Gherkins & Tomatoes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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French Bistro

French Bistro: Seasonal Recipes

July 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“A visual feast as well as a gastronomic one . . . Organized by ten essentials that any successful bistro must have, French Bistro almost reads like a graphic novel, thanks to the prolific and colorful photographs.” When you walk into a Paris bistro straight off the street on a cool fall day, the odd leaf rustling at your feet as you cross the threshold, you expect something almost magical to happen, don’t you? And, according to the authors of yet another […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking • Tags: Bertrand Auboyneau, bistronomy movement, Bistros, François Simon, France, French cuisine, Paris, Parisian bistros, Paul Bert, Restaurants

Dawn of the Belle Epoque

Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

June 12, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Rich with the flavor of words . . . a marvelous and kaleidoscopic view of Paris . . .” Gazing on Paris now from the vantage point of the Pont Neuf or the top of the Eiffel Tower or down the Champs Élysées, it’s nearly impossible to grasp the fact that in 1871 Paris lay smoldering, burning in the same way you’d rid yourself of your stinky garbage after a week without trash pickup. The Franco-Prussian War left hundreds of […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Critic's Corner, France • Tags: Alfred Dreyfus, Basilique du Sacré Coeur, Belle Époque, Berthe Morisot, Communards, Dawn of the Belle Epoque, Eiffel Tower, Erik Satie, Eugene Manet, Franco-Prussian War, Mary McAuliffe, Paris, Paris Discovered: Explorations in the City of Light, Paris Notes, Roger Shattuck, Sarah Bernhardt, The Banquet Years, Victor Hugo

French cooks pariahs

Assimilating “The Other”

March 15, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Leslie Page Moch, author of Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe Since 1650 (1992, Indiana U. Press), has written another book, Pariahs of Yesterday: Breton Migrants in Paris (Duke University Press, 2012). Her book promises insights into the process of integration, a very useful understanding of present-day migrants in France, people from France’s former colonies: Beginning in the 1870s, a great many Bretons—men and women from Brittany, a region in western France—began arriving in Paris. Every age has its pariahs, […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Europe, France, Reference • Tags: Bretons, Brittany, France, Integration, Leslie Page Moch, Migration, Paris, The Other

Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Dreaming of France on a Foggy February Morning

February 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

This morning I woke up to fog so thick that I wondered if perhaps I’d morphed into a another place altogether, like London. The branches of the large oak clinging to the hillside resembled nothing less than a print of a retina found in an old medical book. I started thinking of France as I made my coffee, even though last night it snowed in Paris of all things, as the author “Becoming Madame” so clearly shows, and I knew […]

Categories: Art, France, Photography • Tags: Culinary History, Food History, France, Paris, Snow

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French cooks Imam in Paris

Arabs in France: An Early Account by an Egyptian Imam

January 20, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Rare is the native English speaker who reads and writes Arabic, classical or otherwise. And thus a vast body of literary work lies inaccessible to those who desire to increase their understanding and appreciation of the Arabic-speaking world. Because there is this hole in the material available to scholars and others, the scholarship of much of Europe’s past likely could be construed as being incomplete or even erroneous. That’s why it’s necessary to herald the appearance of works like An […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Egypt, France, French Cooking, Middle East • Tags: al-Tahtawi, Culinary History, Egypt, Food History, France, Imam in Paris, Orientalism, Ottoman Empire, Paris

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Street criers of Paris (Art credit: Francois Gerard, 1700)

Cris de Paris: The Street Criers of Paris in Bygone Days

November 4, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Mushrooms abound in the markets of France in October and early November. And since I found stalls bursting with all sorts of mushrooms, I began to wonder if there were any “street cries” or market songs or whatever you might wish  to call them peculiar to mushrooms. Associated with various métiers (or trades) dating back to the Middle Ages, these cries/songs provide some hints about foods sold and the way people like ambulatory vendors advertised their wares in days before […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Mushrooms, Photography • Tags: France, Mushrooms, Oysters, Paris, Pleurottes

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Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Worshipping Different Gods … The French (Food) Reformation

November 2, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

People throughout history reveal their preoccupations through their architecture, artifacts, and the written word. These aspects reflect what matters to societies at various times. It comes down, in a way, to questions of taste, not just alimentary, but cultural and moral. The fashions, the trends, the modes of the day pass and morph into others as the years go by. Like all ideas, current preoccupations – with simple, natural, sustainable, green – mirror the concerns of a certain segment of […]

Categories: Art, French Cooking, Local foods, Locavores, Photography • Tags: Aix-en-Provence, Cafés, Choir stalls, France, French Cooking, Paris

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French cooks armagnac vieux

L’Armagnac Vieux of the Tour d’Argent (and More)

