I’m not a chef, or even a major foodie. I like to eat, and when it comes to cooking, I spend a lot of time looking in the pantry and scratching my head.
My mother grew up during hard times, totally self-sufficient on a farm in eastern Europe. She didn’t just plant, fertilise, pick, pickle, feed, gut, cure, smoke, milk, churn and sell, she cooked for family and itinerant workers. Her relationship to food was a chore.
My relationship to food, growing up, was lazy. In my early twenties, I was the queen of grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. One day, I decided to set myself the task of learning a meal a week. Fast forward to happy family dinners and dinner parties, which included my beautiful mother at the table, too.
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
-J.R.R. Tolkein – the hobbit
Also …
I’ve been a writer, in one form or another, all my life. I began writing this site for my daughter, who’s enjoyed my cooking ever since I used to feed her little spoonfuls of home-made baby puree. She asked for my favourite recipes, the best compliment of all!
These are all stories, and as the site grew, I became more and more interested in exploring the stories we preserve and inherit, not just through recipes, but through poetry and art. Historic paintings are a way of connecting with past, and I started looking at old fruit bowls in still lifes and kitchen, or domestic scenes. I began to write original poetry in response. The site then truly became a digital patchwork quilt – simple family recipes interwoven with visual art, culinary history, and poetic form.
And so, Stewed Pears is not only for the daughter I love, but is a combination of two of my other loves – food and writing.
If you find something of value, that would be cool.
Traité des arbres fruitiers: Royal d’hiver (1808–1835) print in high resolution by Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau. Original from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Belle d’ Aout chromolithograph plates by Abraham Jacobus Wendel. Digitally enhanced from rawpixel 1879 edition plates of Nederlandsche flora en pomona.
NOTE: Writing is authored by me ©. Photos of my dishes are mine. I also use free stock photos from Pexels.com, Rawpixel, images in the Public Domain, & YouTube Audio Library.
NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.
