At least, my husband is there, helping his dad whose body is giving out. I’m in Vermont thinking of them, keeping my phone close, waiting for updates. I’m there in spirit, my mind turning naturally to reflection and connection, to the lessons I’ve learned from what was once quite foreign to me.

How unlikely a place for me to connect to, especially around food–after all, the first time I encountered Milwaukee I was the girl from New England, who had lived in France and England and had traveled throughout Europe but never across the USA.  I had grown up with a mother who joked that the Hudson River marked the boundary between East and–imagine a vague hand gesture here–everything else.  I thought eating fish meant it came from the sea.  I thought cheddar cheese was pale cream in color and came in huge wheels.  I thought sausages were something you ate for breakfast or were layered deep within lasagna.

What did I know?

Until I met my husband, I had never given the state much thought. It was a flat green place of red barns, nice people and cows and beer and football, right?  Snow. Lots of snow.  Snow and more snow.  I knew that a great great great grandfather had died ice fishing on one of the lakes out there, and a town in the north was named after the family.  But they had soon come to their senses and hightailed it back East, hence my mother’s attitude.  Nothing much of interest out there.

I was wrong.  Wisconsin had much to teach the northern New Englander about culture and food, especially the sort from  Germanic-Polish roots.  And about connections–how pie brings the world together, in this case, stories of my husband’s grandmother’s pie–the best in the world–reminding me of my Irish grandmother’s best-in-the-world: peach pie for lemon meringue, cherry for blueberry.

Sunrise over Lake Michigan

My first visit to the state, I was 20 and a passionate, know-it-all vegetarian. I’m not sure my-then-boyfriend-now-husband had told his parents about that fact.  I’m not sure he knew what that meant exactly.  And so his nice, friendly, unsuspecting family and friends opened their doors and hearts and traditions to me: and that meant meat.  Meat I had never seen.  Or imagined.  Colossal pale sausages (bratwurst) rolling about in a vat of boiling beer on the barbecue, bologna studded with olives and pistachios, sweet-sour smelling sauerbraten.  Wienerschnitzel and things I didn’t even know the names of.  Balanced by doses of orange cheese and sauerkraut, Friday-evening fish fries, and for breakfast, an achingly sweet pastry called a Kringle from Racine.  They thought my eating habits strange; I thought theirs barbaric.

In my smugness, I dismissed their notion of good food.  Couldn’t fathom it had anything to teach me.

Until I grew up.  And opened up.  To the wonders of history and difference as revealed through food–through the tasting, not the avoiding and judging of it.  I learned from my Wisconsin family and their cooking about the people who found their way to the state over the past century or so, the mix of Northern European with southern African-American and a dose of Italian. Sure, Wisconsin has those farms and orange cheese and flat roads named AA and DD, and my father-in-law grew up in a town I had associated with overalls: Oshkosh. But it is so many other fascinating things as well such as what history looks like when traditions meld and mix away from home countries.

And heck, their pie is pretty fabulous.

My lucky children have grown up as American food mutts.  They hail from a family that sends them a huge box of Wisconsin charcuterie every Christmas and one that eats close to the Vermont land.  One daughter loves fermented vegetables, the other fresh; one likes the taste of beer, the other not so much; one enjoys all kinds of meat, the other almost none, with one notable exception: sausage, especially cooked the way their grandfather did on the grill at the summer lake house.

And they both, quite naturally, make amazing pie.

But not yet. It’s in-between time. The almost.

Perfect time for pruning.

And so out I went this morning, into the chickadee hubbub, to bring some order to the cherry trees, the apples, the plums and peaches, and especially the two espaliered pear trees. I’m not a natural pruner–I find it hard to throw anything out or to mess with the natural way things grow. After all, I don’t believe in dying hair to mask the gray or in using make-up to mask the imperfections. I am what I am. My gardens are what they are. Build health from the inside–good soil, good nutrition, good space–keep the weeds and blow-ins in check, but resist the urge to meddle. Pruning? Kind of extreme for me.

But my friend John used to scold me for not pruning the fruit trees sharply enough — I needed a firmer hand; I needed to keep the air flowing to the center of the branches and prevent them from crossing. I needed to cull the trees of rogue suckers and shoots and an overabundance of branches. All in the name of the health of the trees, not out of any human notion of order and aesthetics, he assured me, though those would be good, too, he added slyly.

