Gherkins & Tomatoes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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Fence 2

Foods for a Funeral and a Farewell

March 8, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

What to make of the lavish feasts that come after a funeral? When I attended my first funeral, at age 27, I cried a lot, even though I didn’t know the  deceased, my sister-in-law’s father. My grandparents all died before I turned 20 and lived 1250 miles away. Living as my family did on a poor college professor’s salary, attending funerals wasn’t going to happen. Add to that my mother’s extreme reluctance to even speak of her own mortality and […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cakes, Cookbooks, Cookies, Cooking, Desserts, Norway, Photography, Pies--Sweet, Reference, Southern Food • Tags: American Cooking, Death, Dying, Funerals, Norway, Southern Food, Wisconsin. Southern cooking

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lydia-maria-child

Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: The Other Mrs. (Lydia) Child

September 16, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Events constantly reinforce the old saying, “History repeats itself.” Like the other Mrs. Child (Julia, that is), Mrs. Lydia Maria Child wrote a best-selling cookbook, The Frugal Housewife, Dedicated to Those Who are Not Ashamed of Economy (1829). Like Mary Randolph (author of The Virginia House-wife), Lydia Maria Child (1802 – 1880) married a man more in love with bad debts and other troubles than with her. And again like her modern “namesake,” Julia Child, Lydia Maria lived in Boston. […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cookbooks • Tags: American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooks, Food. Cooking, Lydia Maria Child

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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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Colonial Williamsburg wreath 1

Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg

December 7, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Now Christmas comes, ‘tis fit that we Should feast and sing, and merry be; Keep open house, let fiddlers play, A fig for cold, sing care away; And may they who thereat repine, On brown bread and small beer dine. Virginia Almanack 1766 To paraphrase former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld: There’s the Williamsburg Christmas we ought to have and the Williamsburg Christmas we actually have. And thus are culinary myths born. Modern-day Williamsburg Christmas only faintly resembles Williamsburg Christmases […]

Categories: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Christmas, Cooking, English Cooking, Oysters, Southern Food • Tags: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Christmas, Colonial Williamsburg, English Cooking, Southern cooking, Virginia

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Vintage Postcard

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

November 26, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL! For more vintage Thanksgiving postcards, see my post about them from last year: Vintage Thanksgiving Postcards.

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, Thanksgiving, Turkey • Tags: American Cooking, Cooking, Thanksgiving, Vintage Postcards

Sarah Loman

The Historic Gastronomist

November 14, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Like old cookbooks? Like old recipes? Then don’t miss this down-to-earth video, shot by Liza de Guia, entitled “The Historic Gastronomist,” about a 27-year-old Brooklyn woman named Sarah Loman who is resuscitating centuries old recipes from American history. Loman writes a food history blog called “Four Pounds Flour.” Meet Sarah Lohman. She’s not a professional cook, nor a historian, yet what she is passionate about involves both cooking and history. Sarah is a rare breed of hobbyist. A “historic gastronomist”. […]

Categories: Agriculture, American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, Methods, Video • Tags: American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooks, Historic Gastronomist, Historic Recipes, Liza de Guia, Videos

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Young Girls Eating

Tradition, and the Foods of Hunger

November 12, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In the third never-ending winter, a famine struck the land. You had nibbled me from inside – emptiness pulled my chest towards the spine and it sunk from yearning. From Taming Dragons Laughing and joking, we all stood expectantly around my sister-in-law as she stirred the grøt, watching the bubbling white mixture burble lazily in the pot. Dollops of the gluey pudding in bowls, small mounds of sugar, speckles of cinnamon, and melting golden butter resting on the surface of […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, Norway • Tags: American Cooking, Culinary Traditions, Food Traditions, Gruel, Immigrant Cooking, Norway, Porridge, Pudding, Rømmegrøt

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Balt (Photo credit: Marshall Astor)

The Chicken or the Egg? 2. The Cooking of Eggs

October 13, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

There is reason in roasting of eggs! ~~~ James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides In nineteenth-century America, giddy with conquest and Manifest Destiny, domestic science denizens rose up, called themselves home economists, and jumped on the bandwagon of cleanliness and right thought. The results of that movement set the stage for today’s proscriptions and prescriptions regarding eating and cooking, especially when it came to eggs. And eggs, thankfully,  seem to have survived the greatest roll-coaster ride in […]

Categories: Cooking, Eggs, English Cooking • Tags: American Cooking, Cooks, Eggs, English Cooking

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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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Boarding House Comic 2

Boarding Houses, Fodder for Popular Culture

September 22, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Boarding houses, a slice of the folkloric American food story … American food icon James Beard grew up in an Oregon boarding house operated by his mother.  And New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne cut his teeth in his mother’s Mississippi boarding house kitchen. In a way, we’re still feeling the impact of those women’s pots and pans through the culinary legacies of their sons. Other citizens of these United States (and elsewhere) contributed to boarding house lore, too. […]

Categories: American Cooking • Tags: American Cooking, Boarding Houses, Cartoons, Cooks, Our Boarding HOuse

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Logging in 1912, Minnesota

Lumberjack Culinary Lingo

September 17, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Unlike cowboy lingo, lumberjack lingo did not add many words to the pantheon of American spoken English.  Nevertheless, this fascinating list of terms — used by lumberjacks to describe food and items associated with food and cooking — proves highly entertaining. Notice the meaning of “pregnant woman pie,” for one. Axle Grease: butter Bait Can: lunch bucket Bean Burner: a bad cook Bull cook (also derogatorily called  the crumb boss): a boy who performed chores around camp, such as sweeping […]

