CABBAGE

I almost think of Cabbage as the Momma of the Cole family. It has such a variety of ways to be eaten and enjoyed. Raw it can be shredded and made into Cole slaw, or salted lightly and set in a crock to sour for a week, and it becomes sauerkraut. I make my own and can it, and if you like sauerkraut it’s a simple undertaking indeed. Cabbage also makes an excellent relish. About once or twice a year I make sweet relish from cabbage, adding possibly green tomatoes or late cucumbers and celery and boiling it up in my big blue enamel stockpot. A good canned batch lasts me many months. Sometimes I use it as the filler with hot green peppers to make chow-chow, which is a hot relish.

     Cabbage is often considered “poor mans” food, cause it is so inexpensive and yet plentiful. But don’t ever sell it short for taste and nutrition. It’s considered good money luck to eat cabbage or greens at the New Year. And corned beef and cabbage are the famous St Patrick’s Day tradition… it probably was a nice green alternative to the ham or bacon and potatoes they ate the rest of the winter. And here we have once again a winter crop paired with a cured or preserved meat. Cabbage can be made into cabbage rolls… umm, umm good. There’s also braised cabbage and bacon, and creamed cabbage, which usually has bits of ham in it. Colcannon (one of my family’s favorite Christmas dishes), Bubble and Squeak, and Rumbledethumps, are three similar dishes of mainly potatoes and cabbage. One being Irish, one British and one Scottish, makes one wonder if they didn’t originate from the same source way back when.

     Red cabbage, or also called purple cabbage, is a colored variety with a slightly spicier taste, which often seems true with veggies that have a reddish or purple color.  It braises well with onions, bacon, ham, or ham hocks, and apples.  It also has a nice flavor cooked with vinegar. Just a note: Radicchio is indeed different than red cabbage. It is part of the chicory /endive group of veggies. Great in its own right but the taste is much stronger than red cabbage, with some different qualities and uses, so FYI don’t confuse the two.

    

Savoy cabbage, which originated in Germany actually not Savoy (but I secretly think came from the emerald city) looks like a green jewel to me. It is so perfectly round and a wonderfully wrinkly bright green. The leaves are sweeter and more tender than regular cabbage, and they are consistently more flat and flexible, which can be important for certain preparations.  As well the texture is lighter and more crispy than rubbery. It can be cooked, and when cooked doesn’t have the smell some folks dislike with other cooked cabbage and Cole veggies. It’s also good eaten raw. And raw it even lends itself to lighter recipes. It is nice added to salads, and tastes especially excellent, to me, with bleu cheese dressing. And I like to shred it as a topping for fish tacos, because it’s a lovely pairing both in taste and in sight with the green chili lime sauce I use there. But that’s usually in the spring or summer, and you can’t always find Savoy later in the warmer seasons. Another idea is to wrap the tender leaves around Bratwurst, Polish or Italian sausage, and just bake in a casserole with a little beer or wine. For a nice Eastern touch try just wilting largely chopped Savoy in sesame oil, as a side to five spiced pork with those sweet dim sum steamed rolls. One drawback is Savoy does not last long in the fridge like other cabbages which will keep for a good while. And one big point to these “cold” crops, is their staying power through the times of year when other things are not being grown in your garden.

    

For Asian cuisine all cabbages will work but Chinese (Napa) cabbage has great texture and a fresh green taste for stir frying in the wok. it has a bit more of a thick inner leave stalk branching out to tender light green leaves, which are almost lettuce-like. It too when cooked has less smell than other Cole veggies, but the flavor to me is as diminished as the smell. My personal feeling is Chinese cabbage is a great additive to things but it doesn't hold its own for a main ingredient.

  For Eastern or Asian food I prefer to more often use Bok Choy.  The mix of the waxy white lower leaf stalks with the tender dark green tender upper part is perfect.

I really like it in my egg rolls with shrimp or pork. It’s nice aside fish, or even cooked and added to fried rice. Because of the thicker stalk at the bottom I’ve most always eaten it or used it chopped, where it’s great in soups. I make a white miso soup with bok choy, mushrooms, and just a few other things, that is not only delicious and so incredibly simple and quick, but truly soul soothing, with some pleasant music, and green tea on a spring day.