Out of curiosity, last February I conducted a little experiment with the pruning, to see just how much of a difference it would make to the espaliered pear trees if I cut one back severely, just as he had shown me, and let the other one do its thing. And then watched.

Lo and behold, the pruned tree produced over 60 pears; the unpruned tree, wild shoots and wiggy branches and three–yeah, count ‘em, three–pears. Huge lesson learned. Domesticated fruits and vegetables and flowers and people and animals, well, we need a little order, a bit of tending to for our health and well-being. A bit of pruning.

Fox with a wild pear

And so today I pinched and sawed and snipped and cleared and didn’t even apologize too much to the fallen branches that will become fragrant kindling once they have dried. Waste not want not. It felt great to be outside working. For a minute there I thought about pruning some of the wild fruit trees on the land that have stopped producing much fruit. Perhaps conduct another little experiment for the foxes, the deer, the turkeys, who depend on the wild fruit trees.

While out there, I checked on my experiments with trying to overwinter the artichokes, rosemary and lemongrass under the tunnel.  The rosemary has thus far survived the winter in there.  We’ll see about the others, if they’ll come back.  Experiments are infectious. One can lead to the next. Lop off a branch here, play with something there. Who knows where it will all lead!

Not to worry, though.  I’m not letting all this February sun go to my head. I haven’t scheduled an appointment to color my hair or get a face lift.   There are limits to my tinkering with Mother Nature.

What could be better than interacting with locals and learning the tips on and recipes for that new variety of radicchio or that strange, cone-shaped cabbage, or those black Spanish radishes? What could be better than locally-grown, fresh produce?

If only going to the market were that simple. Being a young woman in Italy is challenging enough, but being a young American woman fluent in Italian presents a whole new string of obstacles. Whether it’s the old man ogling and greeting me with “Ciao bella,” or the young Pakistani asking me out for a drink while handing me a squash, or the old woman asking me 300 questions while I try to order a bunch of kale, my market trips have become a source of anxiety and stress.

A few months ago, after one of my first trips to the market, I came storming home and swore to myself that I would do all my shopping at the grocery store from now on. I had decided to go to a different vendor that day, a robust, elderly woman who introduced herself with my least favorite question, “Di dove sei?” After a short pause and a long sigh, I responded, “Sono americana.” “Aha! I thought I heard a foreign accent!” Then she continued to shower me with questions — “Are you a student? No? Where do you work? Ah, a teacher! What do you teach? Do you like Italy? Why did you decide to come here? Where do you live?” and she continued on and on. Finally I interjected with my order but that didn’t do much to quiet her. I was enraged. I wanted to shout, “Mind your own business! I just want my dang vegetables!”

While Emilio understands my anger and discomfort, he urges me to take these encounters lightly, explaining that the vendors are just curious and friendly and don’t mean to be offensive or intrusive. He also tries to comfort me by saying that people constantly ask him where he’s from because of his accent. He says this is because of Italy’s divided history, because of the fact that different languages were spoken in each region and that local identity is still so strongly tied to the dialect and accent. I agree with him. Visitors rarely understand, advising me to use these encounters as a way to interact with locals and make connections. I agree with them, too, but I can’t seem to see it that way, at least not yet. I’m no longer a visitor. I live and work here, I go to the same shops week after week and have created a temporary home in this city; yet I’m always an outsider, always la straniera.

Last week at the organic Saturday-morning market, I stopped to buy a loaf of fresh whole-wheat bread. I handed the young man my money and my stomach tightened as I heard, “Di dove sei?” I didn’t respond. I clenched my jaw and kept my eyes fixed on the loaf of bread. As he handed me back my change he asked, “Did I offend you?” and I responded, “No, but sometimes I like to just buy my bread.” That’s exactly it. Sometimes I would like to feel a part of this culture, to be anonymous while running errands, to not be constantly reminded of how different I am.

Ever since I was a little girl and made my first family trips to Europe, awestruck by the elegant clothes, the artistic and cultural heritage, the traditional cuisines, I longed to be European. As a teenager, I couldn’t stand the thought of being identified as American and spent all of my free time in Europe. I think that only now, after all my time away and the difficult realities of living in Italy, I can finally say that I’m proud to be American. There’s something in me, though, that’s still resistant to that label, especially when it comes from others. I’ve never been fond of labels. So I keep asking myself, how can I become less resistant? How can I embrace Italians’ curiosity? How can I make peace with being an outsider?

