Open View Gardens

When I first dreamed up Open View Gardens, I wanted to help expand our sense of what we grow and eat locally, and to encourage community building by exploring our culinary diversity. As our mission reads: “Growing food grounds us in the relationships between earth and nourishment; preparing food brings us into relationship with our […]

I know I know… I own too many cookbooks.  Even I have to admit it now that I can no longer fit my collection into the kitchen bookcase and the shelves in the pantry cleared for the overflow. And yet I just bought another cookbook, a big heavy one.  Do I have a cookbook-buying disorder?  […]

It has been quite a week: Irene and her aftermath- an unfolding story of the Vermont community coming together to move through this disaster–and very personal losses friends have endured that have nothing to do with hurricanes. I couldn’t sleep for the stories and memories swirling about my head when the lights went out. So […]

It’s snowing again. Hard. The wind is fierce. Winter has a long way to go yet. But last week brought the faint breath of spring. A couple of warm days swelled with transitional birdsong–not their nesting songs, but then again not the single, plaintive notes of midwinter. It was the loveliest reminder of what’s to […]

At last! After months of  harvesting, drying & preserving the garden output; planning, tasting & developing recipes; dreaming up  & revising menus, I’m ready on this last day of 2010 to roll out my limited subscription series of menus, recipes & Open View concoctions!  I’m excited to offer our jellies & elixirs, dried herbs & […]

Earlier in the summer,  I wrote about learning from family, students and friends.  Actually, since I started blogging in 2001, I’ve often remarked on being far more student than teacher even when I taught in formal schools. Every day since then I’ve learned essential and moving lessons from the non-human inhabitants of the gardens, but […]

It all depends on the weather.  And I can’t depend on the weather being forecast correctly even the evening before, so I make my day’s work plan in the morning as I take in the sky, the humidity in the air, the moisture in the plants.  During strings of beautiful days, I split my time […]

I can go months without thinking of something or someone and then a smell, a glimpse, a sound, or a dream plunges me right back to a time, a place, an experience. We all experience the sensory triggers of memory. The smell of freshly ground curry always sends me back to two places and times: […]

The first time I made cassis and realized how simple it was to transform black currants into ambrosia (really, all you need is patience as it takes six months of maceration in a cool, dark place), I felt as though someone had been keeping a secret from me all these years–some of the most sublime […]

Yesterday my daughter returned from her year studying food and culture at the University of Bologna, a year filled with adventures, not the least of which were about food.  Her experiences reminded me of why I majored in art history–it was the only truly interdisciplinary major in those days at my school.  Now there are […]