     Well coming up I’m going to show how I make cabbage rolls and some filling and sauce ideas. And this weekend is Candlemas, and one of it’s  traditional foods is creamed cabbage. So more Cole articles and, even  better, recipes to come.

    Blessings mes amis

MEET THE COLE FAMILY

Cole crops, are also cold crops, in that they grow well in colder weather sometimes even through the winter. There are other vegetables considered cold crops but here we are going to talk about the family of veggies called Cole. You know them well… and the word Cole, or similar is often used in their name or in dishes prepared with them. Cole slaw, kale, cauliflower, collards, and colcannon are some examples. I’m talking about some of my favorite vegetables… 

     Cabbage and its various cousins, are vegetables for this time of year. There are “winter cabbage” varieties of plants which are best grown even right through the winter season, but in fact most all varieties of  cabbage and Cole veggies do better grown in cooler even cold weather with less hours of direct sunlight. And as well, they also have a better taste grown in the fall and winter of the year. I have heard people conjecture that the word Cole is related to the fact that they are grown in the cold, but that’s an unrelated coincidence, in fact Cole comes from the Latin caulis, which means stem. All of these vegetables no mater how big or ornate a plant they make, grow from one core thick stem.  I’d like to elaborate about each vegetable in its own article and I will as well as be cooking with them.  But allow me to list these wonderful versatile winter delights.

Cabbage is probably the largest, plant wise and probably the most commonly eaten through out the world. There are two main kinds, regular and red or purple.

Other types of cabbage are Chinese cabbage and bok choy, which are wonderful in stir fry and egg roll filling just to mention a few uses. Savoy cabbage, (I have also heard called German cabbage) is excellent eaten raw.

It has an interesting look, and it’s lighter and crisper with a sweeter taste.

And lets not forget my little happy Brussels sprouts, which are little buds that grow along a thick stem amongst cabbage like leaves.

 And next there are the sorts of plants we simply call greens. Kale is an excellent nutritious vegetable, not to

mention it is curly and pretty, and tasty with a great texture. And as we are discussing greens, ahh wonderful collards, probably my favorite green, is great alone or even in casseroles and soups. This being about winter foods let me just mention that the next two greens don’t completely fit here. Mustard greens are actually not as good grown in the cold. They are more hearty, able to stand the summer sun, and they have a strong flavor which can get too concentrated in later autumn. They are best eaten while the leaves are small and grown in the summer with their unrelated friends lettuce and spinach. And turnip greens as well are best eaten young and in late summertime. Turnip leaves can be taken sparingly from a turnip plant without hurting the turnip. Turnips however can be left in the ground into the cold as long as they don’t get too large, tough and woody. But they are a good food for winter as they also hold well in the root cellar (unwashed) to last through the non growing season. 

Rutabagas, turnips big brother, last even longer in the ground and in the cellar, and are bigger and better grown in colder temps.

     Next let’s talk about broccoli, which is good raw or cooked, and an excellent addition to so many soups and casseroles. And there’s sister cauliflower which is often discounted because folks do not know just how many ways it can be fixed. It does have a strong taste and smell, which also makes folks shy away from it, but its well worth learning to cook and enjoy. Some new varieties were bred in red green and orange colors, by botanists at a university, which are really pretty and can make a nice presentation.

The flavor is no different. There are a few colored naturally occurring varieties which were taken and reproduced from flukes that happened in maybe just one plant in the field, like a lavender, or gold. These do have a slight difference in taste. We also have here broccoli rabe (pronounced ROB) and sometimes just called rabe. It almost seems to be a cross between kale and broccoli, having both small crowns of buds and lots of leaves. It is more popular in Europe than here. I’ve not tried it but looking at it, the crowns of broccoli are the best part and in these they are very small, the veggie seems to be all leaves and stalk Then there actually is the hybrid cross of broccoli and kale developed by a seed company and called broccolini. 

