I remember the moment when, as a new apprentice in a retreat center's vegetarian kitchen, I spotted the shelf of nuts in the storeroom.
Food
Carey Burkett 3-01-1995
It takes love to bake a cake. Cakes cannot be baked indifferently or in a hurry.
Carey Burkett 12-01-1994
It is fitting that this morning, after paying bills and moaning about another increase in our health insurance premium, I came across a Russian proverb in a nutrition magazine
Carey Burkett 11-01-1994
Someday I would like to see a cranberry harvest: crimson fruit floating on flooded coastal fields, skimmed off like a school of tropical fish.
Carey Burkett 9-01-1994
It’s hot. The yard needs mowing—the grass is so tall I have to wear rubber boots in the morning dew.
Carey Burkett 8-01-1994
What can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; is grown in all 50 states; and had a war named after it? The potato of course. (The 1778-79 War of the Bavarian Succession was nicknamed "The Potato War.") The Incas of Peru, who cultivated hundreds of ancient potato varieties in terraced highlands, measured units of time by how long it took a potato to cook.
This marvelous crop provides more calories per acre than any grain or vegetable. While potatoes can be grown in a dazzling array of shapes, colors, and sizes, these days most of us rely on the russet Burbank, the white Katahdin, and several red varieties. "Yukon Gold" is gaining favor rapidly, probably because its creamy yellow flesh gives the impression of having lots of butter when it’s served.
In Texas, red potatoes are the passion, fittingly planted on Valentine’s Day and harvested in May. That is, if the weather permits. This year a capricious heavy rain, combined with 80 degree temperatures, doomed my farm’s potato crop to a rotting morass. So I am somewhat forlornly sitting inside today writing about potatoes instead of digging them.
I admit I was really looking forward to "new potato" season. I had the menu all planned out—boiled potatoes with butter and parsley, cream of potato soup, leftover potatoes fried for breakfast, potato salad, and shepherd’s pie. And I wasn’t the only one. Our neighbors were over twice last week to see if the potatoes were dug yet. Elderly family members who used to have farms of their own have been reminiscing about past potato harvests and lamenting the fact that senior nutrition centers these days don’t serve enough potatoes.
Carey Burkett 7-01-1994
Highway food can be fun for a while—eating forbidden french fries at a fast food joint or sipping iced tea in the cool muffledness of a restaurant.
Carey Burkett 6-01-1994
For salad lovers this is a heady time of year with more greens around than a person can shake a salad fork at.
Carey Burkett 5-01-1994
Let’s say you’ve just walked into the grocery store and on the way to pick up some onions you notice a healthy sized mound of eggplant, with glossy, deep purple skin shining under the florescent lights.
Carey Burkett 2-01-1994
FEASTING IS JUST half the story. To have "Sunday dinner" implies plainer weekday meals. Holiday banquets include foods not seen the rest of the year.
Carey Burkett 1-01-1994
MY 1994 NEW YEAR'S resolution - to break loose from serious menu ruts by planning further ahead - has already led to more time at a favorite activity: paging through cookbooks.