Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Gherkins & Tomatoes
A Writer's Musings on Nature and Culture, Since 2008
Sarah Rutledge's cookbook, The Carolina Housewife, surprised me the other day. Try as I might, I could only find one recipe for pork in the whole book! "Ham Toast," on page 75. I kid you not. "Meat" seems to be beef or veal. That's it. Ms. Rutledge's book did include a number of vegetable recipes,…
Continue reading ➞ “To Fry Tomatoes”: Sarah Rutledge Mixes Up a Few New World Foods
With a name like that, of course, I couldn't resist the recipe. "Mulacolong." What on earth did that mean? It seems that no one else knew either, thanks to a Google search and more. So I decided to split up the word, to look at components rather the whole. One tantalizing bit of information kept…
Continue reading ➞ Mulacolong, from Sarah Rutledge’s The Carolina Housewife:
I'd like to introduce you a most interesting woman, Sarah Rutledge. Call her Miss Sally, as did her kin and her friends. She wrote a cookbook, The Carolina Housewife, published in 1847, which tells a most remarkable story. Unlike Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife (1824), which tended to focus more on the victuals cooked and…
Absolutely delicious, served with freshly baked bread: See recipe and discussion HERE. This is the kind of recipe you can make by following instructions and hints found in "A Hastiness of Cooks".
If you've ever tried to read Chaucer in the original language, you know what you're up against when you tackle a recipe dating from the poet's time period. Actually, when you read The Canterbury Tales, you have it fairly easy, for there's a multitude of resources to help you as you plunge through Chaucer's Middle…
Continue reading ➞ What’s That You Say??? Medieval Culinary Terminology Unmasked*
Fans of the popular TV series “Game of Thrones” must be feeling bereft. And why shouldn’t they? The curtain finally fell on the last episode of that long-running megahit. Unless they love reruns, that’s it for those fans. I, on the other hand, have barely made it through the first episode so far, “Winter is…
Continue reading ➞ Keep on Feasting! For Lovers of “Game of Thrones”
As I mentioned, albeit briefly, in “A Hastiness of Cooks”: A Practical Handbook for Use in Deciphering the Mysteries of Historic Recipes and Cookbooks, For Living-History Reenactors, Historians, Writers, Chefs, Archaeologists, and, of Course, Cooks, transcription is one of those things that makes all the difference when you're trying to recreate historic recipes or analyzing…
Continue reading ➞ Transcription of Medieval Documents, or, What an Online Resource!
"A picture is worth a thousand words!" Yes. And no. In one image, art, like photography, can present something that could take a thousand words to describe. Or more, depending upon what's being shown. I think of the raw files that come out of my Nikon D7100 as being more like rough drafts than the…
Continue reading ➞ 12 Months of the Year, or, Medieval Liturgical Calendars
Paleography refers to the situation in which an historic cookbook is studied,* and perhaps converted to script that a modern reader can understand. The process is highly complicated and experts spend years, even whole careers, devoted to just this subject. So the following discussion is more like a scratch on a grain of sand, small…
Continue reading ➞ Culinary Manuscripts, or, Deciphering the Code
In my latest book, "A Hastiness of Cooks", I deliberately skimmed over France and her culinary heritage. Not because I thought her culinary heritage not worth acknowledging, but because I wanted to savor that heritage in a different medium or venue. With that sentiment in mind, I pulled Terence Scully's treatise - The Vivendier -…
Continue reading ➞ Pignagoscé sur chapons (Pignagoscé on Capons), Plus Some Words on Paleography
Did you know that you can cook from hundreds of historic cookbooks without spending a lot of money, except perhaps for your monthly internet fee? Or maybe even for free, if you use the computers at a public library? There are vast digital collections of historic cookbooks and manuscripts just waiting for you to use.…
His quirky, pixy eyes belie his prolificity as a writer, one that some dub the first so-called hack writers in modern history, and possibly the first to import an Arabian horse into England.** And possibly one of William Shakespeare’s rivals? Some writers such as Robert Gittings, in his tepidly received Shakespeare’s Rival (1960), suggest that…
Martha Bradley's The British Housewife (1756) has long fascinated me, for all her detail and precise instructions. And, most of all, for her emphasis on local foods, long before Alice Waters or Michael Pollan were gleams in the eye of God. Of course, the other point I want to make here is this: the English were quite…
Continue reading ➞ Before There was Martha S., There was Martha B.*
“Just like in the movies, when the hero finally gets up to the ticket window and the clerk slams it shut.” That thought ballooned in my mind when I walked up to the doors of the Museo del Prado in Madrid on a Monday morning. CLOSED. No Velazquez. Of course, Monday. Here's something mnemonic for…
