Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Gherkins & Tomatoes
A Writer's Musings on Nature and Culture, Since 2008
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!
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…
Continue reading ➞ Poor Harry: Thanksgiving in the Truman White House 1946
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…
Continue reading ➞ The Harvest Months
Perplexed as to what to serve for New Year's Eve? Look no further than Scotland's Hogmanay - or New Year's Eve - celebration, rich in history (read more HERE), with just the right touch of ancient practices. Raucous, animal-skin dressed revelers call to mind Viking invaders of the 9th and 10th centuries, Hogmanay a substitute…
Continue reading ➞ Happy Hogmanay!
I wish all of you the very best Christmas, no matter where you cook! Thank you all for everything and inspiring me to keep on writing about my favorite subject: food.
No matter what your feelings about the origins of Thanksgiving - it did NOT really start with the Massachusetts Pilgrims post-1620 - and the impact of the English settlers in North America or Sarah Josepha Hale's influence on Abraham Lincoln, today's holiday has more to do with re-enforcing family ties and culinary traditions often far…
Continue reading ➞ Happy Thanksgiving
Term: lefse (food) Definition: thin, unleavened bread of Norwegian origin, traditionally made of a potato-based dough and baked on a griddle [Source: Dictionary of American Regional English] Thanksgiving is a day when Americans recall the myths of their founding, usually associated with the English Pilgrims of Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1620, ignoring the Jamestown settlers who arrived…
Continue reading ➞ Lefse, and Giving Thanks via a Food of Immigration, Poverty, and Oppression
What is home? What is not home? The following pictorial essay portrays a number of symbols associated with the United States, and, indirectly, home. Mine, anyway. (If you click on the photos, you'll see far more detail than this WordPress theme shows in the posts. And further clicking zooms in, I've discovered.) © 2015 C.…
Continue reading ➞ What is Home?
You can't cook porridge with a fool. ~~ Russian Proverb ~~ An example of Russian Lenten food, tolokno or oat flour with liquid, demonstrates the use of the astonishing Russian stove. Streamlined in the 15th century, the Russian stove incarnates the old adage, “The kitchen is the heart of the home.” Much of Russian peasant…
Continue reading ➞ From Mother Russia with Love: A Monster of a Stove and Tolokno
Cabbage soup and gruel are our food. (Shchi da kasha, pishche nashe.) ~~Russian peasant proverb Trying to ferret out tidbits about Russian food history can be tough going. Aside from the language barrier, anyone interested in Russian culinary history suffers from a major weakness: there is a terrible lack of written material contemporaneous with Forme…
Continue reading ➞ From Mother Russia with Love: The Domostroi
Because Russian Orthodox Easter falls on the same day this year (2010) as the Western Easter, it seems appropriate to include recipes for Russia's most well-known Easter sweets: Kulich, a tall puffy "baba" or sweet-bread cousin to Italian Panettone (maybe with phallic overtones and fertility in mind?) and Paskha, a cheesecake-like dairy-rich concoction eaten with…
Continue reading ➞ From Mother Russia with Love: Kulich and Paskha and Easter
One of her greatest pleasures in summer was the very Russian sport of hodit’ po gribi (looking for mushrooms). Fried in butter and thickened with sour cream her delicious finds appeared regularly on the dinner table. Not that the gustatory moment mattered much. Her main delight was in the quest. ~~ Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory…
Continue reading ➞ From Mother Russia with Love: Meaty Mushrooms and Relentless Lent
Many years ago, a high school history teacher of mine asked our class to write down everything we knew about Russia within the space of about 30 minutes. Most people wrote a brief paragraph, describing the red Communist flag with its hammer and sickle. Some delved a little into the cruelty of the tsars and…
Continue reading ➞ From Mother Russia with Love: Great Lent, the Beginning
Folklore or fakelore, the general consensus seems to be that the Irish who came to America brought their custom of carving turnips for All Hallows Eve. They must grow large turnips in the sod over there! Lacking a turnip, rutabagas, beets, or gourds would also do. Delicious legend, that's what started the practice of carving…
Just outside my front door, ice sparkles on the small brown bridge. I know the signs: autumn fled like a thief in the night. Only yesterday, leaves blazing scarlet and saffron hung like Christmas baubles on the trees. Now there's nothing but a memory of those exquisite jewels. Time to burrow and savor the stews…
Continue reading ➞ Picturing the Last Weekend of Fall
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!
