Open View Gardens

Just a short while ago, I thought I’d be sitting in a fabulous Indian restaurant in London right about now, during a two-day stopover on  the way to Fes, Morocco for a month to think, to write, to cook, to take photos, to taste living in that incredible city. And then on to Italy for […]

Most foodies would be thrilled by the prospect of doing their weekly shopping, even in winter, at an outdoor Italian market. Two years ago when Barbara came to visit me in Bologna in December, I remember taking her to the Mercato delle Erbe, a huge indoor market selling just about anything you could want in […]

When I first started planning a trip to Bruges, a gorgeous medieval city in north-western Belgium, food immediately came to mind. I imagined walking the ancient, winding streets along the canals and stopping for a hot chocolate in a cozy café to warm up along the way, while my boyfriend dreamed of the sausage-and-frites stalls. […]

Outside the weather continues to flirt with winter, temperatures careening between yesterday’s 40s and today’s single digits (first real cold), snow dancing about the sky but refusing to lay down a fluffy quilt to insulate the gardens. Yesterday the fennel, artichokes and rosemary were still alive and well inside their light tunnel.  We’ve had a […]

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 […]

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. My boyfriend and I had just enough time to settle into our new home in Mestre, Venice before discovering the food festival hosted in the main piazza just a few days after our arrival. Il gusto della cultura: una giornata di saperi e sapori or “The Flavor of […]

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 […]

Barbara’s Note: This week we bring you our dear friends — Kate Gridley and her son Charles Barstow are incredible cooks, artists, thinkers and stewards of this earth.  Kate, a painter of fabulous portraits, still lifes and landscapes, is also my fellow conspirator and columnist at The Addison Independent and my co-blogger at Eating Well.  […]

It’s fascinating how drastically the concept of “Italian food” has changed in the United States. The other day I was talking with my boyfriend about Mario Batali’s Eataly in Manhattan, which I visited for the first time just two weeks before returning to Italy, saying he would be shocked to see such a tribute to […]

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 […]