And my honest appraisal here is why? I have tried cooking with it a few times. It’s not very tasty, the texture is wimpy, and the buds compared to broccoli are not crowns of delicious tenderness, but sad little loose bundles of pointlessness. Not to mention it usually cost more per ounce so why bother.  That’s just my opinion… now lastly in this group is what is sometimes called romanesco broccoli but is actually cauliflower, and is more correctly just called romanesco. This is for sure the most beautiful of vegetables. Not something you will see in the corner grocery, which is why I have yet to cook it. I here it’s very delicious, and I have seen it at some pricey markets, but at the time I wasn’t shopping for it. I do plan to get some and try however if not just for the novelty of its beauty. Some folks here in the US think this is a new hybrid but it’s a rather old plant. And it too is a cold weather plant from Italy.

And so it goes with the Coles.

     And well, even though this is a long post I can tell you much more about each one of these wonderful foods and the cooking and eating of them, I may not even get it all written this winter, but there’s always next year. so until then adieu. 

Blessings mes amis

TWO POTS AND THREE SKILLETS

     So here we are in the midst of winter. And it certainly feels so outside right now! This is still a time of short days, a time when peoples of antiquity were not doing any work with crops or planting.  Not really getting outdoors much. Snow may well be covering the ground and tending the animals in pens and stables was likely the brunt of the work, aside from keeping wood cut for fires. Hearty foods as best as could be cooked, would keep the blood warm and bellies full. At this time of year there was no fresh meat left, and the veggies were root crops from  their stores in the root cellar, and a few carrots which might still be in the ground, plus in some places cabbage and kale can still be growing. They had eggs, mostly from last year as hens lay little, (note eggs will actually last a long time if the shells are never compromised, they are natures sterile container.)  They would have grain stores, and dried meats and dried fish and dried fruits, possibly candied fruits for the lucky.  Foods like aged bacon and ham, jerky, breads, cabbages, carrots, potatoes, onions, turnips and beets.  Dishes like large warm loaves of bread and hashes of cabbage potatoes and ham.

     These are still the foods we often eat at this time of year. Yes we can get fresher food, but a pot of stew sounds great. Ham, bacon, eggs and bread sound really nice as well in the cold weather, well anytime really!

     I cooked four of five foods customary for this time, ham, onions, potatoes, carrots, and asparagus. Asparagus is a spring sprout, but hey, someone gave me some big stalked spears that I thought would be tough and to my surprise they were tender as ever. They had a really good taste too. So here are the results of my experiment last evening. I’m calling it “Two pots and Three skillets” and you will need just that. Or you can adjust with a little microwave help. I started with the following ingredients:.. plus one large pot, one medium pot, two large skillets, one needing a well fitting lid, and one small fry pan, with a lid.

§        Ham slices rather thin, about 8 good slices, and I halved each one.

§        One nice yellow onion

§        About one pound of thick asparagus stalks cleaned and cut into 1 inch pieces

§        7 nice fat carrots

§        7 small potatoes, red new potatoes are nice.

§        About 2 and ½ sticks of butter (or margarine)

§        ½ cup lemon juice

§        three or four garlic cloves

§        about three or four rosemary sprigs if you can get them.

§        plenty of salt and black pepper

§        1 tsp lemon pepper

§        1 tsp garlic powder, plus more for sprinkling

§        dried parmesan cheese for sprinkling

§        about ½ cup canola oil for frying

§        ½ tsp of asafetida or if you can’t get  it onion powder will do

§        1 tsp dried orange zest

§        ¼ tsp nutmeg

§        1 tsp cinnamon-sugar

§        ¼ cup of each—shelled and roasted almonds and pistachios

§        1 tbsp brown sugar

§        2 tsp chili powder

§        ½ tsp cayenne pepper or Cajun seasoning.