I dedicate this post to the children and the parents, everywhere, especially Newtown, Connecticut. Every year, in December, a marvelous thing happens. At least I think it's wonderful. And not for the reasons you might think. Christmas comes around, bringing with it a sense of magic in the air, some thing that I felt as…
Continue reading ➞ Remembering the Magic and Wishing for Peace on Earth
I love Christmas. Yes, I really do. For I see Christmas as a time that allows us - in these rather sterile, rigid United States, anyway - to cut loose and string up gaudy gee-gaws all over the house. To transcend the daily. To feel the seasonal and mythic cycles of past times. To celebrate…
Continue reading ➞ How to Tempt the Scrooges, or, Christmas, the Cooking Season
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…
Continue reading ➞ The Meat of the Matter: A Question of Sacred Reverence
...visions of sugarplums danced in their heads. ~~Clement C. Moore~~ " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas" Happy Holidays to all readers and visitors to Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons et Tomates! I will "see" you again on January 2. 'Tis soon the season to be jolly. And to bake cookies, the sugarplums of today. I'm…
Continue reading ➞ SUGARPLUM VISIONS: Christmas Cookies
Photo credit: Robyn Lee A while ago, I promised you a short list of facsimile/translated French cookbooks. The following list represents a number of old French-language cookbooks translated into English that you’ll find freely available on the Internet, something quite helpful when you’ve dropped your last holiday dollar on the fixings for Beef Wellington and…
Continue reading ➞ A Few Marrons Glacés for the Season … A Gift for You
I have to tell you that the cookbook lists that come out every year around Christmas time drive me crazy. Like you’re really going to savor, say, 101 Recipes Using ___________? (Fill in the blank.) Or you’re going to run out and buy another Italian cookbook when you already own somewhere in the neighborhood of…
Alas, we've just missed La fête de l’huître, a popular festival that takes place at Riec-sur-Belon, Brittany at the end of July. Maybe next time ... For more about oysters, see "Oysters Tales and Pearls of Wisdom."
Beach towels stuffed into tiny car trunks, piqnique tables folded, and wine properly cooled down, the French depart like lemmings for the seaside in August, the traditional vacation month in France. And so --- in keeping with the French-inspired theme of Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons & Tomates --- postings this month will be a bit…
Continue reading ➞ Les Vacances à la française
Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons & Tomates celebrates an anniversary in a couple of days, and I would like to thank all readers --- old and new --- for their ongoing and strong support. A special thanks goes to friends and family, who keep me going by saying nice things and bringing me champagne. This…
Continue reading ➞ Celebration! With Champagne …
Lemons, their pitted, nay, prehistoric, skins secreting golden oil, Shielding sourness, evoking memories of a grandmother's kitchen, A grandfather's garden. Born in the East, fruitful India, A kiss of cold, albeit fleeting, spawns the yellow Immortalized in stone, paint, and clay. A fruit reverenced, Blossoming from mountain and lake, Urging cooks to slice, pierce, and…
Continue reading ➞ Lemons – Tiny Cathedrals of Gold
In March 2011, Japan suffered an 8.9 earthquake, a magnitude not often experienced. While the massive earthquake last year in Haiti was less on the Richter scale, it nonetheless did terrible damage that is still not wholly cleaned up. The gruesome scenes from Japan turned my mind back to Haiti. In Haiti, the tragic earthquake…
Continue reading ➞ Remembering Haiti Post-Carnival (Kanaval)
MAY YOU FEAST WELL AND HAPPILY THIS HOLIDAY SEASON...
New Year's Day, coming up fast. Planning your menu, are you? There's a good reason to hesitate, to take your time, because there's really only one thing to eat that day. Black-eyed peas, a gift from a part of Africa ruled by the French for a long time. They were there as early as 1659 at St.…
Continue reading ➞ Cabbage and Black-Eyed Peas, Oh My! A New Year’s Tradition in the South
David Lebovitz --- a whiz of a pastry chef, cookbook author, and food blogger --- got me thinking this morning about the meaning of all the glitz and glitter out there, if only I could just get out of my icy driveway. David is giving away a set of Le Creuset cookware, a gift to…
Continue reading ➞ Thinking of Others as You Bite into that Bûche de Noël
