbers of animals under humane conditions, while keeping the price down and within wallet reach of most consumers? That’s the major issue, tinged with other, often moralistic, questions. First, right up front, I am not a vegetarian, and never will be, despite having fumbled with the idea a few times. My first experience with vegetarianism came about chiefly out of curiosity. The central […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Beef, Cattle, Cooking, Festivals, Hunger, Lent, Local foods, Photography • Tags: Beef, Bruce Aidells, Farming, Meat, Michael Symon, Photography, Vegetarianism

Lemons – Tiny Cathedrals of Gold

April 6, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Lemons, their pitted, nay, prehistoric, skins secreting golden oil, Shielding sourness, evoking memories of a grandmother’s kitchen, A grandfather’s garden. Born in the East, fruitful India, A kiss of cold, albeit fleeting, spawns the yellow Immortalized in stone, paint, and clay. A fruit reverenced, Blossoming from mountain and lake, Urging cooks to slice, pierce, and squeeze, Inspiring miracles among the pots and pans. Lemon curd … Lemon pie … Lemon chicken … Preserved lemons … Limoncello … Such richness! Pasta […]

Categories: Cooking, Italian Cooking, Italy, Lemons, Lent, Lit & Food, Photography, Poetry, Uncategorized • Tags: Food Photography, Italian Cooking, Lemons, Meditations, Mint, Pasta, Poetry

Russia Ivan_the_Terrible_begs_to_become_a_Monk

From Mother Russia with Love: The Domostroi

March 29, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Cabbage soup and gruel are our food. (Shchi da kasha, pishche nashe.) ~~Russian peasant proverb Trying to ferret out tidbits about Russian food history can be tough going. Aside from the language barrier, anyone interested in Russian culinary history suffers from a major weakness: there is a terrible lack of written material contemporaneous with Forme of Cury and other such books found in the Western culinary history lexicon.* Happily, however, there’s Carolyn Johnston Pouncy’s translation of the sixteenth-century Russian household […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Lent, Methods, Reference, Russia • Tags: Carolyn Johnston Pouncy, Domostroi, Ivan the Terrible, Lent, Russia

From Mother Russia with Love: Meaty Mushrooms and Relentless Lent

March 25, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One of her greatest pleasures in summer was the very Russian sport of hodit’ po gribi (looking for mushrooms). Fried in butter and thickened with sour cream her delicious finds appeared regularly on the dinner table. Not that the gustatory moment mattered much. Her main delight was in the quest. ~~ Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory Nabokov hits on something many of us reading his words cannot really sense, cannot really feel. For those of us who grew up on canned […]

Categories: Beef, Cookbooks, Cooking, Lent, Mushrooms, Russia • Tags: Beef Stroganoff, Classic Russian Cooking: A Gift to Young Housewives, Cookbooks, Cooks, Elena Molokhovets, Joyce Toomre, Lent, Mushrooms, Recipes, Russia, Vladimir Nabokov

From Mother Russia with Love: A Monster of a Stove and Tolokno

March 23, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

You can’t cook porridge with a fool. ~~ Russian Proverb ~~ An example of Russian Lenten food, tolokno or oat flour with liquid, demonstrates the use of the astonishing Russian stove. Streamlined in the 15th century, the Russian stove incarnates the old adage, “The kitchen is the heart of the home.” Much of Russian peasant folk culture and ritual derives from these massive stoves. Taking up anywhere from a fifth to a quarter of the living space in a peasant […]

Categories: Russia, Lent, Oats • Tags: Lent, Oats, Russia, Russian stoves, Tolokno

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

Cooking Fish — Let Us Count the World’s Ways: Asia 2

March 19, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Continuing our Lenten foray through fish cookery in Asia …

Categories: Asia, Fish, Korea, Lent, Philippines, Thailand • Tags: Asia, Fish, Korea, Philippines, Thailand

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

Cooking Fish — Let Us Count the World’s Ways: Asia 1

March 11, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In Asia, cooking fish presents no problem to thousands of ingenious cooks. The abundance of fish and the surfeit of ingredients ensures that fish cookery scales heights far beyond scorched fish fingers, dried-out fillets, and mushy tuna-noodle casserole.

