Gherkins & Tomatoes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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Artist palette film grain rs

A Bare Table is Like an Artist’s Canvas

May 16, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

There’s something about tables, big, little, or bare – and those bare ones  in particular – that make me want to festoon them with food I’ve cooked, like floral garlands at a grand wedding. I feel an urge, too, to seat people on the equally vacant chairs, saying, “Come on now, sit down a spell, and let your worries fade away like the mist on a hot summer morning.” Well, maybe I wouldn’t say it exactly that way, but the […]

Categories: Art, Beans, Cassava, Chile Peppers, Corn, Latin America, Photography, Potatoes, Pumpkin, Tomatoes, United States, Virginia • Tags: Beans, Cassava, Chiles, Corn, Photography, Potatoes, Squash, Tomatillos

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Pansies in the rain 3 arty resize

“Stew’s so comforting on a rainy day.” *

May 12, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

And so are flowers. *Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948) © 2013 C. Bertelsen

Categories: Agriculture, Photography, Poetry • Tags: Flowers, Photography, Rain

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Manioc Film effect resize

Singkong, Manioc, Mandioca, Mandió, Tapioca, Yuca: Singing the Praises of Manihot esculenta (Cassava)

May 10, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Chipa, chipa!” yelled the little Paraguyan girl – all of maybe 8 years old, thrusting a large flat basket draped with a smudged white cloth against the open window of the bus. I smelled the warm cassava bread even before she flicked off the cloth with a flourish, much as a magician reveals the white rabbit cowering under his top hat. I pointed to the bread closest to me and she held out her hand. Payment first, then food. I […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Cassava, Cooking, Food writing, Latin America, Local foods, Paraguay, Photography • Tags: Brown streak disease, Cassava, Chipa, Latin American cooking, Manioc, Manioc flour, Paraguay, Photography

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Large still life with apple

The Promise of Apple Blossoms

May 6, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Spring, when she sashays in, always takes my breath away. Such vivid raiments cover her, so radiant that Joseph with his coat of many colors could only turn green with envy. The eye hardly knows where to light, much as a honey bee – turned loose in a field of daisies – darts from one nectar-filled delight to another, drunk on the experience. Apple trees always draw me close. I suppose it has to do with the apple tree that […]

Categories: Apples, Art, Food writing, Photography, Poetry • Tags: Apple blossoms, Apples, Art, Food writing, Haiti, Kenscoff, M. F. K. Fisher, Meditations, Photography, Still life, Susan Branch

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VT farm

A Pictorial Paean to Farming and Food

May 2, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

© 2013 C. Bertelsen. No copying of photographs without my permission.

Categories: Agriculture, Cattle, Local foods, Photography, Sheep • Tags: Artist statement, Cattle, Farming, Food, Injera, Photography, Sheep

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The heart of the matter is often not what we think.

The Heart of the Matter: A Pithy Gallery*

April 23, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The heart of the matter is often not what we think. A heart can be obscure. Dark, even. Or perhaps too full or too empty. Sometimes it’s intricate, complicated, as “they” say. And maybe even split down the middle. In the end, the crux of the matter leads us to what’s important, to where the crossroads meet. *Pith: The soft, fibrous inner part of a stem or fruit. © 2013 C. Bertelsen

Categories: Chile Peppers, Citrus, Photography • Tags: Apples, Chiles, Oranges, Peppers, Photography, Tomatillos

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Tulip tree 1 resize

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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High contrast Quad single

The Zen of Sheep: More than Just a Photo Shoot

March 25, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It seemed simple enough. A quick visit to a small sheep operation, twenty or so sheep on a spread of five muddy acres, owned by a retired agronomy professor, some fast snaps of the shutter and off I’d be. But that’s not exactly how it happened. When I first walked up to the owner, the sheep came running. “They’re hungry,” he said. “I waited until you got here to feed them, otherwise all you’d get would be butts and backsides.” […]

Categories: Agriculture, Lamb, Local foods, Photography, Sheep, Virginia • Tags: Agriculture, Farming, Farms, Lamb, Local foods, Photography, Sheep

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And Hear the Angels Sing (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

December 20, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Gherkins & Tomatoes will be back after New Year’s. I wish all of you a happy holiday season, no matter what or how you celebrate!

