Gherkins & Tomatoes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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Another Holy Trinity of the Kitchen: The Magic of Milk, Eggs, and White Flour

September 21, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Every time I pour crêpe batter into my 8-inch Teflon*-lined crêpe pan, I see deep scratches, the ones that Habiba made with the fork she used while cooking a three-egg cheese-and-herb omelet one wintry Moroccan morning. The scratches don’t affect the pan’s performance, just as wounds and scars don’t fundamentally change who we are and how we function in the world. Pots and pans, like sugar-burned hands and fingers cut by dull knives, bear pale scars. These blemishes remind me […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cattle, Cooking, Eggs, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Milk, Morocco, Photography, Techniques • Tags: Crêpes, Eggs, Flour, France, French Cooking, Meditations, Milk, Photography

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Hildegard von Bingen, First Female Food Writer in the West?

September 23, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

You may have come a long way, baby, but it’s taken a while. Food historians generally agree that Sabina Welserin of Augsburg, Germany wrote the first cookbook penned by a woman in the West (Europe) in 1553, Kochbuch.  Anna Weckerin’s Ein Küstlich new Köchbuch von allerhand Speisen (A Delicious New Cookbook) appeared in 1598 in published form. Like the English writer Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Ann Weckerin’s (later Keller) book went through many reprints. But it seems to […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Germany, Middle Ages, Milk • Tags: Anna Weckerin, Food, Food in Medicine, Hildegard von Bingen, Medieval Women, Middle Ages, Physica, Sabina Welserin

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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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Mrs. Mary Randolph

Good Golly, Miss Molly: Mary Randolph’s Boarding House

September 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In March, 1808, readers of The Richmond Virginia Gazette would have read the following advertisement in the pages of that newspaper: “Mrs. RANDOLPH Has established a Boarding House in Cary Street [Richmond], for the accommodation of Ladies and Gentlemen. She has comfortable chambers, and a stable well supplied for a few Horses.” Author of The Virginia House-Wife and affectionately named “Queen Molly” by her friends,* Mary Randolph opened her doors to paying customers when her Federalist husband, David Meade Randolph, […]

Categories: American Cooking, Milk, Rice, United States, Virginia • Tags: American Cooking, Boarding Houses, Cooks, David Meade Randolph, History, Karen hess, Mary Randolph, Refrigeration Invention, Samuel Mordecai, Southern cooking, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia, Virginia House-Wife

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MILK: That Old White Magic

December 16, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[Note: Ironically, I just came across this December 15, 2008 NPR interview with Anne Mendelson:  "A Culinary History of Milk Through the Ages." The NPR story includes a recipe for Apple-Onion Cream Soup.] Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages, with 120 Adventurous Recipes that Explore the Riches of Our First Food, by Anne Mendelson (Alfred A. Knopf. 338 pages. $29.95). When it comes to writing about food, Anne Mendelson is no slouch. A southeastern Pennsylvania native, Mendelson […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Critic's Corner, Food Columns, Milk • Tags: Anne Mendelson, Book Reviews, Cooking, Food, Milk

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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.

My book, due out September 15, 2013

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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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