Categories: American Cooking • Tags: American Cooking, Culinary Slang, Logging Camps, Lumberjacks

Logging Camps food

Bean Burners and Hash Rasslers: More Logging Camp Food

September 15, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

On a typical day in 1929, cooks at Ritter Company Camps of Dickenson County, Virginia , served the following menus to anywhere from 75 – 100 loggers: BREAKFAST: Cornflakes Oatmeal Stewed or fried apples Canned peaches Fried ham, pork chops, or beef steak, with country gravy Fried potatoes Biscuits Butter, jam, jelly, syrup Coffee, milk LUNCH: Baked or boiled potatoes Pork and beans Stewed corn, cabbage, or other vegetable Pickles Cole slaw Onions Fried pork or stew (Irish, vegetable, or […]

Categories: American Cooking, Menus • Tags: "The Old Log Train", American Cooking, Cooks, Hank Wliiams Sr., Logging Camps, Menus

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A Paul Bunyan Breakfast

The Appetite of Paul Bunyan

September 14, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Legends and folklore provide wonderful entrées into cultures. And in the United States we’ve generated a few of these delectable tall tales ourselves. Take the mythical lumberjack Paul Bunyan, who stands heads above the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow and other similar characters. Lumberjacks created Paul and, with each telling, he grew bigger.  And hungrier. Take the story of his birth, for one: … it took five giant storks, working in relays, to deliver Paul to his parents.  And what […]

Categories: American Cooking • Tags: American Cooking, Legends, Logging Camps, Paul Bunyan

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Rice Krispie Treats

Questions, and More Questions …

August 6, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full. ~Lord Dunsany Sitting in the passenger seat of any conveyance for any length of time gives a person plenty of time to think plenty of thoughts. The following questions are just some that clamored for attention as I watched the vastness of the USA midwest whizzing by […]

Categories: American Cooking, Home Economics • Tags: American Cooking, Farms, Jello, Midwest, Muskie, Rice Krispies

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james-beard

The Triumvirate of American Cooking

April 25, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

TRIUMVIRATE: Latin triumvirātus, from triumvirī, board of three [men] Americans owe a lot to the following three people — without them our grocery stores and larders and pantries would still be filled with cans of baked beans and boxes of Jell-O.* James Beard Julia Child Craig Claiborne *David Kamp’s The United States of Arugula (2006)  supports this thesis. The more the merrier, I always say.

Categories: American Cooking, Cookbooks • Tags: American Cooking, Cooking, Cooks, Craig Claiborne, Culinary History, Food, James Beard, Julia Child

manuscript-cookbook

Manuscript Cookbooks

March 12, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Three manuscript cookbooks held in Virginia Tech’s Newman Library’s Special Collections promise rich material for food history scholars. Food historian Rachel Laudan says this about manuscript cookbooks in Mexico: What are not included in this list are manuscript cookbooks. Many of the great convents in Mexico still have magnificent manuscript cookbooks from the eighteenth century.  These are not only written in a beautiful hand, but really are part of the treasure of Mexico because it was in the convents that […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cookbooks • Tags: American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, Cooks, Culinary History, Food, Manuscript Cookbooks

Photo credit: Kevin D. Weeks

Roots on My Mind: Rutabagas

January 26, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

‘The next we come to is the Rootabaga Country where the big city is the Village of Liver-and-Onions,’ said Gimme the Ax, looking again in his pocket to be sure he had the long slick yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it. …. ~~Carl Sandburg, Rootabaga Stories Rutabagas (Brassicca napus), also called “swedes,” meaning “thick root” in Swedish (rotabagge), look for all the world like a turnip gone wild. Botanically,  rutabagas combine the genes of both cabbages […]

Categories: Agriculture, American Cooking • Tags: American Cooking, Cheap Eats, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Root Vegetables

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banana_book

500 Years of Grapes and Wine in America: A Remarkable Story

January 24, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Curated by Prof. Dan Longone and Jan Longone, February 16-May 29, 2009 Clements Library, University of Michigan Open to the public, free of charge, Mon-Fri 1-5pm Lecture on the exhibition, Sunday May 10, 3-5pm Prof. Dan Longone and Jan Longone Co-sponsored by the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor PLEASE ADDRESS ANY QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS TO: jblong@umich.edu

Categories: American Cooking, Food News, Wine • Tags: American Cooking, Clements Library, Culinary History, Jan Longone, Wine

John Harvey Kellogg

Top 10 Food Trends for 2009 — According to the Food Channel

December 27, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[Note: This post is a bit of a rant in reaction to the Food Channel list of trends for 2009.] The Food Channel announced its predictions for foodie trends in 2009. (See The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch for the whole story, based on a press release from the Food Channel.) 1.  Home on the Range — Downsized economy breeds new generation of home chefs, more food-savvy than their predecessors. 2.  Foodie 2.0 — Growth of virtual and non-virtual food communities. […]

Categories: American Cooking, Food News • Tags: American Cooking, Culinary History, Food, Food Channel

Monticello (Used with permission.)

Celebrate Colonial American Cooking: Cookbooks for Thanksgiving and Christmas

November 13, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Want to celebrate American food history and ingenuity this year? The great state of Virginia gave birth to eight U.S. presidents — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. And they all liked to eat, some more than others. In fact, Thomas Jefferson still claims the title of being the most gourmet-minded of the lot. The following books will help you greatly in planning meals, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas […]

Categories: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Cooking, English Cooking • Tags: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Colonial America, Colonial Virginia, Cookbooks, Cooking, English Cooking, Food

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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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