Categories: Christmas, New Year's Day, Photography • Tags: Christmas, New Year's, Photography

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Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

The Saga of a Virginia Coal Town (Part 1): By the Sweat of Your Face You Shall Eat Bread, till You Return to the Ground, for Out of it You were Taken

December 13, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I wandered again to my home in the mountains, Where in youth’s early dawn I was happy and free. I looked for my friends, but I never could find them, I found they were all rank strangers to me. (Traditional bluegrass lyrics, “Rank Stranger”) As I drove along the winding roads toward the coal town of Pocahontas, Virginia, dilapidated trailers and several abandoned Victorian houses lined the way, their filigreed porches sagging under the weight of the wild brush, vines […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cabbage, Cooking, Food writing, Hungary, Photography, Southern Food • Tags: Coal mining, Cooking, Hungarian Cabbage Roll, Immigrants, Photography, Pocahontas, Pocahontas Coalfield, Southern cooking, Southern Food, Virginia

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Lighthouse stairs, Corolla, NC (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

Fallow Time, or, The Rewards of Lying Low and Following Winding Paths

November 28, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The photographs said what I couldn’t. The winding paths on Roanoke Island, site of Raleigh’s Lost Colony, ending up in as-yet-unseen destinations, presented me with an unanticipated gift, fruit of the fallow time thrust upon me recently. What does it mean to be fallow? Uncultivated, unplowed, untilled, unseeded, unplanted, unsown, unsowed, empty, neglected, unused, idle, dormant, resting, inactive, inert, barren, unproductive, unyielding, unfructuous, unfruitful, fruitless, uncultivable, exhausted, depleted, worn out, impoverished, poor, bare, bald, arid, dry, waste – according to […]

Categories: England, Food writing, Photography • Tags: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Fallow time, Julia Cameron, Meditations, North Carolina, Outer Banks, Photography, Roanoke Island, Southern Food, The Lost Colony, Walter Raleigh

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Bread and jam 1

The Little Red Hen had a Point: The Tao of Baking Bread

November 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cooking, Photography • Tags: Baking, Bread, Photography

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Pom stem 2

Of Purple, and of Scarlet: The Mysterious Pomegranate

November 11, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“And beneath upon the hem of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof …” Exodus 28:33-34 Every autumn, just as leaves finally fall from the trees and gardens wilt and squashes go wild with bumps, I pass quickly by the bins of scarlet pomegranates in the grocery store. Their mystery intimidates me, yes, these pomegranates. I yearn for the courage to transcend my book knowledge of this ancient fruit, […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Art, Cooking, Photography, Pomegranates • Tags: Arab Cookery, Demeter, Fruit, Hades, Mythology, Persephone, Photography, Pomegranates, Song of Songs

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Books 7 B&W

Libraries, Passageways to the Universe

November 6, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Without libraries, I would not be the person I am today. Without free access to books that libraries (and taxes) provide, I would have been bereft indeed as a child. My family only owned a couple of copies of the Bible foisted on my father by Baptist grandmother and volumes of novels from the Book of the Month Club, in highly excerpted form. For me, as you can surmise, libraries represented Paradise. I spent many hours in the public library, […]

Categories: Art, Books, Libraries, Photography • Tags: Architecture, Books, Libraries, 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

Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

A Lesson from the Day of the Dead

November 2, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Time comes to a halt on All Souls Day (Todos Santos), November 2, a day of ancient ritual. I learned that lesson when I spent the day with a Mexican family in Puebla, Mexico. To miss this celebration of death was simply unheard of. Our place was the cemetery, where the grandparents lay under thick slabs of cement, their fading photographs a testimony to the relative shortness and impermanence of earthly life. After packing up various mole sauces, tortillas, pozole, […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: All Saints, All Souls' Day, Day of the Dead, Death, Meditations, Mexico, Photography, Puebla

Photo credit; C. Bertelsen

Long Ago, When Chickens had Teeth …*

October 28, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I’ve never had to kill for my dinner, unless you count the time I mangled a lobster at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, crying silently as I tried to plunge the knife in the right place but failing to quickly put the creature out of its misery. I doubt I would have known how to kill a chicken, either, although my mother used to hint at what to do by exclaiming, “You’re running around like a chicken with […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, Food writing, Photography, Southern Food • Tags: Animal slaughter, Chicken, Fried chicken, Grandmothers, Photography, Southern cooking, Texas