Well for one, I decided to return to that insistent old vendor. First of all to show her that she hadn’t scared me off, but also because she was the only one who sold cavolo nero to make my beloved kale chips. Slowly we have begun developing a friendship. She has started offering me tips on the produce she sells and is curious about what I’m planning on making with the different ingredients. Yesterday I had to send Emilio to the market as I unexpectedly had to substitute another teacher and knew that the markets would be closed over the weekend. I sent him to her stand with my usual list — leeks, squash, potatoes, kale, spinach, onions, radicchio — and as he was leaving, without him having said a word about me, she called, “Now I know who sent you!” I guess I’ve made my mark on her, too.

In addition to offering cooking classes, ingredients through a subscription series, and ongoing blogging (including guests) about food issues, I had big dreams:  a community kitchen (including a shared wood-fired oven along the lines of the community bread ovens in Fes, Morocco) where people cook/bake/preserve their products for the marketplace, but more importantly, bring their ideas, stories and expertise to one another as they cook side by side.  I also had hopes for a community experimental garden on our front ten acres where folks share seeds and land stories and gardening know-how from around the world as they weed side by side.  All of this might yet happen, but the fact that our land and barns are two miles from a small rural town (and not smack-dab in the middle of a big town) among other challenges has given me pause–do I really want to encourage people to get in their cars to drive out here?  Should I really drill a well, build ovens and turn the front barn into a kitchen in such a rural spot?  Should I look for space in town?  Is this even a good idea? Would anyone in this town, in this era even use a communal oven? My ideas might be better suited to a diverse urban environment, say, where my daughter lives in Brooklyn.

But luckily, there are other places to share, to learn, to experiment with others out here in rural Vermont.  Simple places, like in our homes gathering together, and on our computers, gathering together.

At potlucks, for one.

We held a potluck recently to celebrate Imbolc, and it was a wonderful learning feast.  I didn’t ask people to follow a Celtic theme (being Irish-American and having lived in Ireland, I wasn’t too keen on an overly Irish-y spread-ha!) or to bring specific courses–I figure it’s always a good idea to let people bring what they want to bring, and if we have thirty desserts, oh well!  I made Woodland grog (from my own brews & elixirs), David Chang’s Bo Ssam to bring a bit of Korea to the table (absolutely incredible and easy–people huddled over the stove to pick at the hot bits that didn’t make it to the platter and at the kitchen island late in the night to finish it off),  Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Grilled Kumquat Chicken for some spicy-citrusy  Thai flavorings, Suzanne Goin’s  Wild Mushroom and Gruyere Tarts for a taste of California for the vegetarians, and David Lebovitz’s incredible Fresh Ginger Cake (in keeping with the Celtic celebration in case no one brought dessert).  Everything else–a smorgasbord of wonderments– was brought by our guests.

Yes, we ate ridiculously well, but even more satisfying, I think, was the talk around and because of the food shared by everyone–stories about soaking but not cooking lentils for a salad, the flavorings in a delicate raw carrot and radish dish, the mixing of kale and potatoes in a 21st-century reading of old Irish ways, the stew with neither garlic nor gluten to meet the allergy requirements of one eater.  If I had made everything, no way would the talk have been so rich or lively–everyone was interested; everyone contributed. The tasting talk soon led to discussions of best ways to over-winter rosemary and to dry lemon verbena, of family recipes versus cookbook concoctions, of root cellars and gardening practices in this changing climate, of school gardens such as the new Denver Learning Garden,  and soon to serious talk of culture, world events, and politics around food.  At that point, and upon observing what people chose to bring and to put on their plates, I suggested everyone read Elizabeth’s first post for Adios Barbie on gender, body image and food. (I hope you’ll read it, too! And comment! )

What a great evening.  It started me thinking not of what I hadn’t yet accomplished in my work, but of all that I’ve learned through gatherings and experiences here in my local community and through other sorts of potlucks, too, where culture, food and learning come together…online.  I thought about the online learning potlucks like those offered by the generous food websites of influential magazines such as the sensible, health-minded, non-star-studded (yes, I like that) Eating Well with its huge compendium of free recipes and tips for good health, and of course the gazillion foodie blogs and celebrity chef websites.  Lots to learn from all of them in this open school for the inter-cultural cook. As readers add their own content, such sites rise far beyond the stars or experts, morphing into communities of practice for the dedicated, curious participant.