     To start, scrub your potatoes, leaving the peels on. And scrape your carrots and trim the ends. Also clean your asparagus trimming as needed. Bend each one holding it towards the large end and they will naturally break off at the point where the stalk is getting tough. Wash and chop the rest all the way through the tips in about 1 inch pieces. Place the asparagus in the smaller pot, and the whole carrots and potatoes in the larger pot. Salt each pot very liberally so the water you’re about to add will be  very salty. Add half of your lemon juice to each pot, which works out to ¼ cup in each pot. To the large pot, with the potatoes and carrots, add the whole garlic cloves and rosemary sprigs and fill with cold water. To the smaller pot, of asparagus add just enough hot water to cover the asparagus. Note if you wish you can cook the asparagus in the microwave using a glass microwave safe bowl. Fill the bowl just as the pot instruction with asparagus, water and lemon and salt  to just barely cover the pieces, and go 6 minutes to start then about 4 more at a time until they are tender. Probably 14-16 total. There is a great hint for steaming whole asparagus spears in a jar in the microwave which I, or my friend Sophie, will tell you about another time.

       If not using the microwave, then start both pots boiling on the back burners. Put a lid on the asparagus. Let the potatoes and carrots come to a boil. As the asparagus comes to a fast boil with the lid on, open and check them after about ten minutes for tenderness. They should take a spearing with a fork easily, but the best way is to cool a piece enough to bite into. They should be just a tiny bit still crunchy but easily eaten. Continue to cook them until they are tender.

     The carrots and potatoes need to cook from the cold water point for about ten plus minutes also but they will not be done. To find the stopping point, while they are boiling, try to spear a potato with a fork. Just as soon as a fork is able to penetrate a potato turn off the heat and drain them in a colander, then rinse in cold water. They are parboiled and the carrots should be just slightly rubbery but not tender, potatoes still rather hard. Set them to cool just a bit, possibly in the refrigerator. While they cool drain the asparagus well.  Set that aside while you melt about 6 tbsp butter into the smallest fry pan. As soon as the butter is melted add in the chopped tender asparagus and sauté turning gently with a slotted spoon. Add salt and pepper to taste, and 1 tsp of each lemon pepper and garlic powder. Cook this together on a medium heat  for just about 3-4 minutes. Take off the heat and sprinkle lightly with parmesan cheese. You will add more to taste at serving time. Set this aside with a lid on or in a warming oven, while you set up the other two skillets on the front burners of the stove.

     Take out your potatoes and carrots and slice into ¼ inch slice rounds. Separate the carrots and potatoes into two bowls or piles. Cut your onion in half long ways (tip to root) peel each half onion down towards the roots then holding the root part, slice into thin slices of half rings. Have your ham slices ready to cook. And have a pan with paper towel for draining  or a draining rack set next to your space.

     In one skillet place the canola oil and start it heating. In the other with the well fitting lid melt about 6 tbsp butter. Add the onions to the butter and keep the heat on high for a moment as they are starting to cook. Add some of the carrots to the oil and start them frying one layer deep. Just let them fry do not mix them or try to turn them over until on side is getting done. Meanwhile do mix and sauté the onions until they just start to brown. At this point cover them with all the slices of ham layered across them. Cover the skillet with the lid and lower the heat to the very lowest point. As you cook your carrots, and then follow with cooking the potatoes let each side cook well about 4-5 minutes undisturbed.  Then turn only once. The carrots will darken each side and get just to beginning of a crunch stage but the potatoes will be golden brown and nicely crispy. Drain both in a pan on paper towels or if you have a rack that’s great. As each batch is done and draining sprinkle liberally to taste with salt pepper and garlic powder. Then after each batch drained and seasoned place them into a glass casserole dish arranging carrots and potatoes nicely together. After the potatoes and carrots are done. Check your ham. The onions should be nicely caramelized and ham cooked softly. Push the onions aside and place the ham on the skillet bottom and rearrange the onions on top now. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and cayenne or Cajun seasoning. Cover and put back over the low heat.

     Place the nuts in a plastic bag and pound with a meat hammer or rolling pin just until they break up but do not pulverize them.

     In a glass measuring cup or any glass cup melt the remaining butter about 8 tbsp, which you have sliced in pats. Do this in the microwave no more than 20 seconds, or melt in a small sauce pan. Do not melt too far, just until some but all of the butter is liquefying. Take a fork and mix the rest of the pieces into a nice thick well blended liquid. Add the asafetida, nutmeg, orange zest, cinnamon-sugar and nuts, and blend all well. Pour this over the potatoes and carrots covering all well. Place the casserole in a warming oven to hold.

