Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Gherkins & Tomatoes
A Writer's Musings on Nature and Culture, Since 2008
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
Maggie Nelson's Bluets tackles the varied permutations of the color blue. It's the perfect book for someone like me, someone who loves the short eccentric entries writers make in their notebooks. Like Somerset Maugham's A Writer's Notebook, Nelson's Bluets ricochets all over the place, only in her case, every observation concerns blue in some way. On one…
Continue reading ➞ Bluets, Maggie Nelson’s Exploration of Blueness
Cousin Connie Atherton, or Constance as she wanted to be called - she always said it sounded more grownup, you know - inherited Grandma's large coffee-brown eyes. Grandpa's curly black hair went to his great-grandson Jake , whose sister Mildred emerged from their mother Flora's uterus with long tapered fingers, a Doppelganger of Uncle George,…
Continue reading ➞ Many Different Faces: Bibliography’s Extended Family
“Let me take your coat, my dear.” I heard her voice as I stepped off the elevator, into the penthouse suite at the Chicago Hilton on a snowy day in late December. The tall, white-haired woman standing there, holding out her hands to me, drew me over the threshold, welcoming me. The color of Forget-Me-Nots,…
Continue reading ➞ Prelude to a Bio-Bibliography
Compiling bibliographies is a bit like blowing bubbles, for you never know how big the bubbles will be or how far away they’ll float through the air. Or where they’ll land. And that’s the exciting bit about bibliographies. You can’t know when you set out on the journey where you'll end up. If you compile…
Continue reading ➞ The Joy of Bibliographies
I don't like to get my hands dirty. Literally. And that's why I will never be an archaeologist. Grubbing around in the muck and peat and clay, no way. So how come I was in Washington D.C. for the 2018 meetings of the American Archaeological Society (AAS), along with several thousands of other people? Many…
Continue reading ➞ Skeletons, Disease, and the Dinner Table
I stood in front of her, the dim buzzing of children’s voices fading behind me. Her glowing face stared out at me, a wisp of a smile on her perfect lips, a vast verdant landscape stretching out behind her. Leaning close to the tiny sign to the right of the painting, I read “Mrs. Davies…
Continue reading ➞ The Threads of Time, or, Who is that Woman in the Painting?
I binge watch cooking shows. Instead of reading intellect-stimulating tomes such as Homer's The Iliad (who amongst you can say that you have???), lately I've been spending my precious time on earth transfixed by Paul Hollywood's piercing blue eyes, calmed by Mary Berry's soothing voice, cheering on the indomitable bakers of "The Great British Bake…
Continue reading ➞ Lessons from “The Great British Bake Off”
Artists and writers often depict society in ways that raise eyebrows and curl lips with disdain. The artist Judy Chicago and her massive installation – “The Dinner Party” – turned the tables on the art world back in 1979. She chose the powerful motif of a dinner party to make her statement. With all the…
Continue reading ➞ Come to Dinner: A Meditation on Judy Chicago’s Art
Driving through Texas, thinking of my 9-year-old grandmother, of the tale she told me so many years ago. Her father decreed that they would all move to Globe, AZ, along with his brothers, driving cattle, who knows, to the new ranch, from the old one in Fredericksburg, Texas, German enclave. To Globe, Arizona. How long…
Continue reading ➞ Musings on the Road West
Bacopa Literary Review Contest submissions open March 1 - May 31, 2018 with a $250 prize in each of four genres plus $25 payment for each published work. $3 submission fee (first submission free formembers of Writers Alliance of Gainesville). If accepted for publication, you agree to grant us First North American Serial Rights. Poetry: We're…
Continue reading ➞ Bacopa Literary Review is Looking for a Few Good Writers
"Anyone can cook anything and make it delicious." That's what chef/teacher Samin Nosrat promises, right up front, page 5, in her stunning debut - Salt Fat Acid Heat. Everybody loves an optimist. And I count Ms. Nosrat among that merry band of people, those who amble through the world with a smile on their faces, their…
Continue reading ➞ A Pinch of Alchemy: Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat
Just a note - life's busy - to share the shortlist for The Gourmand Awards. "What is that," you might ask? Here's their take on it: "The Gourmand Awards are the major Food Culture event in the world. They started in 1995 for cookbooks and wine books, at Frankfurt Book Fair. They now include all…
Continue reading ➞ THE GOURMAND AWARDS
Haiti is NOT a shithole, Mr. Trump. I should know about that. I lived in Haiti for nearly three years. And you, you've never even been there. And yet, here you are again, saying something insulting and derogatory, knowing nothing about what you're talking about. Yes, I'm talking about your woefully ignorant comments about "shithole…
Continue reading ➞ Haiti is NOT a Shithole, Mr. Trump
Curry. I can't live without it. And thus it was only natural that I used some of my Santa Claus money to buy myself a copy of Dan Toombs's clever cookbook, The Curry Guy: Recreate Over 100 of the Best British Indian Restaurant Recipes at Home (2017). The cooking found in British Indian Restaurants. Or BIRs.…
Continue reading ➞ The Curry Guy
At Christmastime, my kitchen becomes a place where past and present merge. Through food, I honor my ancestors - the known, the unknown, and the never-to-be knowns, all the people whose DNA runs through my veins and shapes my nose and determines my character. They hailed from Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Cheshire, Lincoln, London, Kent ...…
Continue reading ➞ Happy Christmas to All!