And then I came upon Culture Kitchen SF.  Just yesterday, Elizabeth sent me its link, and here, in a beautiful site, is exactly what we wanted to do on Open View Gardens, but better!  Their simple mission is “To spread culture through food.  Empowering people to learn and share authentic ethnic cuisine,” which they do through engaging local cooks, many of whom have immigrated to the States, to share their expertise in their culinary traditions from Afghan to Vietnamese, Colombian to French.  Like us, they offer a subscription series and a blog and cooking classes–  but unlike us, their teaching cooks have roots in the traditions being shared.  Their stories are not so much those of the travelers to such cultures but of the sons and daughters of those cultures who have traveled away and are now are influencing the food and culture of their new homes.

As I prepare to head to Morocco and Italy for two months, and as I listen to Elizabeth tell stories of cooking with the immigrant women in Venice, I’m thinking about exploring not just the traditional cuisines of the places I will spend time in soon, but the ways in which those cuisines are changing.  Just as I am as likely to make Korean pork or Thai chicken as I am Irish or Vermont anything, what are they making now in Fez, say, that blends in some of the new cultural influences in their lives?  As Mourad Lahlou says in the introduction to his splendid New Moroccan (about which I’ve blogged):

“And so, dish by dish, and year by year, my food evolves. I started at Kasbah with a somewhat obsessive attitude about showing people real Moroccan food, done the authentic way.  But there we were in California.  It’s just not possible.  The ingredients are all different–even the ones flown from Morocco don’t taste the same by the time they arrive…So, before long I was doing the Moroccan version of what so many inventive northern California chefs have done.”

And so my ideas about a community garden and kitchen and website are evolving, too, slowly, to suit this land, this culture as it changes as well as ideas I encounter on my travels and in my studies.  We’ll see what comes of this next series of cultural potlucks I experience away from home!

Food historians, such as Massimo Montanari, with whom I studied in Bologna, claim that the invention of cooking was the process that transformed eating into a social ritual. Hunters and gatherers came back to the village to eat around a communal fire instead of dispersed in the woods and fields. The novel, The Last Chinese Chef, by Nicole Mones centers around the importance of eating together in Chinese food culture. Numerous recent studies argue that eating together can prevent obesity: when we eat in company we eat more slowly and, therefore, often less and enjoy the food more. Here in Italy I witness the importance of eating together daily, where children still come home from school to have lunch with their families. But does all this mean that cooking and eating alone can’t be satisfying?

A few weeks ago when my partner was away for the weekend and I found myself confronted with four days of cooking for myself, I began to reflect on my feeling of dread at having to eat alone. I began to ask myself: Why do we so enjoy giving love and care to others in the form of food but we don’t do the same for ourselves? Why do we say we don’t have anyone to cook for when we speak about cooking for ourselves? Am I not enough? Do I not deserve to receive the same delicious, nurturing food I give to others?

I decided that yes, of course, I deserve it and that I just needed to shift my thinking and instead to consider cooking for myself as a way of taking care of and nurturing myself. That evening I decided to make myself one of my favorite dishes — quinoa with roasted squash and kale. I wanted to make something good for my body but also a dish that I would enjoy the process of making. I turned on the music and began to sing and dance along to Meklit Hadero as I peeled, chopped and sauteed, remembering doing the same with my parents over the holidays just a few weeks before. It was the first time I truly enjoyed making and eating a meal I had prepared for myself, and myself alone.

In the last few years, cookbook authors seem to have caught on to the importance of cooking for oneself. With titles such as “The Pleasures of Cooking for One” by Judith Jones, who sees it as an opportunity for creativity and experimentation, “Table for One,” “Going Solo in the Kitchen,” and “Serves One,” there seems to be plenty of guidance and inspiration for solo cooks.

Of course it would be difficult to do day in and day out — but I find that true as well of cooking for a partner or friend. In my thesis on gender and food, I found that what most women disliked in particular about feeding work was its compulsory and repetitive nature. We do, after all, have to eat three times a day, every day. Understandably, while their partners are away, many women finally feel lifted of the burden of having to prepare daily meals and prefer not to cook at all.

