Spring Time Thoughts

I rarely do lists of links anymore. But recently I’ve found that my browsers need some space and I have too many windows open.  Here are a few for spring, or for now, whatever type of season you are having there. This is the time of year where I get really sleepy, between seasons, and also terribly hungry. I feel like I can eat anything, and a lot of it and still be hungry. Ah well, such is the movement. 

If you want to read about a really cool chef who moved to an unlikely location and works with local foragers and farmers to get ingredients you can’t find aynwhere else, but also who learns to cook from grandma’s in the area, then read this article. Inspiring and original story and also, it shows that some, or most, of the best food being cooked has ancient practices, recipes behind it and time on it’s side.  

Rewriting the Menu in Tulum

The Greek Islands have held mysteries sine the beginning. They are beautiful, rugged and hard to reach for the everyday traveller from afar. Easier now perhaps than in the past, but it still demands some dedication, unless you have your own boat. On Hydra, there exists some kind of small collective of artists, who have been going to the remote island for years. Given it’s tremendous beauty, scarred earth and the law that says no cars allowed, it sounds like the most relaxing kind of paradise there is. 

Beyond the Sea

Just when you think that all of the profiles of chefs and people in the food world are the same, along comes an article like this one in Garden and Gun magazine, celebrating the south of the US. An area that I’ve become more and more interested in lately, perhaps because of a certain t.v. show, or simply because it represents to this American the last part of my country that has mystery, eeriness and something spooky, historical and earthy to it. Honestly, this is the most engaging article I’ve read in a long time. What you read and know about history is how you participate in it. 

Michael Twitty: The Antebellum Chef

If you’ve ever thought that hipster food trends just appear, or, somehow just show up because of instagram it’s probably not true. Somewhere, those ideas first appeared. Wether abroad or at home, the movement of people around the world has really contributed to this idea of hipster-ism. But, as this article shows, sometimes things turn out to be different. The idea of “artisan toast” sounds really ridiculous, but it’s happening. And as this reported found out, the original “concept” or should we say the cafe that started the crazy has a really intriguing story about where that toast came from and why. It’s not all hipsters and IPhones. But a real story of a real person, struggling with her own life.  I was enthralled and glued to this article the minute I found it. 

A Toast Story

And finally, this piece about home envy. Envy is especially unique part of our daily lives, given the amount of images in newspapers, magazines and online that we see of people in beautiful locations. But what if those people in those beautiful locations also had home envy of others? This article traces the line of home envy starting from the authors own friends, whose home he envy’s. All in SFO of course, where else.

The San Francisco Envy Chain 

Currently reading this. From a really unknown Canadian author, Michael Winter. Real writing here. Interesting dialogue, about a part of the world that feel foreign, Newfoundland. All his books are great. Find them if you can. 

One Last Good Look

Ciao,
JD

Ode to Memories (Bleeding Vermont)

The first day of rain has come — it’s arrived with full force and vengeance.  We had to turn on our heat last night – it was just too much to take, with cold little toes we walked across our stone floors wearing wool socks and house slippers.  I was complaining too much perhaps about the coldness, but I generally can’t help it.  I have poor circulation, my body needs warmer climates and my mind needs the cold, the rain, the fall and winter air that give it some kind of mystic medicine to help me think, writer, put words down on paper, in digital form, coming and flowing from my head to the outside world.  It reminds a constant battle between my body and mind, cold, warm, sun, clouds, mountains, beach.  What to chose and where to go?  I long for both and the continued change of seasons, but at what point do I give into the ways of the older generation going to the desert in the winter.  Is this the Mediterranean?  At times it feels more like England.  But alas, it is time for me to stop complaining, and think about a few things.
I think that tonight she will make some onion soup, which nourishes my soul on days like this.  It gives me thoughts of sitting by a fire, watching snow fall outside in Vermont.  I think that is where we first had this soup, and it was spring time, but snowing and we had a fire going.  We made it with Guiness, because it was St. Patrick’s Day, yes, I remember it well now.

Vermont for us represented a place of thoughtful reflection on our lives, together and separate because it was a test.  A test for us both on living with the other.  We become very much ourselves there, very much and via that experience and that time, our relationship grew, like the roots of a tree that slowly take root in one place, we have roots stuck in the Vermont soil, waiting for us to return at some point in time to keep growing, because we know, she and I that when we go back there, things will happen, people will be met, food and drink like no other will be had.  We will walk down the road, around the lake, and eat muffins, lentils and drink the highest quality better we could possibly hope for in this lifetime.  Vermont, oh Vermont, stuck in our hearts with a little bit bleeding out of my mind.  Drop by drop it comes flowing from my brain, those memories and images.

Coffee.  Tea. Fire. Snow. Mud.

Poor but happy, we realize it now, but not then. But we were.  Poor but happy, how glorious to be those two things at the same time, thinking about nothing but the moment, the immediate moment, about lunch and dinner.  Those were the moments.  Those were the pieces of time where we spent our free brain space.  Constantly taking advantage of the kitchen, it was abused in all forms of cooking, baking, cleaning, not-cleaning, broiling, sauteing, etc. etc. etc. my list goes on in my head but I’m unable to keep writing it.

I miss it, Vermont, our home for a short time.  We miss it.  A true home it was.  Comfort gave way to experience gave way to love.