Take a girl with an iffy start in life. Mix in wanderlust and cooking. And lots of books. Add a dollop of yearning for home and belonging. Knead in a pinch of self-discovery. Let rise and ripen. The result is Cynthia D. Bertelsen’s Stoves & Suitcases: Searching for Home in the World’s Kitchens, a reflective … More “Stoves & Suitcases” Book Trailer!
It’s parka weather in North Florida now. At the moment, saying “the sweats” refers to pants and hoodies, not the moist high-summer insecty trickle, when walking to the mailbox seems like an audition for a wet T-shirt contest. Colder days and nights invite a certain degree of nostalgia for winter and cold-weather, stick-to-the-ribs types of … More Rendezvousing with a Wooden Spoon and a Cup of Cream: French Cooking
The lobster just wouldn’t die. Neat black-and-white drawings in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking fail to tell the whole story. Nothing there about squirming bodies, queasy stomachs, and misplaced stabs to crustacean heads. “While professionals simply cut up the lobsters with never a qualm nor a preliminary, you may find this difficult.” … More Cordon Bleu, Paris
About All Souls’ Day (November 2), Sir James George Frazer wrote in The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, a classic in anthropology: The day of the dead or of All Souls, and other as we call it, is commonly the second of November. Thus in Lower Brittany the souls of the departed … More Saints, Souls, and Haints: Cider and Curds
It was Julia Child‘s favorite outdoor market in Paris. La Mouffe. Or rue Mouffetard, in the 5th arrondisement. Ancient street, cobblestone-strewn. Romans trod there, and marched, too. In the third century, Legionnaires laid the first rock in the town they called Lutetia Parisiorum. And that thoroughfare stretched all the way to Rome via the modern … More La Mouffe
It’s hard not to admire Nika Standen Hazelton, an outspoken and opinionated food writer who, despite the 30 or so cookbooks she wrote, quipped that “… cookbooks are mostly bought as escape literature, not to cook from … .” Very much a prophetess! Born in Rome in 1908, to a German diplomat father and Italian … More Nika Standen Hazelton: Remembering a Food Writer Chronicling a Lost World
As I sniffed the seductive odor of pumpkin pies emanating from the bakery that day, a menu composed itself in my head, shouting “It’s FALL, finally!” I went wild over the cheap chicken thighs at my local Kroger, dumping package after package into my grocery cart. Mushrooms, walnuts, shallots joined the chicken in the cart, … More Remembering Mireille Johnston: Memories of a French Food Writer on a Fall Day
It’s always a marvel when I come upon an intriguing new writer, to me anyway. What’s even more wonderful is when that writer takes up food and cooking as the main topic in their work. And Maryse Condé is one of those writers. Ms. Condé, born in Guadaloupe in the French Caribbean, has been writing … More Maryse Condé’s “Of Morsels and Marvels”: A New Book by a Not-to-be-Missed Writer of Style and Substance
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