But I think that if those of us living with a partner can take some of those moments we do have to cook only for ourselves as an opportunity rather than drudgery, and those living alone treat themselves to an occasional delicious home-cooked meal, we can use this act not only as a lesson in slowing down and reflecting on what we’re putting into our bodies, but also the need to treat ourselves kindly and nurture ourselves!

Man Down

Whenever I head to New York City–and head there I do often to visit my daughter–I take canvas shopping bags and a big old cooler to haul back as much food as possible. I dream of the ingredient shopping possible at the greenmarket, the spice shops and Middle Eastern grocers. Most of the year, I’m on the search for dried fava beans and the world’s best hummus, Vietnamese cinnamon and lemon-infused olive oil, mahlab and dried za’atar, Aleppo peppers and Iranian dried limes–things I couldn’t dream of finding in my corner of Vermont but are essential to cooking I do.

But in winter I’m pulled to markets where I just might find fresh, local-ish, ecologically grown vegetables.  I’m looking for fruit that looks and smells like itself and not plastic-perfect and shipped from a long way off.  I’m hoping beyond hope for vegetables with a shred of nutrition left to them. And flavor. Back in Vermont there are only so many local apples–wonderful as they are, still, in the depth of winter–we can eat before longing for a taste of something else. And yet I watch the birds eat the same four kinds of seeds I put out there day after day; the cats eat the same food for years. I am struck by the human desire for variety, our reliance on food to perk us up when the skies are thick and low.  Even though we don’t need much help from our food to stay warm, we crave heavily seasoned  stews and roasted anything.  Just look at the food blogs pumping out heavy-sounding recipes that right now sound pretty much interchangeable to me.  All we really want is snow or spring, but because we can’t change the weather, we turn to food.

Winter is particularly bleak this year.  There’s no snow in our valley but plenty of grey, oppressive days.  Right now it’s 42 degrees, almost warm enough for my bike but dark and wet.  It’s grim out there. In Vermont we expect snow and cold, not this mush.

Spareness

And inside I’m all out of my storage crops except for garlic, carrots, leeks and dried chiles. The potatoes froze in the barn, the deer got the kale, escarole and sorrel before I did, and somehow the onions were used up by Christmas. The salsas are going fast; I have canned jellies and chutneys and syrups yet in abundance, but they’re laced with sugar, something we use sparingly, so those shelves take quite a while to clear. The freezer’s supply from last summer’s garden is thinning out.  I’m pretty much down to lemongrass broth, frozen herb pestos and purees, winter squash and tomatillos, and tomato puree.

I’ve been to our natural foods cooperative three times in the past week, prowling the aisles, hoping to stir my culinary imagination with the local produce I’ve run out of from my own gardens: beets, parsnips, kale, celeriac, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, broccoli, cabbage.  I’ve made slaws, stews, juices, and raw salads.  Everything tastes good, some of it tastes great, but still I search and search again.  I suppose that also has to do with the fact that I’m on Day 19 of a 21-day cleanse which recommends access to super-nutritious super-fresh foods– pretty tough to do in winter.  I must be crazy, especially given that the cleanse eliminates nightshades as well as oranges and grapefruit and bananas.  Poor pitiful me.

Not really.  Not at all.

Simplicity

I’m moving past the hankering stage to an appreciation of clean, bracing spareness.  Stripping down the diet to the essentials–whole foods:  grains (no wheat) and nuts (no peanuts), lean proteins, good fats (no dairy), vegetables and fruits and spices–for three weeks each winter has given me a sense of well-being, a lightness of spirit in the middle of a thumpingly grey winter.  We can do with less variety.  Less quantity.  Far less rich ingredients. Bracing is good for a spell every year.   It’s the antidote to the Paula Deen-esque food view. A way to gain perspective and toss the toxins out.

And that, I’ve decided, is what winter can do.  Something to love about the long, lean months.

Taking a waffle break

When we arrived in Bruges, it was windy, freezing and raining, but we decided to brave the weather and venture into the center in search of an afternoon snack. After browsing the numerous stands, we settled on one and ordered our first frites and a waffle with caramel sauce. Both of us were underwhelmed. I must admit I prefer the thin, crispy, matchstick frites served in France to the thick, dense fries in Belgium, even if the latter claims to have invented the iconic dish, despite its misleading name in English. Throughout our stay, we continued our search for the frites we had imagined, but never found them.

