Archives

*”Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new”: A Sweet Potato Rhapsody

January 25, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new,” or so confessed St. Augustine, a Catholic saint born in 354 A.D., in what is now Algeria. And I, I could also say the same, about many things. One of them being sweet potatoes, a beloved Southern staple.** It was a Thanksgiving Day. I was five, going on six. Old enough to know what I liked to eat. But that day I added another “yuck” food to a list […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, American Cooking, Bibliographies, Southern Food • Tags: George Washington Carver, Old Ebbitt Grill, Southern cooking, Sweet potato, Thanksgiving, Virginia, World Food Habits

MORE THAN MEETS THE PIE

October 18, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The other day I saw another sign of autumn: a smashed pumpkin lying along the side of the road, pieces scattered like the crumbs in the forest that Hansel Gretel dropped on the way to the witch’s house. Pumpkins deserve more respect. Think about it. Remember Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman, in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, who bashed poor Ichabod Crane with a carved pumpkin? And year after year, pumpkins get to strut their stuff only in pies. […]

Categories: American Cooking, Pumpkin, Recipes, Thanksgiving • Tags: Cooking, Food, Pumpkin, Recipes, Thanksgiving

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

Cooks Last Supper Assisi Piero Lorenzetti

To the Cooks, Prosit! Part II

November 25, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

He turns the spit who never tasted a morsel from it. Proverbes en Rimes, no. 117. Continuing our salute to cooks this holiday season (Thanksgiving), today’s post includes some depictions of male cooks, as well as female cooks. Medieval opinions of cooks, mostly men, tended to reflect the lowly status accorded to people who worked in the kitchen: Medieval attitudes toward the cook and his staff were mixed. There was always a certain contempt for a man with an obviously […]

Categories: Art, Cooking, Europe, Lit & Food, Thanksgiving • Tags: Cooks, Food in Art, Thanksgiving

To the Cooks, Prosit! Part I

November 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Sir Thomas More in his Utopia (1516), in delineating what would make an ideal society, said: .. all vyle service, all slaverie and drudgerye, with all the laboursome toyle and busines, is done by bondmen. But the women of every famelie by course have the office and charge of cokerye … and orderyng al thinges thereto belonging.” (Utopia, Book 2, Chapter 5, p. 70) It is fitting that there be a tribute to the women who cooked through the centuries. […]

Categories: Art, Cooking, Europe, Lit & Food, Thanksgiving • Tags: Art, Cooks, Cuisine, Flemish Painting, Food in Art, Thanksgiving

Feasting in State: Obama’s First Real State Dinner

November 19, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In the next week, we will see real-time examples of a few of the different types of feasts common to American culture: Thanksgiving — essentially a harvest feast tinged with overtones of cultural identity — and President Barack Obama’s first true State Dinner, to be held on November 24, 2009 for India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — a feast based on the display of power and good will. Both feasts carry with them great tradition and historical precedent. Having covered […]

Categories: China, Thanksgiving, United States, White House • Tags: Barack Obama, Manmohan Singh, marcus Samuelsson, State Dinner, State Dinners, Thanksgiving, White House

The Feat of Feasting

November 16, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One cannot both feast and become rich. Ashanti Proverb “Feasting,” for all practical purposes, appears to be the antonym of “hunger.” And yet, feasting is rife (ripe?) with teeming contradictions and ritualistic conventions. For some, feasting implies hunger. Ambrose Bierce defined feasting in a rather limiting manner in his irreverent Devil’s Dictionary: FEAST, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness. In the Roman Catholic Church […]

Categories: American Cooking, Italian Cooking, Local foods, Locavores, Menus, Thanksgiving • Tags: Feasting, Feasts, Local foods, Locavores, Medicis, Menus, Thanksgiving, Weddings

Hunger, Starvation, Famine and the Sweep of Human History

November 9, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When it comers to food, we humans live in a paradox these days. In the West, there’s too much food — as long as one has money with which to buy it — and because of that excess, we begin to look like the Michelin Man or the Pillsbury Doughboy. And on the flip side lies true hunger and its cousin, starvation, usually in Africa and other places where money, transportation, and just plain decent soil (not to mention rain) […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, China, Europe, Thanksgiving • Tags: Africa, China, Europe, Hunger, Jamestown, Starvation, Thanksgiving