     Go back to your ham. Turn up the heat all the way. Mix the chili powder and brown sugar. Open the lid and sprinkle the sugar mixture over everything. Mix it well into the onions then flip the ham slices over and around in to all the mixture. Take the ham off the heat. If your asparagus has cooled heat it up now while you lay out the ham.

     Pull the ham slices out of the onions with tongs and lay them staggered along the center of a platter, then pour and spoon the onions and sauce over the top of them. Place your asparagus in a serving bowl and sprinkle with more parmesan to taste.  Now…Serve all three…platter, casserole, and serving bowl hot on the table. I added little toasted cheese and lettuce sandwiches for bread just cause I like something to sop up sauce with, but you can forego that or use the bread of your choosing…yummm if I say so my self.   However…

     My daughter and son-in-law happened by and their reviews were excellent. Enjoy!!

Blessings mes amis

WHEEL OF THE YEAR..continued

By way of the Wheel of the Year I discussed, I have made a little reference illustration. It gives a brief example about what foods are in season when. As the calendar comes to each quarter day, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn and cross quarter day, those between, or there about, I hope to elaborate a great deal as to why the foods are in season, and the holidays that have grown up around the foods or vice versa the foods around the holidays. As you see we are now in the first half-quadrant of the year. So, many of my recipes, but not all, and articles to follow, will be about the food for this time. And coming up is Candlemas… Feb 2^nd, A day rich with traditions going back to ancient times.

 Blessings mes amis.

BRANDY BACON DRUMS

I want to continue on with the wheel of the year with an illustration for reference but lets take a break for a recipe I created the other day that I’m sure you will enjoy.

     Well, the market had drumsticks and bacon on sale, and one of my sons had left a bit of brandy here from the holidays so I came up with Brandy Bacon Drums. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

7-8 chicken drum sticks

14 – 16 slices of bacon

½ cup brandy

1 tbsp of dried orange zest

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp salt or to taste

2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp Cajun or Creole seasoning

Adolph’s meat tenderizer

1 tbsp olive oil

1tbsp butter

   Sprinkle  tenderizer on all drums to coat and rub in. Note that the tenderizer is salty so adjust salt to your taste accordingly… remembering that bacon is involved.

     Adolph’s meat tenderizer is the only true tenderizer on the market that I know of containing bromelain which is derived from the enzyme in pineapple that tenderizes meat. All other tenderizers are just salts which though they tenderize some they do not really break down the fibrousness of protein the same way. Here we are using it for mostly the skin of the chicken, but also for the meat. The bacon will bring juiciness but the skin underneath the bacon will be chewy so we use the tenderizer.

     Sprinkle salt and the pepper all over the drums. Heat a skillet to hot with the oil and butter, and sear quickly but lightly all the drums. Set aside and let them cool just a bit. Roll them in a combined mixture of the rest of the seasonings except the sugar and orange zest. Wrap each drum in two slices of bacon tucking under the ends to hold. Sprinkle the combined zest and sugar over all the drums on both sides. Pour the brandy into the skillet fats and deglaze (mix in a sauté) for just a small amount. Pour a tiny bit of the skillet brandy into the bottom of a greased glass casserole. Arrange the drums, alternating the small ends with drums to the outside edges so they fit well together. Pour the remaining brandy sauté over them.

      Bake these covered with lid or foil on a low heat 325 degrees F. for 45 minutes, this ensures bacon is done right so it crisps later. Then uncover, turn over the wrapped drumsticks carefully, and bake at 400 for 20 more minutes.  Then carefully turn over the wrapped drumsticks again so the crisped bacon side can alternate, and cook for 20 more minutes. When done they should be uniformly cooked in well done crisped bacon with a good liquid baste in the dish about half up the drums deep.

     Immediately remove the drums to serve and use the baste as a sauce if you wish to go aux jus, or just serve without juice. The outsides should be crispy and caramelized but easy to cut into. The insides should be very tender, very moist and very flavorful. Enjoy! I had this with not more than buttered French bread and apple slices, but a side of something green would be nice. And an iron rich veggie would fully balance the protein and fat for a healthy, not to mention elegant, meal.