Both nights our dinner out was disappointing as well. The highlight was the complimentary beer tasting, even though neither of us are beer drinkers. Over our plates of stewed rabbit with prunes and fish stew, Emilio and I began to reflect on our experience of food in Bruges. After reading in our guidebook about the Belgian world-renowned cuisine, perhaps my expectations were too high. Or perhaps we didn’t find the good restaurants. Or maybe it was because we couldn’t afford to go to the Michelin-starred spots. But good food doesn’t necessarily need to be expensive. In Italy, there are lots of affordable and delicious options — pizza, pasta, panini — unless, of course, you live in Venice. In New York, there are the most expensive and world-renowned restaurants, but you can also eat well at the numerous food trucks and small dives scattered about the city.

A local chocolate shop

The culinary highlight by far was the chocolate. I couldn’t believe how many aristanal chocolate shops lined the streets, one after another. I kept asking myself, who buys all that chocolate? Just the tourists or the Belgians, too? Our best discovery was The Chocolate Line, where Dominique Persoone (considered the Ferran Adrià of chocolate) serves up strange and surprising treats. Since the labels weren’t in English we asked for a mix of the most interesting and surprising flavors and were given chocolates filled with wasabi, fried onion, sundried tomato, saffron, lemongrass and passion fruit. Some of the combinations were delightful while others were… surprising.

Wasabi chocolates

We also spent a morning at Choco Story, a small museum tracing the history of chocolate from its Aztec and Mayan origins, to across the Atlantic on Spanish ships, from a bitter and spicy drink to the famous Belgian pralines, culminating in a demonstration and tasting of local chocolates.

Pastries at the market

All in all we loved the city, and the chocolate, but I’ve continued to reflect on the idea that good food should be accessible and affordable, not reserved for white-linen clothed tables and rich patrons. On our way to the train station on our last morning in Bruges, we had just enough time to stop at the local Saturday market. It felt that for the first time I was seeing the real food that locals ate. We wandered through row after row of stalls selling all kinds of cheeses, meats, jams and pastries.

After seeing these local delicacies I’m convinced we just didn’t find the right spots this first time — I guess that just means we’ll have to go back!

In the old days I would receive Johnny’s catalog from Maine, John Scheepers from Connecticut and Burpee from Pennsylvania.  Period. Thus far this garden-dreaming season over a dozen have landed in my mailbox. And I’m sure more are headed my way. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing. Much as I hate any other sort of paper catalog, I love seed catalogs and want to pore over them, rabbit-ear them, write on them, compare them, spread them out on the table and admire them before I go online and place my orders.

A taste

Since I’m not planning on ordering many seeds at all this year, what really interests me about this flood of catalogs is what it indicates about the state of gardening in general. It’s palpable evidence of the rising interest in growing our own food, and that’s great news.  This shift isn’t just among the twenty-year-olds coming to Vermont to become ecological farmers, though that bodes well indeed for the future.  It’s involving people who have never gardened before, who might have a balcony for pots or a tiny yard or who have applied for a plot in a community garden, such as folks I’ve interacted with during my garden blogging for Eating Well Magazine, and within several online communities devoted to cooking and eating.  Take Food52, the very popular foodie blog–just yesterday they announced the addition of a garden blogger  known for helping people grow food no matter where they live–apartment or homestead.  Local resources now abound for home gardeners, from state ag extension services to new wikis set up within towns and cities filled with tips and how-tos and places to converse about growing food.  Bookstores devote whole sections to gardening; newspapers, such as my own county-wide bi-weekly, have added gardening columns.  What could be a better trend than people getting outside, hands in the dirt, growing something that will require patience and close attention (i.e. slowing down), and then nourishment of the highest order?

I hope this  interest in growing some of our own food will have effects on not only what we eat but what we consume in general.  Will we give up gas guzzlers and oil furnaces?    Will we choose more modest, green housing and clothes made out of natural materials?  Will we walk and bike more if and when we can? Will we see ourselves as participants in complex ecosystems?  If I look at the political landscape, I see only more collapse of the climate and trouble for the planet ahead; if I look at the array of seed catalogs on my kitchen counter, I see something else, which, by the way, is the name of another excellent seed company, the seeds of change.

