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SUGARPLUM VISIONS: Christmas Cookies

December 20, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

…visions of sugarplums danced in their heads. ~~Clement C. Moore~~ ” ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” Happy Holidays to all readers and visitors to Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons et Tomates! I will “see” you again on January 2. ‘Tis soon the season to be jolly. And to bake cookies, the sugarplums of today. I’m about to head out to the kitchen to do just that right now. For many Americans, especially those of Northern European descent, Christmas without special […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Christmas, Cookies • Tags: Bibliographies, Christmas, Cookies, Cooking, Culinary History, Food, Food History, Gingerbread man, Recipes

Versailles, The King's Kitchen Garden (Photo credit: Pete Reed)

Le Potager du Roi, a Kitchen Garden Fit for a King

April 11, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Winter still chills those of us north of equator and so the time has come to dream of gardens and kings and and cabbages and things like seed catalogs. A while ago (OK, more than a while!), because of the burgeoning trend nowadays for local foods and backyard gardens — the most famous being the Alice-Waters-inspired White House veggie garden, a news story about Versailles came to my attention via Rachel Laudan’s excellent blog on food history. Published by The […]

Categories: Bibliographies, France, French Cooking, Gardens • Tags: Bibliographies, France, French Cooking, Kitchen Gardens, Louis XIV, Potager du Roi, Times Literary Supplement, Versailles

A Whiff of Madeleines and a Sniff of Curry: A List of Delectable Food Memoirs

July 15, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Why do you love to read food memoirs? Barbara Frey Waxman attempts to answer that question in “Food Memoirs: What They Are, Why They Are Popular, and Why They Belong in the Literature Classroom.”* But it doesn’t take an academic treatise to prove what you, and publishers, know: food memoirs sell because people love stories. Some of these memoirs enthrall, others end up tossed across the room, relegated to the Thrift Shop pile. A fine line wiggles between sheer narcissism […]

Categories: Books, Lit & Food • Tags: Autobiography, Bibliographies, Food in literature, Food Memoirs, Memoirs

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

Ghosts of Gourmet: Ann Seranne

October 17, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

About three days ago, caught in the throes of egg cookery, I realized that Ann Seranne’s name doesn’t ring a whole lot of bells these days in food circles. Who? Even Alice Arndt’s celebrated Culinary Biographies fails to mention Seranne. We shouldn’t ignore this lady and her place in the pantheon of culinarians contributing to the world of food. After all, not only did Seranne serve as executive editor of now-defunct Gourmet magazine, she worked as food editor of the […]

Categories: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Cookbooks, Food writing • Tags: Ann Seranne, Bibliographies, Complete Book of Egg Cookery, Cookbooks, Cooks, The Art of Egg Cookery

A Honey of a Bibliography

October 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Beekeeping is farming for intellectuals. ~~Sue Hubbell, A Book of Bees Here are some of the many resources I’ve relied on for the series on honey and bees (9/28/09 through 10/1/09). If you read no other material on bees and beekeeping, be sure to read Dr. Eva Crane’s work. Letters from the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind, by Stephen Buchmann and Banning Repplier (2005) In Letters from the Hive, Professor Stephen Buchmann takes us into the […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Books, Reference • Tags: Bees, Bibliographies, Honey Bees

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

Reveling in Books: DIY (Old) Food, Knowledge Lost and Now Found

June 11, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Want to make your own cheese? How about pickles or chow-chow? Sausage and headcheese? Raise a couple of cows or keep a flock of geese? At a time when people want, no, need, to know the how-tos of old foodways, it seems that there’s a book for making just about everything. Fortunately, because this knowledge is dying out along with the older generation, many of whom had hands-on ties to pre-World-War-II American agriculture one way or another. If they themselves […]

Categories: Agriculture, American Cooking, Bibliographies, Book Reviews, Cookbooks, French Cooking, Locavores • Tags: Agriculture, American Food, Barnyard in Your Backyard, Bibliographies, Canning, Charcuterie, Cheesemaking, Culinary History, Food Preservation, Foodways, Foxfire Books, Locavores, Meat-Smoking, Root Cellaring, Wood-fired ovens

Kaleidoscope of Peruvina Food (Used with permission.)