October 29, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Beauty comes in many guises. Appropriately for a restaurant in full view of Notre Dame and its mythical hunchback, the dining room of the Tour d’Argent in Paris resembles the prow of a ship sailing off into the sunset. Some critics say its reputation for good food departed some time ago. An auction in December 2009 cleaned out its wine cellar, the better offerings hidden from the Nazis by a false wall built during their occupation of France. These ugly, […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Armagnac, France, French Cooking, Paris, Tour d'Argent

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French cooks colonial chocolate

The Turtle Wins, Not the Rabbit

October 17, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Leisurely Sunday lunches provide only one example of the difference between French and American ways of approaching life. Although many Parisian women often walk very fast along the sidewalk and drivers usually screech to a halt when the little green figures pop up at  street crossings, the truth of the matter is that a slower pace prevails in nearly every endeavor. Take Monoprix, for example. Now it is true that Monoprix is not at all like Walmart, but for the […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Chocolate, France, French Cooking, Monoprix, Paris, Shopping

French cooks hot chocolate

Chocolate Chaud / Hot Chocolate

October 13, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Hot chocolate in Paris is like nothing else.

Categories: Chocolate, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Angelina's, France, French Cooking, Hot Chocolate, Paris

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France nazi occupation 1

The Nazi Occupation of Paris: Signs and Symbols

October 10, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Cafe life, Nazis, Paris, World War II

Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Belleville Revisited

October 6, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The Belleville market — straddling the crossroads of Paris’s 10th, 11th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements — presents the determined photographer with a tremendous dilemma: how to take pictures without being literally swept up in the crowds and jostled like a buoy bobbing in heavy seas? Although the market runs from the Menilmontant metro stop to Belleville (about 2 km.), the easiest way to tackle it  seems to be to get to the Belleville stop, the beginning (or end, depending your […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Algeria, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Photography • Tags: Belleville, France, French cuisine, Open-Air Markets, Paris

The Last Vineyard in Paris? Clos Montmartre

October 3, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Through the seasons of the year, the Montmartre vineyard prevails … the temple of Bacchus no longer sits on the steep slopes and the vineyard covers only a small portion of prime real estate, 1500 square metres to be exact. Benedictine monks in the 12th century produced wine here, their monastery destroyed during the French revolution. A group of artists in the 1920s saved the vineyard and prevented it from being overrun by developers hungry for another type of greenery. […]

Categories: Agriculture, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Photography, Wine • Tags: Clos Montmartre, France, Grapes, Paris, Photography, Vineyards, Wine

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And mine ... (Photo credit: Mallory )

In the Parisian Kitchen

September 30, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Many years ago, when I first fell in love with Paris, I stayed in hotels and suffered through agonizingly mediocre dinners in nameless bistros, always longing for a kitchen of my own, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf. When I finally realized that renting an apartment made more sense monetarily and culinarily, why then I invested in a string bag and gaping basket with a maw like a lion’s, just for “le shopping” that occupies many Parisians’ waking thoughts. But what I […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: France, French Cooking, Kitchens, Paris

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Knock and Enter: A Gallery of Parisian Door Knockers

September 28, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

 

Categories: Art, France, Photography • Tags: Art, Door knockers, Doors, France, Paris, Photography

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Belleville Metro Station

Belleville, Paris, France: II

September 22, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Algeria, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Belleville, France, French Cooking, Paris, Photography

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Photo credit: Cecily Upton

Belleville, Paris, France: I

September 19, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Belleville, the site of my upcoming study in France, filled with other worlds and other tongues, other ways and other dreams, but all French, just the same.

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Agriculture, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Photography • Tags: Africa, African Cooking, Belleville, France, French Cooking, Open-Air Markets, Paris

Le Cordon Bleu Paris Today

Dreaming of Le Cordon Bleu Paris

July 25, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When you dream, dream big. But remember that dreams mean a lot of hard work. People might help you realize your dreams by repeatedly nudging you forward or opening a door for you or mentioning an opportunity, but only you can make the dream happen. And sometimes  if you help others with their dreams, they achieve their dreams and goals because they do the hard work and they follow through — you just provide the encouragement, the elbow in the […]

Categories: Cooking, France, French Cooking, Photography, Spinach • Tags: Boudin Blanc, Caul Fat, Champagne Ardenne, Chocolate & Zucchini, Cordon Bleu, Culinary Schools, France, French Cooking, Julia Child, Paris, Rethel, Spinach Quenelles

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The Weird, Different, and Just Plain Interesting Restaurants of Paris: A Photo Gallery

July 18, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Like many of you, I dream about being in France. A lot. And, of course, I daydream about eating in Paris, in spite of naysayers who point their compasses at other, more culinarily au courant corners of the globe. I’m already making lists of culinary adventures in preparation for my grant-sponsoredjourney this fall, doing research in Paris and Aix-en-Provence. The following are but just a few of the places I’m imagining …

