Because she loves you, Grandma Pellegrini made you a Valentines soup. She even put hearts in it. It’s a work of art. And because he loves you, Gordon snapped some photos of it. And because I love you, well… I’m just writing to tell you about it. I can’t take any credit. I can just share. This is a root soup, colored with red beets. It is delicious, I have […]
There once was a woman named Virginia Elizabeth Williams Gray. People called her “Jennie” Gray back in the 1800’s. She was my other great-great grandmother. Whereas, Evelyn Day Bruner was my great-grandmother’s mother, Jennie was my great-grandfather’s mother. We shall call her the tree trunk. Because she is the basis for a very wonderful tradition that links the many branches of my family. She is the basis for a family […]
Grandma Pellegrini has these faintly pink glass bowls in her house. She’s had them since the 1930’s. She and her sister (my great-aunt) lived together in New York City when they were working girls. I like that she still has them. She served me a pudding in them that I would like to tell you about, because it was a spectacular pudding. She has a way with puddings, she really […]
Loretta has had quite a colorful life in her seven months as a bird. As you remember, she started out as the one “rare breed” sent to us in the little box with all the other Rhode Island Reds that arrived at the post office. She was called a “Buff Laced Polish Chicken” and she was pretty and yellow while the others were all orange. She was always a little […]
When I was cooking away at a restaurant in the underbelly of Provence not too long ago, I didn’t have many people to talk to. In a way, it was like a silent retreat. My French was pretty flimsy and not many people spoke English. And the ones that did, well… they didn’t. I lived in a run-down house in the middle of nowhere on the estate of an old […]
I found my version of gold tucked away in an old drawer. It was a tiny black book. And when I read the cover, I had to know more. So I investigated, and guess what I discovered… this was my great-great grandmother’s recipe book! Her name was Evelyn Day Bruner. She lived in Brooklyn but was born in the mid-west. It’s tattered in a charming kind of way. “Well-used” shall […]
Another milestone this week at Tulipwood! The gals are starting to lay eggs! Can you believe it? It feels like just a few months ago that I was posting pictures of these tiny little things, and they are now laying eggs? Well, at least one of them is…. and they are very tiny. Look at them compared to one of Lucy’s eggs: They are called pullet eggs, and are the first eggs that young hens lay… […]
The coolest thing I’ve seen in recent months… … is a father teaching his daughter how to properly clean a bird for dinner. Wanting her to understand what it is to be a meat eater and how to be a fair and honest meat eater at that. Hunting is not about male bonding in the woods anymore… it’s about understanding how to participate in nature, how to hunt for food, take only […]
This is my French friend Robert. Doesn’t he look like Ernest Hemingway? For many weeks we spent Saturdays together at the french farmers market where he tended to his pot of rice. The rice was his priority, second only to the box of wine he carefully unloaded from the truck along with a portable refrigerator used just to keep the wine cool. In France, it is important to have wine to drink while you sell […]
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.