But there’s a difference.  The seed catalogs have arrived–the stuff of winter day dreams beckoning as I stand at the edge of winter.

And so, because I’m a sucker for reading about heirloom varieties of almost anything I can grow up here,  I spend the evening looking through the colorful pages. What to order? Yet another strawberry variety? Probably not if we’re in for wild sweeps of weather extremes. That sweet-looking tomato? Pencil-thin hot peppers? More kinds of heirloom broccoli and celeriac?  Tempting.  But I have seeds left over from last year and seeds harvested and saved from the heirlooms I particularly  liked. And seeds my friends will give me.

Going Deep

I put the catalog down. What am I thinking? I could plant out the gardens without ordering a single seed.  That would be the right thing to do–waste not want not. As I will be away all of March and April and cannot very well ask our house-sitter to plant and tend to a gazillion seedlings in the basement, I won’t  start some of my favorites this year.  Or I’ll have to chance it and start them in May.  No lemongrass this year.  No new rosemary or thyme. Or artichokes. If I insist on starting them from seed.

I stack the catalogs and put them away (on my desk, not in the recycling bin).  I am warming to a new challenge–growing only what I already have in seed stock or barter for or am given. Getting serious about seed saving. Spending my gardening time improving what I do rather than trying out the new.  Going deep.  Slowing down.  Letting a couple of beds breathe this year under a thick covering of buckwheat instead of potatoes.  We don’t need that many potatoes.  There will be some exceptions such as sweet potato slips (I didn’t grow enough this year to save), peas and a few lemongrass plants–I cannot imagine my winter storage rooms and freezer without them.  If my thyme plants don’t make it through the winter, I’ll have to replace them.  And then there are the seeds I’ll come across on my travels…But mostly, I’ll plant what I have and see how it goes.

And if you happen to have extra seeds hanging about….

Chestnuts, mozzarella di bufala and prosciutto for hors d'oeuvres

Even though I have access to some of the finest ingredients in the world, and I know many people dream of the cheeses, dried meats, olive oil and fresh produce I can find at the markets, I still find myself yearning for foods I associate with home. Especially around the holidays. On Thanksgiving, I missed the stuffed turkey and pumpkin and pecan pies (and I don’t even like turkey–just the stuffing!). I couldn’t imagine missing our Christmas feast.

My grandmother's stollen

As for many people, Christmas is the one time a year our extended family gets together, and food is at the center of that gathering. Everyone has their specialty to contribute — my aunt makes the bouillabaisse for Christmas Eve; my uncle does the standing rib roast; my mom makes the most incredible squash and hazelnut lasagne for the vegetarians; my other uncle does the wine pairings; my mom, sister and I make the five types of Christmas cookies (this year we had a few new additions including a fabulous recipe for pinenut and rosemary brittle over on Food52) except for the double-bourbon balls which are my dad’s specialty; my grandmother makes the breakfast stollen and my great–grandmother’s famous Irish fruit cake; another aunt makes the plum pudding and hard sauce; and my cousin’s girlfriend brought her homemade Baileys and her mother’s killer cinnamon rolls. It certainly is a feast, and we all feel rather queasy when it’s over.

Dessert spread

When I described this feast to my boyfriend, he was awestruck. His family in Sicily went out for Christmas dinner for a seafood feast. Despite their deep culinary heritage, they don’t have traditional Christmas foods they eat every year like we do (Easter is their big feast). One of the first questions Italians ask me is what typical dishes come from Vermont. I always feel myself scrambling to come up with an answer. I have no trouble thinking of typical products or ingredients, but the assembly of them varies from family to family. After all, we come from so many cultural traditions — Pizza? Irish stew? Spring rolls? It all depends… Around the holidays, though, I have no trouble coming up with my family’s favorite dishes and am proud of these traditions. So this must be how the bolognesi feel about their tortellini in brodo and tagliatelle al ragù. Or the veneziani about their sarde in saor and baccalà. Or my boyfriend’s Sicilian family about their charcoal roasted carciofi and eggplant parmigiana.

I enjoy that feeling of having a culinary heritage, even though it is just my family’s and not my region’s and lasts only for a few days, not all year round. But I feel blessed to have both — to live in a culture with deep culinary traditions and to have come from one with multicultural influences. That way I get the best of both worlds.