Truman Signing the Atomic Energy Act of 1946

Thanksgiving in the Truman White House 1946: Poor Harry

November 28, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

President Harry S. Truman found himself on the slimming end of things in 1946. The New York Times reported that Truman’s menus seemed a bit austere and quoted White House housekeeper, Mrs. Mary E. Sharpe, as saying “When I make up menus I keep it in mind.” “It” being President’s Truman’s ongoing battle of the waistline. Of course, poor Harry got a bit of reprieve (but not much, from the looks of it) on Thanksgiving), like the turkeys all presidents […]

Categories: American Cooking, Thanksgiving • Tags: Food, Harry S. Truman, Thanksgiving, White House

BREAKING: Camp David / White House Thanksgiving Menu 2008

November 26, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Just in time for Thanksgiving eve, the White House uploaded the following menu that President Bush and his family will eat on November 27, 2008. Just a few changes from 2006: Free-Range Roast Turkey Cornbread Dressing Cranberry Sauce Sautéed Green Beans Morelia Style Gazpacho with Spinach Salad Zucchini Gratin Whipped Maple Sweet Potatoes Buttered Mashed Potatoes Giblet Gravy Fresh Clover Rolls with Honey Butter Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Topping Apple Pie Pumpkin Mousse Trifle Fresh Fruit Platter # # #

Categories: Food News, Menus, Thanksgiving, White House • Tags: Cooking, Food, George W. Bush, Thanksgiving, White House

George W. Bush with Lynn Nutt and "Flyer"

Thanksgiving in the Bush White House: 2006 Menu

November 26, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Like presidents before him, George W. Bush prefers eating his turkey at Camp David. Here’s what he loaded up on at Thanksgiving in 2006: Free-Range Roasted Turkey Cast-Iron Skillet Cornbread Dressing Cranberry Sauce Sauteed Green Beans Zucchini Gratin Whipped Maple Sweet Potatoes Basil Chive Red Potato Mash Giblet Gravy Fresh Clover Rolls with Honey Butter Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Topping Apple Pie Pumpkin Mousse Trifle Fresh Fruit Platter # # #

Categories: American Cooking • Tags: Food, George W. Bush, Thanksgiving, White House

Vintage Thanksgiving Postcards

November 25, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fascinating old-fashioned trend: nineteenth-century postcards for Thanksgiving. Take a look at more here, most featuring Thanksgiving feasts. Enjoy savoring a part of American history:

Categories: Thanksgiving • Tags: Food, Thanksgiving, Vintage Postcards

President Bill Clinton’s First Thanksgiving in the White House: The Menu

November 22, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

U.S. Presidents since Eisenhower seem to prefer the rusticity of Camp David for Thanksgiving. Bill Clinton ate his first Thanksgiving dinner as president at Camp David. The Office of the First Lady released the following menu the day before Thanksgiving that year, November 23, 1995: Thanksgiving Menu Turkey Wrapped in Bacon Mrs. Kelly’s Traditional Cornbread Stuffing Mashed Potatoes Liza’s Sweet Potato Casserole (from 30 Years at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion) Giblet Gravy Seasoned Green Beans Assort Cut Relish Tray Black […]

Categories: Thanksgiving • Tags: Bill Clinton, Food, Thanksgiving, White House

Autumn Leaves (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

The Harvest Months

October 21, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The frost descended on the pumpkin the other night and in the early morning light, as I drove around the curving roads of rural Virginia, a dozen cows stood silhouetted and blanketed in thick white fog. Eerily outlined against the fading green of the sparse grass they munched, for some reason those cows reminded me of Washington Irving’s story of the “Headless Horseman.” I could just see people of an earlier time jumping out of their skins as they stumbled […]

Categories: Pumpkin, Recipes, Thanksgiving • Tags: Cooking, Food, Pumpkin, Thanksgiving

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

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life