“I just found the best bundt cake recipe in the entire United States,” so said my grandmother as she handed me a piece… she tends to modify recipes often, adding a bit of this and that along the way. Some yogurt here, some honey there. So you’re never quite sure how it got to be so spectacular… something in her kitchen air. I thought I’d share grandma’s bundt cake recipe […]
I recently listened to the cadence of five pies consecutively – my ear against the heavy thwump of throbbing apple, the crackling of a blueberry, the bubbling of two flawless blackberry confections, and the soft gurgle of perfectly sweetened huckleberry. It was a morning of passionate pie baking interrupted only by a blackberry picking interlude. Kate McDermott, (www.artofthepie.com), a pianist by trade, gave me an elegant lesson on pie making. […]
You know that fleshy weed that grows in sidewalk cracks? That’s purslane. And it tastes very good if you know how to use it. I didn’t use it properly until this past week when Jon Rowley made me realize that I do like it as more than just an “acid accent” to my normal salad greens. He and I share a love of simple foods, with very simple ingredients. This […]
Just finished the summer honey harvest at Tulipwood! I’d like your list of things that are better that a piece of raw honeycomb. Especially when paired with a cheese plate. The honey is making its way from a big metal vat that uses centrifugal force to extract honey, into charming little hexagonal jars.
At Tulipwood, everyone since my great-grandfather has left their mark. This is the summer of birds — wild Guinea hens with their keets, domesticated keets a day old that we picked up from a lady in Pennsylvania, so small and fuzzy, they fit into the palm of your hand… rapidly growing chicks, turkeys that loiter outside the kitchen door, a rooster named Buster and a white hen named Lucy who […]
They patiently (sort of) waited in a basket while their paper was changed. It’s amazing how quickly they can cover the entire surface of their living quarters with bird droppings…. Meet Loretta, the Buff Laced Polish chicken… She’s tired after her bath. One of her favorite pastimes is to roll around in bird droppings.
Look What I Found In The Woods! I was catering a rehearsal dinner for a wedding last week and on the menu was a platter of sauteed wild mushrooms for the table. Well I was out in the woods and found this, so I promptly returned the packaged mushrooms to the store. These were a hit, especially when I put one of them on a platter as a showpiece and […]
The post office was highly amused. There is nothing like a box of fuzzy chicks to ring in the Spring. There are a few rare breeds here. We ordered them for our neighbor who wants hens that lay green eggs. Maybe she wants green eggs and ham in the mornings? I can’t blame her. I would like green eggs and ham most mornings.
The highlights: Picking blueberries with a Kentucky farmer for a few hours and chatting about life…Eating tomato sandwiches in his kitchen… Watching the crowds swarm around his tomatoes at the Berea farmer’s market… Seeing hundreds of windmills spinning on the Kansas planes… Seeing the Kansas planes, especially during sunset… Eating Beer-Can Chicken in Denver… Strolling through the farmer’s markets there… Seeing the vineyards in the Colorado Rockies transition to the […]
There’s nothing like a bee swarm to get the day started. Here in Skejberg, Norway I’m with Hans-Otto at one of his hundreds of honey hives. He was a day late in visiting them and his bees swarmed. Swarming is what happens when the hives get too full of honey and eggs — the queen bee leaves the colony with a large group of worker bees and they start building […]