    

Blessings mes amis

WHEEL OF THE YEAR

If you think of our calendar as a circle, a wheel, with Winter Solstice being at the North, Spring Equinox being at the East, Summer Solstice being at the South, and Autumn Equinox being at the West, you have a Wheel of the Year. And in our northern hemisphere you could travel around this wheel along with these seasons. Though supermarkets, imports and more have made all sorts of food available most all year round, many if not all foods we enjoy, as well as customs, traditions, and holidays follow a cycle and pattern. These, have in times gone by, been dictated by what foods were available, harvested, growing, grazing, bearing young, lactating, roaming, and hunted. So food is indeed seasonal. And it should remain so for a plethora of reasons. I can only speak here as a northern child of our Mother planet, for that is how I’m oriented, and what my habits body and soul even are connected with. d

     In these modern times we can enjoy Chilean fruits and veggies, flown north daily, in the midst of our winters. And while I don’t disparage doing so, there was a time not so long ago that this was impossible, and generations before were accustomed to the seasonal bounty the earth gave us, pared with human ingenuity of preservation out of necessity. And we have primordial signals within our psyche that are connected to what we eat and when. And when we follow the seasons and foods there of, we are, id say, more in sync with the rhythms of our existence.T

     You might pshaw my theory but let me relate two little stories. There is a very lovely Australian actress with porcelain skin, who shall remain nameless as I’m borrowing her story, who tells of Christmas with her family down under. Being as they are of British descent… Christmas, which happens in the bloom of summer heat in Australia, was always kept in the usual traditions by many there all the way down to the food served. Heavy foods like turkey or ham,  cakes and puddings, and all manner of preparations that heat up the house to cook, and are meant to fuel up your body with pleasure and warmth to help through the cold.  Well one year as they sat down to Christmas dinner… sweating, eating food that sat on their stomachs like hot bricks, it occurred to them to change the tradition. The following year they were on the beach ringing in Christmas in their swim suits with flowers and melons and shrimp on the barbie. ð

     My second story is about an experiment done to test psychic abilities. A group developed a machine with a wheel of lights that were extremely sensitive to electromagnetic waves. It was a biofeedback mechanism. The point being that known psychics with telekinetic abilities could  turn the lights on or off with just the power of thought as they were connected to the machine. They gathered people from all over the world who had shown great abilities in this area. The experiment was quite successful. The instructions were to make the lights move around the wheel in a clockwise direction. And a great number of the subjects were able to do so. This showed that the sensitivity of the machine pared with the power of human thought, which by the way generates electromagnetic energy, is a real phenomenon. But something strange happened. Some of the subjects no matter how they tried to make a clockwise direction movement, came up with the opposite result, counterclockwise movement just as definite as some of the others clockwise movement. An astute member of the group thought and then checked into an idea. All of the folks who could only move the lights counterclockwise were born and raised below the equator, in the southern hemisphere. Where as you may know cyclones, storms,  and even draining water in the sink turn opposite from the way they turn here in the northern half of our little planet. And clockwise was determined by the circular movement of the sun through the sky, which is also opposite down under.ü

     So we are much more in tune with the tilt of our planet, the rotation of it, the gravity of our star sun, and its light and energy. We are but products of this wonderful blue earth, part of it, part of the food chain, part of the web of life. And part of the seasons and wheel of the year. And so let’s embrace what is given to us in the wonderful beauty of seasons. Where we are, what we eat, what is right for our bodies fuel at any given time or place. c

     My heading for this blog has a hint into this wheel, the seasons and foods associated with them, all displayed in the photos. It’s a limited look but a hint of where I travel around this wheel each year. And I hold traditions, rituals and the foods, customs and joys as a practice to the rhythms of life. So I will talk from reference to the western culture and life here in the northern half of this planet.  But I never want to express with intention of being egocentric and the only way to see things.  I hope to ever remain open to learning about other cultures, foods, geographies. Alas my reference point even though limited in the scheme of the globe, is personally intimately, connected to the seasonal body-clocks of me, those around me, and probably most anyone who might read my thoughts. |

