When I was at Tulipwood a few weeks ago, I got to see all of the carnage left over from a massive wind storm a few months ago. Lots of trees went down like dominoes and let’s just say it’s going to take a very long time to clean up the firewood. But something interesting happened when all of the trees came up by their roots… can you see it? […]
I’m back! Did you miss me? It took a little longer than I said it would, my new server rejected me several times. I kept trying to make it like me but it wouldn’t, and so I finally had to face the fact that we had no future together and move on to another server. That’s life, my heart is healing. As you know I don’t like to shop. But sometimes, […]
My dad is a master beekeeper. He builds his own box frames much to my mother’s dismay. It causes a lot of clutter in the garage. But he looks awfully amusing in his bee suit. Rather like an astronaut. He gets his bees from Georgia, not me, the state. It’s an exciting time when they arrive. We don’t always have to order more, but sometimes you lose a hive or […]
When I was at Tulipwood last week, I took a trip to Gilberties Herb Farm with Grandma Pellegrini. She had been talking about this place for many months. Since early winter. She and my great-aunt used to go regularly she told me, they would get up early while it was still cool enough to be inside the greenhouse, and they’d be back in time to open the store (they owned […]
I’m 34,000 feet in the sky again. I seem to be up here a lot. I’m hoping to have a lull again this summer before I embark on a whole new book that I’m about to write, which will require travel which means many more posts from up here. Did I tell you about the new book yet? I will, I have to push the first one out of the […]
I’m in New York this week, which was perhaps serendipitous since it’s May Day, and with it, came a lesson in sweet woodruff from Grandma Pellegrini. Sweet woodruff, is also known as Master of the Woods. It is a perennial, with small white flowers that bloom in May and June and star-like leaves in circles of six or eight. On May 1st, the Germans use Sweet Woodruff to make May […]
Grandma P. and I had a recent exchange via Gmail, as we are prone to do. We like to talk about projects. And radio programs. She tells me what Arthur Schwartz and Joan Hamburg are up to in New York and I tell her what the latest title of my book is. She has much more to offer to the conversation usually, I go into a tunnel when I’m working […]
A while ago I uncovered a recipe book from my great-great grandmother. It was full of recipes for brown bread. She was mildly obsessed with it I think. Maybe it tapped into her Puritan nature and she felt satisfied by its simplicity. Then a while after that, I got the latest edition of our family recipe book in the mail, a compilation of six generations of recipes from the family […]
This is the time of year when a lot of your proteins are in the freezer, since in many places, it is the “in between” season. One of my favorite things to do in these months is cure meat and fish. If I can manage to do it before it hits the freezer even better, but you do what you can. Salt curing inhibits the growth of microorganisms by drawing […]
Two wild stallions. Or domesticated. Whichever I can find first. A transexual rooster. With army tags. And one good eye. A hearty piece of honeycomb straight from our beehives which will last forever. It truly will, honey is the only food that never goes bad. Now can you really say that about money? Honey is better than money. Oh, I crack myself up. Badly baked scones. Kind of reminiscent of […]