Pipes and feathers; Native American trade items
In truth long before Columbus arrived in the New World Native American cultures traded over long distances for interesting and innovative products not available locally; the red soapstone (Catlinite) for sacred tobacco pipes is one example, decorative bird feathers from…
Self–reliance versus Self-sufficiency: An ongoing series of meditations
None of us are self-sufficient. We all need somebody! Despite the often nostalgic retro-interpretations (our national idealization of Little House on the Prairie comes to mind!) Americans weren’t self-sufficient in the Colonial past, the Revolutionary Era nor the long 19th…
Dotty the Pig is getting bigger every day
She nibbles out of our hands, begs for an ear scratch, and eats, eats, eats!!
All the rainy day cooking
Here is my yesterday’s production! Six quarts of beans and ham. Four dozen cabbage rolls, and a five pound bowl of hummus.
Cooking Ahead on a Wet Spring Day
What does a food obsessed woman who lives out in the country do on a wet, chilly, rainy, spring weekend day? Why she cooks, of course! It’s 10-ish o’clock in the morning and I have three make ahead meal…
Where there’s a will there’s a ‘whey’: in which I make mozzarella cheese
Today for the first time in 35 years I made Mozzarella Cheese. Having lost so many cookbooks in the fire so long ago I only recently searched out a good basic home cheese book and went back to making all…