Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Blog, page 14

Seeking the Old West

Gunslingers. Buffalo. Cowboys. Horses. Native Americans in war paint. Women clad in petticoats and not much else. Clergymen and priests clutching bibles, swinging crucifixes. Wide open spaces, land for the taking. The images keep coming. An icon of the American story, the myth of the West provided Hollywood with fodder for decades. And before that, … Continue reading "Seeking the Old West"

Feral Pigs & Yellow Squash: A Tale Woven in a New World Kitchen

Soon  summer will again bless the Virginia mountains. Once the tall oaks leaf out, that is. And I’m already thinking of my old garden, Mary Randolph’s cookbook, and Hernando de Soto’s feral pigs. All ingredients, more or less, in my dealings with one of the three American culinary sisters: corn, beans, and squash. A tale woven from the … Continue reading "Feral Pigs & Yellow Squash: A Tale Woven in a New World Kitchen"

Sonoran Flour Tortillas = Culinary Mestizaje

Culinary mestizaje signifies fusion. And when the Spanish arrived in the New World, that’s exactly what took place: little by little the Spanish introduced key ingredients from their traditional pantries to their new subjects. Pork, beef, olive oil, and more.. And vice versa. Mostly chiles, tomatoes, beans, squash, and corn. The Roman Catholic Church played … Continue reading "Sonoran Flour Tortillas = Culinary Mestizaje"

Stoves & Suitcases

Wanderlust infiltrated my blood from early on. I joke that I left the womb three months early, so impatient was I to get started with life. In the beginning, just my mouth got to travel. And those exhilarating experiences of tasting and eating new things consoled me through a turbulent childhood. As did reading and … Continue reading "Stoves & Suitcases"

Friday Fish Fry

I have never much liked fish. Shellfish? That’s another matter. Except for crab. I seem to have developed an insidious allergy to that crustacean, as I suddenly suffered a great deal after diving into a platter of crab legs in Hawaii. But when I first moved to Milwaukee for graduate school in library science, Fridays … Continue reading "Friday Fish Fry"

M. F. K. Fisher in Japan: A Meditation by Leo Racicot

Leo Racicot, a friend of M. F. K. Fisher’s, wrote an essay about M. F.’s sojourn in Japan, a part of her life that rarely gets any ink. This total immersion in the Japanese way of eating and of living changed M.F.K. Fisher. Admirers of her work boldly underscore her sojourns in France, particularly in … Continue reading "M. F. K. Fisher in Japan: A Meditation by Leo Racicot"

Tucson: The Gastronomic City

Daddy always told me about being born in Miami. Yet it took me years to realize he wasn’t talking about Miami, Florida. Rather, he meant Miami, Arizona, near Globe, where my grandmother Winnie Gibson grew up, where she lived among Native Americans, miners, ranchers. Where all sorts of drifters came and went. Where one such … Continue reading "Tucson: The Gastronomic City"

Cuisine in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert: Cholla Buds

Miles and miles of endless, empty roads, only the occasional passing freight truck for hours on end, vast open spaces on either side, sagebrush, sand, merciless sunshine, roadrunners darting across the asphalt, jarring hypnotized drivers awake faster than a double Big Jolt. The desert, to the uninitiated, seems barren, lifeless, a place to be gotten … Continue reading "Cuisine in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert: Cholla Buds"

Nika Standen Hazelton: Remembering a Food Writer Chronicling a Lost World

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 … Continue reading "Nika Standen Hazelton: Remembering a Food Writer Chronicling a Lost World"

Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz: Remembering Her Latin American Food Writings

She was British, he was Mexican.  And from a meeting at the United Nations in New York came a surfeit of riches of cookbooks and food writing. Articles for Gourmet and House and Garden flowed from her pen. thanks to the support of José Wilson, editor of House and Garden, who opened the publishing door … Continue reading "Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz: Remembering Her Latin American Food Writings"