Gherkins & Tomatoes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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Look Up, Look Down: Escaping to the Real World

April 19, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When spring peeks stealthily through the trees, the smell of the air transports me – as it were – to my grandmother’s vanity table. There I used to sniff her talcum powder, inhaling an aroma reminiscent of flowers, patting my face with the fluffy white powder puff, until I looked like a singer in a Japanese Noh drama. Memories like this pour forth when I walk through a lush garden not far from a busy street on a campus teeming […]

Categories: Gardens, Photography • Tags: Gardens, Meditations, Photography

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Jalapenos (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

With Time and Frost, Things Fall Apart

November 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fall can be a bittersweet time, a time to look forward to cool-crisp nights, hearty meat-and root-vegetable stews, and the smell of burning leaves, that is, you’re allowed to burn them where you live. On the other hand, the coming of fall and frost signifies the end of the growing season, and the beginning of fallow time. The life force fades from the trees as their iridescent leaves drop. But it’s in the garden where the change in temperature registers […]

Categories: Agriculture, Chile Peppers, Gardens, Herbs, Photography, Tomatoes • Tags: Gardens, Jalapeños, Lavender, Photography, Tomatoes

Pears 1

Waiting for Pears

August 30, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I bought four very green, very hard pears four days ago. Waiting for them to ripen made me think about how quickly everything happens in our lives today. There’s something soothing about watching the ripening process, something profound actually, because no matter how much I might have wanted to make a pear cake, I just couldn’t do it until the moment was right. Every day I examined the pears, noting changes in their color, their texture, and their aroma. And […]

Categories: French Cooking, Photography, Agriculture, France, Food Science, Local foods, Pears • Tags: Gardens, Canning, Pears, Pear Cake

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Lavender Madame de Sevigne

Lavender Fields Forever

April 30, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

No smell of cow patties flitted through the air, thank goodness. After all, just before lunch who wants to contemplate biting into a sandwich perfumed with the stench of manure? We  stood on the knoll about the Maison Beliveau and watched the black-furred cattle, including two hefty bulls, running down the hill, hell-bent on cozying up to some people foolish enough to walk into the pasture. The animals no doubt hoped for a morsel of food other than the grass […]

Categories: Cattle, Cookbooks, Cooking, Gardens, Herbs • Tags: Gardens, Herbs, Lavender, Madame de Sévigné

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Photo credit: Rich Lewis

The Random Herbalist: Into the Setting Sun

August 5, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

For the moment, the end of the series of notes on monks and their gardens.

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Gardens, Herb Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries

Sisymbrium Officinale

The Random Herbalist: Charlemagne, St. Gall, and the History of Medicine

August 3, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The history of medicine, a fascinating subject, shows how people began to understand more and more about the corporeal body. Herbs played a big role in the evolution of this understanding, and medieval monasteries encapsulated this knowledge: The curriculum of these cathedral schools embraced originally the Trivium, (arithmetic, grammar, music), and the Quadrivium (dialectics, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy). Charlemagne, in the Capitulary of Thionvillc (805), ordained, however, that medicine also should be taught (as already stated) under the name of Physic. […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Middle Ages, Monasteries • Tags: Charlemagne, Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Monks, St. Gall

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Monastic Gardens 12

Idylls of Cuisine #24

August 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Gardens, Monasteries, Photography • Tags: Gardens, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens, Monks

Photo credit: Bart Busschots

The Random Herbalist: Monks and Plant Migration

July 31, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Along with dill, which we’ve briefly brushed by, other plants also traveled with the monks as they made their way across Europe: To the monks, who in their way were great gardeners, we are indebted for the introduction of several plants ; and since in many cases the ancient monastery has disappeared, the flowers which were wont to grow in its garden are often taken for wild ones. Among others, the Snowdrop was a favourite flower in a monastic garden, […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Middle Ages, Monasteries • Tags: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Monks, Snowdrop

Monastic Gardens 14

The Random Herbalist: The Roman Influence on Monastic Gardens

July 30, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With this post, I celebrate a year of writing “Gherkins & Tomatoes!” Thank you so much to everyone who visits the blog. I look forward to the coming year! The Romans wielded profound influence on the architecture and organization of monasteries … and, hence, on us … centuries later. According to Viollet-le-Duc : —* ” It is probable that the first cloisters were porticoes of the same kind as those of antiquity, that is to say;— origin, a sloping roof […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Monks, Roman Empire, Romans

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Figure 24, St. Gall Plan

The Random Herbalist: St. Gall, A Model Garden Plan?