Categories: France, French Cooking, Photography, Restaurants • Tags: Food Photography, France, French Cooking, French cuisine, Paris, Photography, Restaurants

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French cooks Exposition Anvers 1930 women eating

Eating Around the Empire in a Day: The 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition

June 30, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To her sons who have extended the empire of her genius and made dear her name across the seas, France extends her gratitude. ~~ Inscription on the facade of the colonial museum, now the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration Before EuroDisney, people who might never be able to go to Tahiti or Senegal or Morocco often attended various fairs and expositions. One such exposition left a lasting mark on France:  the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition. Twenty-five years in […]

Categories: Africa, Asia, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Morocco • Tags: 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition, Africa, France, Louis Hubert Lyautey, Marseille, Morocco, Paris, Vincennes

Arab France Coller

The Lost Arabs of Marseille: Food, Family, and France

June 17, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In his  timely Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798-1831 (2011), Ian Coller writes of the Arab families associated with Ya’qub Hanna, an Egyptian, a Copt and first non-French general who’d served with  Napoleon Bonaparte in his military campaigns in Egypt. The cover, I believe, was chosen to highlight the idea of the Arab “Other.” The artist, Anne Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (1767 – 1824) titled it “Portrait of Mustapha” and painted it in 1819. These families […]

Categories: Africa, Chicken, France, French Cooking • Tags: Chicken, Egypt, France, French cuisine, Immigration, Marseille, Molokhiyya, Paris

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Photo credit: Maggie Osterberg

The Paris Apartment, Fleeting Glimpses

June 9, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: France, Photography • Tags: Apartments, France, Paris

The Paris Apartment, Fleeting Glimpses

June 6, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: France, Photography • Tags: Apartments, Paris

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French cooks Fatema Hal 1

Fatéma Hal, Queen of Moroccan Cuisine in France

June 3, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fatéma Hal, a Moroccan chef with a penchant for busting female stereotypes, cooks traditional Moroccan food at her Parisian restaurant, La Mansouria (11, rue Faidherbe, 11th Arrondissement, Paris), opened in 1984. The restaurant began with only women working there, including Fatéma’s mother, the cooking in “the hands of women.” Unusual for France, non? One of many “ambassadors” of non-French cuisine from France’s former colonies, Fatéma Hal is a moving force in the dissemination of Moroccan cooking in France today. Not […]

Categories: Africa, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Fatéma Hal, France, La Mansouria, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Paris

French cooks Paris Apt kitchen

The Paris Apartment, Fleeting Glimpses

June 1, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

No wonder everyone shops every day, no wonder bread baking and pastry making tend to be left to the pros.

Categories: French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Apartments, France, French Cookinhg, Paris

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Scenes from La France Profonde

April 8, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Desserts, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Desserts, Fauchon, Food Photography, France, French Cooking, Paris

Raymond Mason's "Le Départ des fruits et Légumes ... "

Le départ des fruits et légumes du cœur de Paris: The Loss of Paris’s Les Halles

February 28, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In 1969, Paris’s ancient central market of Les Halles, having grown enormously, and congested to boot, moved to Rungis, just on the outskirts of the city. Émile Zola wrote of the old Les Halles in his The Belly of Paris, volume three of Zola’s twenty novels examining the French bourgeoisie, civil conflict, hunger, and poverty. Les Halles dated back to at least 1183. The nearby church of St. Eustache, where Louis XIV received his first communion, contains one of the […]

Categories: France • Tags: Emile Zola, Food in Art, France, Les halles, Open-Air Markets, Paris, Raymond Mason, Rungis, St. Eustache Church, The Belly of Paris

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Paris Landmarks

February 6, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A picture, worth a thousand sighs.

Categories: France, Photography • Tags: Eiffel Tower, France, La Tour Eiffel, Landmarks, Paris

Scenes from La France Profonde

January 29, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Foix, France, French Cooking, Markets, Paris, Photography, Red peppers

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Vadouvan 2

To India, via Paris’s Le Passage Brady

January 24, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In spite of French presence in India for a couple of centuries, trying to find Indian curry in France tends to be a bit of a chore. The first Indian restaurant didn’t open in Paris until 1975. Those in the know (mostly British expatriates pining for curry in London) lament the lack of good Indian food, although there’s an occasional stampede to certain Indian restaurants in parts of Paris, only to find that the owners are Pakistanis.  And Richard C. Morais’s […]

Categories: Asian Cooking, Chefs, France, French Cooking, India, Spices • Tags: Cuisine Francaise, Cuisine indienne, Curry, France, French cuisine, French India, India, Indian Cooking, Paris, Passage Brady, Spices, Vadouvan

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Alain Ducasse (Photo credit: Executive Class Blog)