After Pizarro: Food in Colonial Peru and Today (Conclusion)

December 8, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In Lima, a city more Spanish than perhaps any of the other seats of Spanish viceroyalties in the New World, the Spanish elite built huge mansions from the money raised by the tribute demanded of the natives and other less noble members of the society. Tribute usually consisted of the ubiquitous silver, but also included potatoes, corn, fish, and coca. The class differences imposed by traditional Spanish social structure elevated the Spanish born in Spain above the Creoles, or people […]

Categories: Latin America • Tags: Add new tag, Bibliographies, Cooking, Food, Latin America, Peru, Recipes

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

Día de los Muertos (Todos Santos)/ Day of the Dead Food-Laden Altars

October 31, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(Note: The italicized portion of the following article is an excerpt from something I wrote for an encyclopedia on the history of dining and entertaining, Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl, Greenwood Press, 2008.) In Mexico, the Día de los Muertos (Todos Santos) (Day of the Dead/All Saints’ Day) resembles the norteamericano Halloween only superficially. Mexico is deeply, profoundly Catholic. And Mexico is also deeply, profoundly Aztec. Or at least traces of indigenous religions color the Catholic festivals […]

Categories: Bread, Halloween, Mexico, Pork, Recipes • Tags: Bibliographies, Calaveras, Cooking, Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, Food, Halloween, Mexican Cooking, Mexico, Pork Chile Verde, Todos santos

Arab Food and Cuisine — Inspirations

September 24, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Cooking in the Arab world, in general, adheres to one of the most healthful food patterns on earth, probably healthier in many ways than the Mediterranean model (and that is the stuff of a special future post). The freshest food, the most beautiful colors, the greatest imagination in wielding the pan, this is what the food of the Middle East offers. But most of all, I hold women like this woman in my heart, because she is Everywoman, Arab and […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Middle East • Tags: Arab cooking, Bibliographies, Books, Cooking, Food, Middle East

Ecstatic in Farmers’ Markets (with a List of Cookbooks at the End)

September 8, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Not too long ago, driving through the flat land of northern Illinois, I passed near Galena, a charming Victorian town nestled among bluffs and rolling hills near the Mississippi River. Just before arriving in the town, along scenic Highway 20, several small farmers’ markets beckoned. Now, truth be told, my hands tingle and my blood thunders through my veins when I spot a farmers’ market on the side of the road or in the middle of a busy town. The […]

Categories: Corn, Food Columns, Recipes • Tags: Bibliographies, Cooking, Corn, Farmers' markets, Food, Galena, Recipes

Turkey Talk and Stuff: A Gobble Ahead

August 30, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“When the wine has stopped fermenting in November, the turkey is ready for roasting.” –Italian Proverb– The slight chill in the air lately conjures up dreams of fall nights replete with soup and crunching leaves underfoot and turkey dinners. Wild turkeys dart in and out of the bushes around the woods near my house. And I whisper to them, “Godspeed, run, for Thanksgiving will be upon you before you know.” Some people consider the turkey, and not the bald eagle, […]

Categories: American Cooking, Bibliographies, Cuban food, English Cooking, Recipes, Thanksgiving, Turkey • Tags: Bibliographies, Cooking, Food, Jamestown, Pilgrims, Plymouth, Thanksgiving, Turkey, Turkey Dressing, Turkey Stuffing

The Metamorphosis of Italian Cooking in America: The Myth and the Reality

August 11, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Typical Italian-American dishes that one will not find on menus in Italy: Stuffed Shells Penne Alla Vodka Spaghetti w/Garlic and Oil Penne Ala Bolognese Baked Ziti Pasta and Broccoli Pasta Primavera Macaroni and Cheese Fettuccine Alfredo Vegetable Lasagna Chicken Cutlet Parmigiana Chicken Francese Chicken Cacciatore Cheesecake Italian Rum Cake And the litany of differences continues on, reality blurring with myths and stereotypes. Italian-American cooking differs a great deal from Italian cooking as known in the various regions of Italy. The […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Food writing, Italian Cooking • Tags: Bibliographies, Cookbooks, Food, Italian Cooking

African Cooking and Food: A Select Bibliography

August 1, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The Africa News Cookbook: African Cooking for Western Kitchens. New York: Penguin, 1985. Ayensu, Dinah Ameley. The Art of West African cooking. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1972. Bayley, Monica. Black Africa Cook Book. San Francisco, Calif. : Determined Productions, 1977. Beier, Georgina. They Keep Their Fires Burning: Conversation on Food, Manners and Hospitality in Africa. Bayreuth, Germany: Bayreuth African Studies Series 72, 2005. Boahene, Christine Joyce. Recipes for West African Foods. Accra, Ghana: Black Mask Ltd., 1994. Board on Science […]

Categories: Africa, Bibliographies, Cookbooks • Tags: Africa, Bibliographies, Cookbooks, Food

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life