Purple bougainvillea flowers hung thick and rope-like over the sand-colored walls, their little white hearts nearly pulsating in the blazing noon heat of Rabat, Morocco. The door of The English Bookshop stood half-opened. The stern English proprietor stood behind the counter, his thin pale fingers reaching into scuffed cardboard boxes, filled with the newest shipment of books…
Continue reading ➞ In the Scent of Cinnamon, a Whiff of Medieval Humoral Theory
In my forthcoming book - with illustrations by Courtney Nzeribe - I discuss Hannah Glasse's cookbook. (And much more, of course!) Poor Hannah Glasse. Literally. Except for Martha Stewart, she may be the only cookery book writer who did hard time for financial woes. Author of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy,…
Continue reading ➞ The Eels of Hannah, Or, Hannah Glasse’s Lenten Recipes
Yesterday, I crossed into Nogales, Mexico, and saw a bit of Nogales, Arizona, too. It's a story that repeats itself every day of the year. At Ed's Border Lot, my car fits nicely between two others - the one on the left with an Arizona plate, the one on the right with a Sonoran plate.…
Continue reading ➞ A Day on the Border: Nogales, Mexico
You're probably wondering what "A Hastiness of Cooks" means. Read the following definition and you'll see why the phrase inspired me in writing my new book, "A Hastiness of Cooks": A word game, popular in the great households of late medieval England, had at its heart the creation of collective nouns. In the lists of…
Desert. From ecclesiastical Latin. Dēsertum. "Abandoned place." The word conjures up images of vast sand dunes, blurred footsteps leading to the top. There, some poor soul lies prostrate, skin parched and blistered from the ray guns of a merciless sun. Lands of little rain, uninhabited, lifeless. That, I must admit, covered my initial definition of…
Continue reading ➞ Going to the Desert
You're not supposed to begin a piece of writing with a question. Why not? No idea, except that the "experts" seem to think that it's an easy way out. "You can do better," they say. So what was my question? Oh yes. Why is traditional French food so terribly unpopular at the moment? Many authors…
Continue reading ➞ Speaking of France …
Several months ago, thanks to a series of bleeds in my right eye due to ROP*, I underwent a vitrectomy to clear up all the blood still pooling throughout my eye. When my surgeon finished, I learned that I'd suffered a retinal detachment as well, hidden by the immense amount of blood. A gas bubble…
Continue reading ➞ How Julia Child Rescued Me from the Darkness
“Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.” ― Lawrence Ferlinghetti, City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology I've been assailed by several critics this last week. Never mind why and for what. Not that I've written anything resembling "great masterpieces," but I find it amusing how quickly people come running when a troll on…
A recipe analyzed in my upcoming book, A Hastiness of Cooks.
Just an example of the type of recipes you will be able to recreate with the help of my upcoming book, A Hastiness of Cooks. Recipe reconstructed and recreated from archaic language. An example of what's in my upcoming book, "A Hastiness of Cooks." Chicken in a saffron-infused sauce, flavored with Poudre Forte, or "Strong Powder."…
Continue reading ➞ Capouns In Councys, from The Forme of Cury (1390)
I am thrilled to announce that my new book will be out and available for purchase on November 15, 2018. For more information, please go to Turquoise Moon Press. (Working on the pre-order set-up on Amazon)
Thanks to the shenanigans of Mother Nature and corpus meum, I've been confined to the couch and a big screen. Or at least the 27-inch one hugging my desktop computer. (Yes, I love the dinosaur, because it responds to me better than my laptop, which reminds me of a willful four-year-old I know. And as…
Continue reading ➞ Breaking the Silence of the West, and Words Near to Fail Me
This is the last post I plan to write for "Gherkins & Tomatoes." At least for a long while. After almost 10 years, it's time to fold up the tent, so to speak, and move on. Thank you, all of my regular readers, for stopping by, I've loved getting to know you and sharing opinions. …
Continue reading ➞ Lauren Groff’s “Florida”: Nurturing Noirishness
It's the 4th of July. A day of almost mythical proportions. For Americans. I got to thinking about the stories surrounding this day, a really special day in the history of the world. Consider the facts: A small, rather weak and geographically diverse conglomeration of settlers rises up like David against a powerful giant -…
Continue reading ➞ The 4th of July: Mythology and American History
I once thumbed through Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, skimming her seductive writing with the speed of a racehorse headed toward the finish line. Or at least the deadline for a book review due the next day. Years passed. Woolf's essay became a feminist classic, a rallying manifesto for women intent on being…
Continue reading ➞ The Art of the Essay
I forget where exactly I was when I read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. But I'll never forget the writing, the cool depiction of the parade of characters - chefs, waitresses, line cooks, dopers, and so on. Tony, I think he liked being called that, could tramp through the Chaco of Paraguay with the same ease he…
Continue reading ➞ The Death of Anthony Bourdain
