Open View Gardens

There’s nothing like coming home. Especially at Christmas time. Before packing my bags I wrote a list of all the foods I missed — almond butter, puff pastry tart, sweet potatoes, homemade corn tortillas, gado gado– and all the items I wanted to bring home with me: champagne vinegar, pomegranate molasses, raw cacao powder, cheddar […]

Elizabeth’s Note: After a brief pause, we’ve got a new guest post to share, this time from one of my close friends, Maxime Billick, a native of Montreal. I first met Maxime many years ago on a volunteer trip to Dominica (pronounced Domih-NEEKah and not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) in the Caribbean. I’ve […]

During my first few weeks in Mestre, I was lucky enough to discover the Women’s Multicultural Center, financed by the Municipality of Venice. The Center offers information, advice and support and organizes cultural events for immigrant women, including Italian and English lessons and — to my delight — cooking classes. I immediately signed up for […]

Apart from the five inches of snow that fell the day before Thanksgiving and the very few nights of 20ºF frostiness we’ve had this fall, the weather has been, well, ridiculous. Yes, ridiculous. Okay, there’s some good in this consistent warmth: I am still picking greens and herbs–the ones the deer do not like, that […]

On a table in my house sits what most people, including my entire extended family, find quite bizarre, something they cannot align with what they know of me.  After all, I pride myself on being an ecological gardener who tries to consider the impact of my actions on all the inhabitants of the garden, not […]

Note from Elizabeth: Today our guest writer is Megan Halpern, one of my sister’s closest friends and an enthusiastic foodie. A while back, Meg blogged about her experiences eating and cooking in Brooklyn, introducing herself as someone who “spends what little free time she has in the kitchen, where she is passionate about cooking, oblivious to […]

My father was among the world’s most enthusiastic record keepers. As a historian, he stacked details of time, place and event neatly in his mind. On index cards he noted the noteworthy including nagging holes in his coin and stamp collections. Even after he died, we discovered more: deep within his desk he’d squirreled a […]

Note from Elizabeth: I’m lucky to have two parents who cook. I have as many memories of my father preparing meals while I was growing up as of my mother. Writing my senior thesis on the relationship between gender and food, I realized how truly rare such a division of labor is. Even though my […]

It’s been three weeks since I moved back to Bologna and already my body is complaining. From time to time, we’ve mentioned Dr. Alejandro Junger’s Clean Program (see our post on gardening for optimal health and our recipe for delicious gluten-, dairy- and sugar-free cookies) — a holistic detox program that has helped both Barbara […]

Barbara’s Note: I buy my meat from these two young farmers–fabulous pork shoulders and chops, chickens and ducks–and am much inspired by their example.  Kate Corrigan grew up in Shoreham, Vermont where her family raised their own eggs, pork and poultry. Sebastian Miska grew up in the Middlebury, Vermont area and enjoyed frequent visits to […]