Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Blog, page 12

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Eggs

From Memoirs of the American Folk-lore Society, Volume 4, published in 1896, by the American Folklore Society, folk beliefs about Halloween from early America. Most U.S. Halloween practices came from Scotland. 311. On Halloween put an egg to roast before the fire and leave the doors and windows open. When it begins to sweat a … More Saints, Souls, and Haints: Eggs

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Cider and Curds

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

Halloween: Cake and Candles

Prolific nineteenth-century domestic scientist, Sarah Tyson Hetson Rorer, in her Home Games and Parties (1898,  p. 139), wrote about some of the old Halloween customs. The ancient association of Halloween with fertility and love comes out in this section of Home Games and Parties: DIVINING BY THE CAKE WITH CANDLES MUCH sport may be had … More Halloween: Cake and Candles

Writing about Food IS Writing

An interesting thing happened to me today. I ran into a person who knows me, a person who is also a writer. And they said the darnedest thing. Something about me just writing about food. As if it were something lesser than writing a novel or whatever. Actually, I have written a novel. In the … More Writing about Food IS Writing

The Three Sisters: A Celebration

Corn. Beans. Squash. The Three Sisters. Many Native American groups tell very different creation stories about these New World crops, which – as “sustainers of life” – meant deep sacredness. According to Shelia Wilson of the Sappony Tribe in North Carolina: The legend of “Three Sisters” originated when a woman of medicine who could no … More The Three Sisters: A Celebration

La Mouffe

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

On the Borderlands

Uniformed men on horseback, lassos at the ready, chase brown and black people standing in the surging water of the Rio Grande near Del Rio, Texas. The photographs shock. They call up long-buried images. Of the Ku Klux Klan night riding. Of patrollers chasing runaway slaves. Of Native Americans and the U.S. Cavalry at Wounded … More On the Borderlands

Stoves & Suitcases: Searching for Home in the World’s Kitchens

My latest book is out, a story of culinary discoveries and life’s big-and-little adventures.

Literature as Witness

Witnessing doesn’t always mean expressing words out loud. Or even in written form. You act as a witness, every day, in one way or another, merely by living. Witnessing can be as simple as waking before the sun rises, shuffling to the kitchen, waiting while the coffee gurgles through the filter, peeling a bruised banana, … More Literature as Witness

Not Long Now: New Book Due Out Soon!!!

Stoves and Suitcases is a marvelous magic carpet ride (although a carpet is the only mode of transport Cynthia Bertelsen doesn’t employ as she and her future husband, Mike, a fellow Peace Corps worker, make the rounds of Africa, South and Central America, the Caribbean, France, the American Heartland, Florida, and Indonesia). Her story addresses … Continue reading "Not Long Now: New Book Due Out Soon!!!"