Quote of the Day: Tamar Adler
“If we were taught to cook as we are taught to walk, encouraged to first feel for pebbles with our toes, then to wobble forward and fall, then had our hands firmly tugged on so we would try again, we would learn that being good at it relies on something deeply rooted, akin to walking, to get good at which we need only guidance, senses and a little faith.
We aren’t often taught to cook like that, so when we watch people cook naturally, in what looks like an agreement between cook and cooked, we think that they were born with an ability to simply know that an egg is done, that the fish needs flipping, and that the soup need salt.”
Tamar Adler from An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace
I loved this quote when I read this book. Many people aren’t taught how to really cook, to cook like you create any other kind of art. Cooking is definitely a skill that you learn, one you learn by really tasting the food you eat. Every time you eat you have the potential to hone your cooking skills.
I love to cook and I’ve been honing my skills for my entire life. Creativity has always been one of my strengths and it really comes out when I cook.
What kind of cook would you say you are?
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Little House – no time to waste in spring
“There was no time to lose, no time to waste in rest or play. The life, of the earth comes up with a rush in the springtime. All the wild seeds of weed and thistle, the sprouts of vine and bush and tree, are trying to take the fields. Farmers must fight them with harrow and plow and hoe; they must plant the good seeds quickly.”
Laura Ingals Wilder (Little House Series)
Right now the ground is covered with over a foot of snow, spring seems really far away, but the growing pile of seed catalogs by my chair reminds me that it will be here sooner than I realize.
I’m not quite ready to get my seed order organized, but I don’t really have much of a choice. As much as I love gardening, I’m really enjoying a little bit of rest this winter. However, if I linger too long I may not be able to get the seeds that I want.
Luckily I still have a little time to rest before things get started in earnest. My onions will be started first in about a month. That gives me four more weeks of rest!
Do you ever have to do things before you want to because of circumstances outside of your control?
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Quote of the Day: Robert Frost
“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.”
It’s beginning to feel like it might end in ice around here! No thawing yet and 6″-10″ inches of snow coming today and tomorrow. It’s certainly a mess out there, I can’t imagine what all the trails back in the woods looks like.
What’s the worst weather issues you have in your garden?
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The Garden Year – a poem by Sara Coleridge
THE GARDEN YEAR
by Sara Coleridge
January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.
March brings breezes, loud and shrill,
To stir the dancing daffodil.
April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.
May brings flocks of pretty lambs
Skipping by their fleecy dams.
June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children’s hands with posies.
Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.
Warm September brings the fruit;
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.
Fresh October brings the pheasant;
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.
Dull November brings the blast;
Then the leaves are whirling fast.
Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.
What’s your December bringing?
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Quote of the Day: Jessica Prentice
In the rush to industrialize our food system, tradition has not only been ignored, it has been actively shunned. We make the assumption that the new thing is the better thing, indicating progress and vision, and that the old thing is obsolete. But vision, to be healthy, must be balanced by tradition. Unfortunately our country neglects tradition.
Jessica Prentice – Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection
I was thinking about this quote as I was talking to my grandma about her childhood last week. She said they raised 8-9 hogs each year and butchered them in the winter to help feed the 8 kids in the family. We chatted about how we butchered our own hogs a few weeks ago right on our place.
Growing and raising your own food is definitely a way to connect with tradition. For most of history our ancestors have had a hands on connection with their food. Not only in the cultivation of it but in the processing of it as well. If you can’t grow your own vegetable or raise your own meat, I’d highly recommend connecting with a small local farm that does. Even going out to the farm to see the vegetables in the garden and animals in the field will help connect you with your food heritage.
Learning to make food from scratch is also a way to connect with tradition. One of my favorite things to make is bread, whenever I knead bread I think about the millions of women around the world that are kneading bread now and the billions that have done it throughout the ages. Such a simple act that transcends culture and time.
What kind of food do you feel most connects you with the past?