The Gulf of Mexico lies 60 miles southwest of here. A joy to behold on a clear day, no matter what time of the year, the water there sparkles with the intensity of a stash of De Beers diamonds. And the wetlands that lacing its edges harbor a most fascinating array of life, gems, if…
Continue reading ➞ Mullets, Jumping into the Stream of Life
Memory, fickle memory. To recall the long-ago past becomes a journey into a place where truth flits behind trees or ducks into closets, an exhausting game of hide-and-seek where no player easily becomes “It.” Do you remember going to the Saturday afternoon movies when you were a kid? How you got so engrossed in the…
Continue reading ➞ Pumping Sunshine: Susie H. Baxter’s Rural North Florida Childhood
Birds fascinated my father. I could never quite understand why. Not until he died. My mother dumped his bird-watching books on me. Then I knew what the scientist in him saw when he watched birds in their natural habitat: great variety, adaptations to environment, the living proof of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, at least…
Continue reading ➞ Birds of a Feather: Proverbs and Idioms
In 1821, Major Charles Wilhelm Bulow found himself the master of all he surveyed, near what is now Flagler Beach, Florida. He ordered his slaves to clear the wilderness, which they did, over 2200 of the 4675 acres belonging to him. Such a task would challenge even the largest earth mover today. Thick, sharp, insect-ridden, the…
Continue reading ➞ Bulow Plantation, of Florida’s Flagler County
They're not visible to the naked eye, but I hear their raucous cawing every day, the very second I open the door. Crows, maybe ravens. No matter where I live, these glossy black birds congregate. The only place on earth to escape these intelligent creatures lies far south, in Antarctica. Crows and ravens eat whatever…
Continue reading ➞ A Murder of Crows, An Unkindness of Ravens
There comes a day, sometimes, when it seems all that there remains to do is to sit and weep, staring out at the world through tears of salt, gazing through windows of murky glass. Seeing leaves, earth, sky, rain, even the path of the wind in tall grass. But not seeing. No, not really. Where…
Continue reading ➞ Surviving the Whiplashes of History and American Gun-Culture Violence
Although I'd read her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Yearling (1938), in high school, I came to admire Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's work more via the great unifier - food. I bought a paperback copy of Cross Creek Cookery nearly forty years after Charles Scribner's Sons first published it. Now the spine on my cheap copy splits…
Continue reading ➞ Muses: Cross Creek and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
There's something about explorers who ventured into the New World that always grips my imagination. Maybe it's because men could leave home for years, move from place to place, free to be the souls they were born to be. As a woman, I could never have done that. Nor would it be easy today, either.…
Continue reading ➞ William Bartram and the Nature of Florida
I left the house this morning, seeking a sense of normalcy in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. What I found in my neighborhood proves the resilience of old houses in Florida. Battered off and on for over 65 years by hurricanes of all strengths, these gems still stand. And so does the natural setting around…
Continue reading ➞ Traces of Old Florida
Good morning to everyone. Hurricane Irma came knocking on my door on Monday, September 11, 2017. Her gusty breath took down a kingly live oak in my neighbor's yard and threatened to rip up my back fence. Some of my fellow citizens still wade thigh-high in the muddy alligator- and snake-infested water of Newnan's Lake.…
Continue reading ➞ Weather, Weather, Weather
I, non-Italian, cook a mean roasted pork thing, slathered with ground fennel and coriander seed and white peppercorns, an Italian dish dubbed "Forever Roasted Pork" in Michael Chiarello's Travigne cookbook. And I also see definite correlations between that meltingly soft meat and Southern barbecue, between mechoui and other long-roasted meat dishes from around the world.…
Continue reading ➞ Cooking with Hurricane Irma, Part IV: Going Green: a Riff on Salsa Verde
The smell of burning diesel alerted me - the bus would be there in a few seconds. With a loud burp, it came to a rubber-losing stop about 10 feet away from I stood. Exiting passengers stumbled down the worn linoleum-covered steps, clutching baskets filled with squawking chickens, small squealing piglets, and sleeping babies wrapped tightly in thread-bare rebozos. Behind…
Continue reading ➞ Cooking with Hurricane Irma, Part III: A Tale of Guacamole
Pipérade snuck into my life the other day. I mean, I'd known about this universal - global? - combo of tomatoes and garlic and onion and other stuff for some time. Hardly the sort of dish you'd let any culinary culture lay claim to. I mean, come on, what else might a cook do with garlic,…
Continue reading ➞ Cooking with Hurricane Irma, Part II: Pipérade
I am of the unpopular opinion that no one owns cuisine. In spite of UNESCO decrees and loud cries from the lecture stand or pages of popular books, the fact remains: Food and ingredients travel with people. People share food. People love food. People want the recipes. Or at least the basic facts about how…
Continue reading ➞ Cooking with Hurricane Irma, Part I: Tomatoes Breathing Fire: A Universal Sauce