Categories: Asia, Asian Cooking, Cooking, Lent • Tags: Asia, Asian Cooking, Fish, Lent

Cooking Fish — Let Us Count the World’s Ways: Africa

March 8, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It’s Lent. That means fish to a lot of people, even today, despite the relaxed rules of the Church. But how to cook fish? How to get past Mrs. Gorton’s Fish Sticks? Many, many ways. Let’s look at what people around the world do to get fish from the seas, rivers, and lakes from their pots and pans to their mouths, starting with Africa:* *For more on African food, see Fran Osseo-Asare’s magnificent blog about cooking in Africa, chiefly Ghana. […]

Categories: Africa, Cooking, Fish, Lent • Tags: Africa, Cooking, Fish, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, Photo Essay, Senegal, South Africa

Mrs. Sherman G. Bonney on Lent and Fish

March 5, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Lent used to be a far more widespread concept in American society than one might think. As Mark Kurlansky made clear in his book, Cod: A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World (1997), cod overfishing led to some radical changes, including Canada’s moratorium on cod fishing in 1992. Dan Murphy of Dunville, Newfoundland created a folk art protest of this state of affairs. But just to show you how prevalent fish eating was in the U.S., here’s some […]

Categories: Fish, Lent • Tags: Fish, Good Housekeeping, 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

Idylls of Cuisine, #52

February 28, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.] *I usually don’t write anything for these “picture-only” posts, but I encourage readers to check out the “Shelf Life” Web site, because of the clever commentary on packaged foods and retro food-product ads. A column, “Shelf Life,” appears monthly in the National Toronto Post as well.

Categories: Art, Lent, Photography • Tags: Food Photography, Lent, Mayonnaise, Miracle Whip, Recipes

A soufflé looking like this one might be OK. (Photo credit: Sharon Mollerus)

Lent, According to American Cookery, the Magazine, That is

February 26, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Lent can be a really interesting time of the year. For some of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, a mere glimpse outside our windows forces the introspection and reflection behind the whole idea of Lent. Who wants to walk around out there in that howling wind and blowing snow? Better to stay inside and contemplate life’s meaning. (Or whatever.) And, as we’ve talked about before, Lent comes at a time where food used to be rather scarce and so […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, American Cooking, Cooking, Lent, Menus, Reference, Spinach, Sweet Potatoes • Tags: Africa, American Cookery magazine, Boston Cooking School, Lent, Menus, Spinach, Sweet Potatoes

Idylls of Cuisine, #51

February 21, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Art, Carnevale, Lent, Paintings • Tags: Art, Lent, Paintings, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

Shrovetide Pancakes — A Shrove Tuesday Tradition

February 15, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Shriven/Shrove: archaic : to confess one’s sins, especially to a priest* When they heard the “pancake bell,” people flocked to the church to be “shriven” or confessed on Shrove Tuesday, and ready to make the pancakes that date back to Saxon times. If you think of Shrove Tuesday pancakes as stodgy, thick American pancakes, think again. Meant to use up eggs, butter, and milk just before Lent, these pancakes resemble French crêpes and Italian crespelle more than the flapjacks so […]

Categories: Cooking, Eggs, English Cooking, Lent • Tags: English Cooking, Lent, Pancakes, Photo Essay, Shrove Tuesday

Butterfly of Winter — Fabergé’s Mardi Gras Egg

February 12, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Carnival is a Butterfly of Winter whose last mad flight of Mardi Gras forever ends his glory.” ~ Perry Young, The Mistick Krewe: Chronicles of Comus and His Kin Theo Fabergé, grandson of Carl Fabergé, created this dazzling egg to commemorate Mardi Gras in New Orleans:

Categories: Art, Eggs, Lent, Russia • Tags: Eggs, Fabergé eggs, Mardi Gras, New Orleans, Theo Fabergé

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

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life