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Cow 4

The Meat of the Matter: A Question of Sacred Reverence

October 26, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Meat eating presents modern society with a bit of a dilemma. How to raise and slaughter large numbers of animals under humane conditions, while keeping the price down and within wallet reach of most consumers? That’s the major issue, tinged with other, often moralistic, questions. First, right up front, I am not a vegetarian, and never will be, despite having fumbled with the idea a few times. My first experience with vegetarianism came about chiefly out of curiosity. The central […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Beef, Cattle, Cooking, Festivals, Hunger, Lent, Local foods, Photography • Tags: Beef, Bruce Aidells, Farming, Meat, Michael Symon, Photography, Vegetarianism

Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Ode to the Great Pumpkin [Pie]: Speak, Memory*

October 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye, What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie? ~ John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Pumpkin,” 1850 Some people moan and descend straight into mourning with the first frost. Not me. You’ll find me in my kitchen, with clanging pans and steaming windows, eager to put aside the perpetual salads and raw cucumbers of summer. Yesterday afternoon, I baked my first pumpkin pie of the season. Yes, I confess: I basically […]

Categories: American Cooking, England, Food writing, Photography, Pies--Sweet, Pumpkin • Tags: John Greenleaf Whittier, Libby's, Photography, Pie, Pumpkin, Southern cooking

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Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

‘Tis now the very witching time of night*: Lessons from a Rotting Pumpkin

October 15, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Oh!—fruit loved of boyhood!—the old days recalling, When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling! When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!** Every October, a nearby farm family celebrates the harvest by opening up their land to the surrounding community. Hundreds of cars converge, parking in empty fields, and thousands of people traipse across pumpkin patches, testifying to the power that the earth still holds over us. And […]

Categories: Photography, Pumpkin • Tags: Agrotourism, Farming, Halloween, Photo essays, Photography, Pumpkins, Southern cooking

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Autumn 1

The Signs of Autumn

October 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Yes, I know, this seems to have nothing to do with food. But it has everything to do with food and eating. Autumn – in the northern hemisphere – signals the end of salads and the onslaught of heavy, stomach-stretching dishes that evoke nostalgia. And satiety, a sense of repleteness that raw vegetables can never mimic. © 2012 C. Bertelsen

Categories: Photography • Tags: Autumn, Fall. Leaves, Photography, Seasons, Street Signs

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Nik Silver cobwebs

Weaving the Ties that Bind, One Bite at a Time

October 8, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I stood by the wooden fence, peering over the barbed wire fringing it like a lace collar. For some reason, I couldn’t focus the camera lens clearly on the Holstein standing a few yards away. The cow gazed back at me, her jaws moving with the steady precision of a slow motor. When I stooped just a bit, I saw it clearly. But it wasn’t the cow in the viewfinder. No, the camera had zoomed in on an exquisite spider […]

Categories: Books, Cheese, Cooking, Food writing, Photography • Tags: Charlotte's Web, Cooking, Cows, E. B. White, Feta, Photography, Spider webs, Spiders

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Backlit artichoke side view

The Zen of Artichokes

October 3, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I love autumn. If it’s not the leaves and all the color, then I find poignancy in the drying and dying weeds littering the ground. They embody survival to me. One plant I particularly love is a thistle-like plant, filled with tiny seeds attached to billowy white parachutes. The least puff of wind forces the seeds out of their pods and they float in the wind, just like paratroopers, over the landscape, falling where they may, taking root at times […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Italian Cooking, Italy, Local foods, Photography • Tags: Artichokes, California, France, Italy, Meditations, Normandy, Photography, Thistles, Writing, Zen

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Chiles

What the Eye Doesn’t See …

September 29, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I decided to sign up for a photography class, because I wanted to move out of AUTO on my lovely Nikon D5100 camera. Below, you’ll see some of the food photos that I’ve been fussing with:

Categories: Cabbage, Cheese, Chile Peppers, Cooking, Cucumbers, Ingredients, Photography • Tags: Cabbage, Caviar, Cheese, Chiles, Coffee, Cucumbers, Cups, Photography

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Still life 2

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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Peaches 2