     Ahhh ..for food is close, its our bodies connected to our own nature, its necessary, its about what is here and now. The artistic creation of a meal or dish is not placed in a museum for centuries but eaten enjoyed experienced and gone. Cooking is such a transient but rich, necessary and bound to the earth, but uplifting and transcendent type of creative effort. And as I continue circling the wheel of the year I will share, each cycle, and the blessings of food associated with  each time and place. ä

   Blessings mes amis

   

GREETINGS

What can I say by way of introduction?  I am a lover of food. You might say, “who isn’t?” Yet there are those who merely, in their busy-ness, use food as nothing more than fuel, necessary sustenance to be acquired where ever, and usually in a hurry. I feel so sad for those types of folks. I am also a lover of knowledge…which is what Philosophy means, after all.   I like to learn, to seek, and research anything which piques my interest. And food piques my interest. I also love people who are very into food… “foodies”… guess you could say beyond being a foodie myself I am a foodiephile.

      I have no “formal” training as a chef, though I have trained, and researched, and practiced diligently. I have met the most wonderful teachers, usually sweet experienced women who had cooked for their families for many years, and are full of tips, short cuts, and recipes. And I sought out teachers, videos, books… and cooked…and cooked…and cooked some more… and experimented a lot! For over 30 years at least I have non-stop lived my life cooking for family or friends or just to learn new techniques..  I do feel I am an accomplished enough chef, and my knowledge of food and food preparation, gardening, growing, harvesting, and more, I am confident in describing as extensive. I come from gardening people. And I knew about the two year cycle of pecan trees and why cabbage and kale are better grown in the autumn, before I knew anything about cooking. We, as children, shelled many nuts in the autumn for holiday foods. We peeled peaches for canning in the late summer. We made pumpkin pies (with help) and roasted the seeds from our jack-o-lanterns. We made “snow” ice cream, when a big snow kept us home from school. And we helped with all manner of family cooking projects

     I also experienced as a child helping clean and feather chickens and ducks, clean fish, (I have a great one step technique there!)  butcher hogs, make and smoke sausage   Plus much more was expected of us as part of our yearly cycle of life while growing up. Needless to say I’m not squeamish. And food was part of everything, and every time. And I feel dearly blessed to have been raised in such an environment.

      Now as to philosophy, I AM formally educated there. Starting out as an art student in drawing and painting I ended up after a few “major” changes with philosophy, with an emphasis on world religion, symbolism and mythology. Though I will say that with anything, and all these things, I’ve always educated myself well beyond, before and after  any formal education. And I will never stop seeking to learn more. We all, I think, can have a tendency to become complacent in what we know or think we know, and feel our cup is filled. And pardon a well worn analogy but: if you (or I) see your cup as full, then there is no room for some new knowledge to be poured in to that head of yours. So I also feel blessed to have an endless restlessness to find out ever more

      My love for art makes me a visual person, with eyes for beauty, and I relish color. My love for philosophy comes because of my spirituality, my restless mind, and the connection I feel with the land, nature, and the seasons,… at least in my experience, of the northern half of our dear little wonderfully tilted planet Earth.  My love for food somehow seems intertwined in it all. The act of eating our meals each day, whether alone or sharing with others, the acts of cooking and preparing with love, of setting a pleasant table, and  artistically presenting  our meals, with all that is aesthetically pleasing, the wonderful smell of cantaloupe in the warm of summer days, or bacon and coffee early on a cold  morning, or a bite of succulent juicy turkey and gravy, while you look across the table at loved ones, or a rich red table cloth under candles for a holiday dinner with a friend. All this becomes sacramental to me.

     And yet, while this all sounds solemn and serious, I am French after all. And if you do not include the wine and song with the food, and the dance, the whimsy, just the Joie de Vivre, well, mon cher, you are just missing the boat. So here I am, wanting to share in writing all I’ve gleaned from a rich life of cooking, giving, receiving, growing, and learning. This is mostly about food, but some wisdom, history, and humor are thrown in. And all this is framed within the context of what I’ve told you above, and given with love. And to that end for now I bid you adieu. Blessings mes amis.