Culinary Diffusion? Yes, in Alain Ducasse’s Kitchens

January 18, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In a way, it’s the French version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” World-famous French chef, Alain Ducasse, chose fifteen women from Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris housing mostly poor immigrants mainly from France’s former North African colonies. An article in The New York Times tells the whole story, almost a Cinderella saga: 15 Women Win Golden Tickets to Alain Ducasse’s Kitchens – NYTimes.com All are from Sarcelles, all were either born outside of France or are first generation immigrants. […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Arab cooking, Chefs, Cooking, French Cooking • Tags: Alain Ducasse, Chef, Cooking schools, Cuisine Francaise, France, French cuisine, Haute Cuisine, Mali, North Africa, Paris, Sarcelles

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Afterwards ... (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

Brassai’s Paris, a View Through the Tunnel of Time

January 8, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Before the second world war, filled with the wandering souls of the “Lost Generation,” Paris throbbed with the fluttering notes of jazz and the clattering of horse hooves on cobblestones. And Paris also served as a subject for the art of photographers like Brassai, one of the earliest photojournalists, influenced by surrealism. Brassai (born in Hungary as Gyula Halász) moved to Paris in 1924, worked as a journalist, and started taking pictures in 1930 to use with his articles. He had […]

Categories: Beef, France, French Cooking, Photography, Potatoes • Tags: Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, Art, Brassai, France, French cuisine, Lost Generation, Paris, Photography, Steak and Frites

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Harissa

La Malbouffe, Oui ou Non? Fast (Ethnic) Food and the French

January 5, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If you saw the following headline  pop up on one of the many news feeds streaming into thousands of computers around the global, you might think, “Oops, some editor didn’t ingest their caffeine fix in time!” French Get the Taste for Fast [Ethnic] Food (Click on the link above to read the article that inspired this post.) Ah oui? The honest-to-goodness truth? A pita restaurant in Antwerp, Belgium scored a whopping 13 out of 20 points from the picky GaultMillau […]

Categories: France, French Cooking • Tags: Colette, Cooking, Fast Food, France, French colonial empire, French cuisine, Harissa, Immigrant cuisine, North African Cuisine, Paris, Recipes

Idylls of Cuisine, #84

October 17, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Angelina's, Charlotte, Paris, Patisserie

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Mushrooms in Paris market

Idylls of Cuisine, #78

September 5, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: France, French Cooking, Mushrooms, Photography • Tags: Farmers' markets, France, French Cooking, Mushrooms, Open-Air Markets, Paris

cacao-hot-chocolate-angelinas

Angelina’s Hot Chocolate

March 13, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

For anyone who’s walked through Paris on a rainy winter day, the cold wind whipping your coat about your knees, your umbrella suddenly quitting on you. Drenched, you find yourself on the Rue de Rivoli, making for Angelina’s tea room. You walk through the crowds of tourists, hoping you look as French as those ladies sitting along the wall, their proper black suits and pearls just so. You sit at the small round table that your waitress points to with […]

Categories: Chocolate, France, Recipes • Tags: Angelina's, Bernini's Escstast of St. Teresa of Avila, Chocolate, Culinary History, Food, France, Paris

Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

France Encore

March 10, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

France bewitches. Burgundy. Normandy. The Loire Valley. The French Alps. Provence. All sublime. But the besotted dream most of returning to live in some tiny Parisian garret, drinking high-class red or white plonk, writing of life, death, and love while seated at a sticky Formica-covered table at Flore or Deux Magots. And surreptitously paging through Eric Maisel’s A Writer’s Paris: a guided journey for the creative soul. (Wish there were one for the cook’s soul …) For those who love […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Pork, Recipes • Tags: Cooking, Food, France, French Food, Paris

A Paris cafe, a bit of beer, and voila!

Reading about Food: Musings on a Cold Winter Morning

December 13, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Brillat-Savarin, a French philosopher, once wrote “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.” He sure had that right. Food serves as a metaphor for some larger truths about humanity. In contemplating food and our ways of dealing with it, we learn certain things about ourselves. When we talk about food, we’re really talking about ourselves. What is revealed in the way a culture approaches? What’s revealed in our culture when we contemplate our approach to food?

Categories: Food writing • Tags: Books, Brillat-Savarin, Food, Food writing, Paris, Reading

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Root vegetables for sale in Paris market

Open-Air Markets, Vanishing Communities?

August 2, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“How much more French can I get?,” I asked myself as the vendor behind the melons glared at my right hand snaking toward a cantaloupe.

Poking the tomatoes, prodding the chile peppers, breaking off a hunk of fragrant golden ginger, and deliberately bruising cilantro leaves to get a whiff of that perfume, I moved through the Parisian open-air market on Rue de Rennes, the Eiffel Tower looming behind me. There, in front of me, dozens of golden cantaloupes sat, pyramided in a perfect triangle.

Categories: French Cooking, Haiti, Morocco • Tags: Food, France, Haiti, Markets, Morocco, Paris

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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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