How Cooking Transforms the Aching Soul

September 12, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Living today’s hurry-up-run-run-run-faster-faster-text-text lifestyle tends to blunt contact with more earthy things, like cooking. The act of cooking offers something that the stiffest drink or most potent tranquilizer cannot. Dare I say it out loud? It’s even better than sex, in a way. Especially when chocolate is involved, but that’s another story … . For me, cooking offers a glimpse of the spiritual, but it’s also a calming and mindful activity. After all, I must be in the present moment […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, Food writing, France, French Cooking, Peaches, Photography, Pies--Sweet • Tags: Cooking, La Cucina, Lily Prior, Meditations, Peaches, Photography, Pies, Spirituality

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France HUGE baguette old picture

Telling Stories, About French Bread

August 24, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Even years later, long after someone took this photo, I can see this young boy – I’ll call him Jacques –  standing in the street, lugging his heavy basket made of tree branches, no doubt the same ones that Jacques’s father might use on the poor boy’s legs if he doesn’t sell all the bread that day. Look at his shoes, it’s hard to tell, but is one of the soles higher than the other? And his toes, poking out […]

Categories: Bread, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Elliott Erwitt, France, French Cooking, Photography

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Pasta symmetry

Have a Little Symmetry

November 27, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Pasta and curtains – who would have thought they’d be so similar? And symmetrical?

Categories: Art, France, French Cooking, Pasta, Photography • Tags: France, Pasta, Photography, Symmetry

Photo credit: Kevin McCormick

Garlic, the Perfume of Provence

October 20, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Or is lavender really the perfume of Provence?

Categories: France, French Cooking, Garlic, Photography • Tags: France, Garlic, Photography, Provence

Photo credit: Rob & Lisa Meehan

Potting About in Provence

October 19, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Rustic pottery always draws the eye …

Categories: Art, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: France, Photography, Pottery, Provence

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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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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French cooks lavender stalks

Lavender, France’s Balm for the Soul

September 26, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The lavender lingers on my sloping hillside, autumn rain running in rivulets between the dying leaves. At summer’s peak, the purple flowers tantalized the bees and butterflies and me, the glorious scent perfuming the air of evening and morning both. No lambs frolicked in the lavender this year, but maybe someday a friend’s weanlings will lie in the hot sun, their tails flicking, noses pressed to the mauve blossoms, savoring the taste of this ancient nard. Like the lambs, I […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Herbs, Photography, Poetry • Tags: Flowers, France, French Cooking, Herbs, Lavender, Photography

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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Market in Cordes (Photo credit: Crazy Farmer)

The Joy of France: Open-Air Markets II

September 15, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Agriculture, France, French Cooking, Gardens, Local foods, Photography • Tags: France, French Cooking, Local foods, Markets, Open-Air Markets, Photography

Sallanches, France (Photo credit: Sally Payne)

The Joy of France: Open-Air Markets I

September 12, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Markets in France reflect a long tradition of local foods, now sadly giving way to supermarkets like Franprix, Monoprix, and Intermarché, but still holding their own. With any justice at all, such markets will continue as the local foods movement takes firmer root.

Categories: Agriculture, France, French Cooking, Gardens, Local foods, Photography • Tags: France, French Cooking, Markets, Open-Air Markets, Photography

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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Photo credit: C. Bertelsen

Scenes from La France Profonde

April 22, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: France, Photography • Tags: Crucifixion, France, Photography, Tarascon-sur-Ariege, Thermal baths

Seeking Honey, in the Bee-Loud Glade

March 30, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The journey begins, with a glimpse, through the kitchen window, of golden dust shimmering in sunlight, a phantom shadow darting through the air. Hive-bound, the soaring bee dips and kisses the blue-hued flowers once more.  Life blossoms with the promise of fruits and grains to come. Auriferous, gilt-laden with pollen. Honey. Nectar. Food for the common good. Alchemy. Sweetness dwells in the honeycomb, high up in trees or resting in sunken hollows of the Earth. A drop of honey calms […]

Categories: Cooking, Honey, Lit & Food, Photography • Tags: Back to the land, Bees, Blueberry Jam, Honey, Honeybees, Meditations, Photography, Poetry, Religion, Spirituality, Sustainable agriculture, William Butler Yeats

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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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