July 29, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[NOTE: I'd like to thank the readers of Gherkins & Tomatoes for their patience this summer --- in the last few weeks I've moved from a house where I've lived for fourteen years, my favorite cat died, and I've been writing under deadline for an article for an encyclopedia as well as for a local magazine.  And now I'm currently attending a family reunion. I promise to be more fully "present" to the blog and all reader comments soon.  Meaning […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens, Monks

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Monastic Gardens 8

The Random Herbalist: The Hortus Eremitje

July 28, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Charlemagne had a shovel in every monastic garden, or so it seems:* As early as the days of Charles the Great (Charlemagne) the cloister owned outside property, and just as at Canterbury we must conclude that the plan of St. Gall meant the orchards and vineyards to be outside. The whole time of Charles the Great— and the St. Gall plan may be supposed to belong to it — was of great importance for horticulture. Charles himself encouraged personally the […]

Categories: Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Capitulare de Villis, Charlemagne, Gardens, Herbs, History of Garden Art, Marie-Luise Gothein, Medieval Gardens, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens, Monks, Purslane

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Monastic Gardens 3

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

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Monastic Gardens 10

Idylls of Cuisine #23

July 26, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Gardens, Monasteries, Photography • Tags: Gardens, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens, Photography

Gregor Mendel

The Random Herbalist: Gregor Mendel

July 25, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Medieval monks knew a great deal about plants and their characteristics. And so did monks of later times. Take the example of Gregor Mendel, as does this article discussed in a March 2009 Journal of Biology article: Why Didn’t Darwin Discover Mendel’s Laws? Mendel solved the logic of inheritance in his monastery garden with no more technology than Darwin had in his garden at Down House. So why couldn’t Darwin have done it too? A Journal of Biology article argues […]

Categories: Gardens, Monasteries, Peas, Recipes • Tags: Gardens, Genetics, Gregor Mendel, Mint, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens, Peas

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Monastic Gardens 2

The Random Herbalist: The Monastic Physic Garden

July 24, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Most of the gardens originally associated with monasteries contained numerous plants used for medicinal purposes. And, if nothing else,  at least these gardens provided the background for mystery novelist Ellis Peters’s sailor-turned monk and herbalist, Brother Cadfael. The cloister-garth was a square, planted with grass and possibly shrubs, divided by two intersecting paths into four equal quarters. In the centre was a savina, supplying water for drinking and washing purposes. These cloisters were south of the church, and surrounded by […]

Categories: English Cooking, Gardens, Monasteries • Tags: England, Gardens, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens

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Photo credit: John Menard

The Random Herbalist: An Introduction to Early Monastic Gardens

July 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A series on monastery cooks (“At the Tables of the Monks“)*, and a recent comment on the impact of medieval monks on the spread of dill throughout Europe, led me to reflect in more detail on the influence of monks on early European agricultural practices. For the next several days, I will be sharing notes from my reading. Thus within the walls of the Benedictine monasteries were large gardens cultivated by the monks in common, and often smaller ones assigned […]

Categories: English Cooking, Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries • Tags: Gardens, Monasteries, Monks

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Sunflowe mosaic

Idylls of Cuisine #19

June 28, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Gardens, Photography • Tags: Food Photography, Gardens

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Photo credit: Richard White

Idylls of Cuisine #15

May 24, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.] And a Web site on medieval herb gardens, for the perennially curious …

Categories: France, Gardens, Herbs, Photography • Tags: Abbeys, France, Gardens, Herbs, Monasteries, Mont St. Michel

Gardening at the White House

April 4, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A history of American gardens, a part of the “Eat the View” effort to turn the 18 acres of the White House backyard into a garden. Sounds like the Obama garden is not the first garden to be planted there.

Categories: American Cooking, Gardens, Video, White House • Tags: American Food, Barack Obama, Culinary History, Gardening, Gardens, Video, White House

Photo credit: Jeremy Cherfas

The Garden of Bartolomeo Vanzetti

March 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Sometimes I close my eyes and just remember, remember being in ___ [name of place] and then it was just (pause) sit at the table, and I got a lot of brothers and sisters, you know. My dad’s there and I just sit at the table and it’s like, eat and laugh and talk and drink and enjoy with my family . . . There’s very few feelings like that in the world and a person can experience that through […]

Categories: Gardens, Italy • Tags: Anarchy, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Food, Gardens, Italy, Nelson Mandela, Nicola Sacco, Prison 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.

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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