Monday August 24, 2015
Dear friends
I know I have been a bit silent over these last few months.
If I told you I have experienced the gamut of emotions, would you believe me? Well, of course you believe me. Why would I pose the question?
So here’s how I have been rolling….
Happy and Grateful
I spent the first 2 weeks of May at a writers residency program on Martha’s Vineyard. I decided to write a food memoir. Yes. All about ME! It is quite a journey going back in time and recalling scenes of your life. It is very healing and very powerful. I cannot wait to share it with you. Of course it’s a memoir with recipes!!
Anxious and Sad
Hanging over me and our family during the spring and early summer was the knowledge that my dear sweet sister-out-law had stage 4 breast cancer. While I prayed my heart out, held onto OPTIMISM like it was the last ticket out of town, I knew it wasn’t good. We hosted a magical family reunion late May for Madeline. She was radiant, happy, and beautiful. I thought I was witnessing a miracle – that she had turned the corner. The truth of the matter is I was witnessing a miracle. It’s called living every moment. Or bringing the people you love together to share our love for each other. Or providing the space for lasting memories.
Five weeks later. Madeline passed away. I carried her pain in my body. I sobbed. I walked around like a zombie. I tried to comfort Jim. And then mustered up the energy to have another family reunion. An old-fashioned Irish wake with the casket right here in our home. It was an honor to offer Madeline one last night at Boulderwood. Her send off was beautiful. It was pure, unadulterated love. Love that emanated from Jim’s heart, my heart and all who loved Madeline. The priest’s eulogy was powerful. He said God is in all of us. I believe that. We meet people that give us what we need at the moment we need it. This is how God works. This is how the universe works.
Madeline handled her illness with such grace. In her last group email, she said it best: “I continue to enjoy life, but will admit it is difficult to think in terms of no timeline. Although it is not real for any of us, I think we all live with the expectation of another day and old age. To plan even a few months ahead not knowing what will happen is different to say the least. Probably a good reminder for all of us to enjoy the days we have and focus on the important stuff. As you can see, for me the important stuff is family and friends.”
RIP sweet Madeline.
Thrilled
I am alive. Ergo I live. In the midst of the sadness, I launched another dream – The Heirloom Meals Recipe Project – an 8 week online class where I coach the participants to write their family food narrative, collect and or write all their recipes, collect old photos and take new ones and end up with their own hardcover, color heirloom family cookbook. The pilot class was extraordinary. Here’s one of the testimonials:
It has been said that because so much of our lives today are documented in technology that we chance to loose our history and stories in these devices. Carole Murko has offered a gift of leading us through the writing of our families’ food history and memories so that they are not lost and can be passed down for generations to come. She takes you on a beautiful, emotional, supportive and loved filled journey that is a gift unto itself. With her warm and creative guidance you create together a memoir that you never realized was inside of you waiting to be shared with those you love. This is a gift to give to yourself, to a friend, to family. Everyone should experience this journey with Carole Murko.
Debby Edwards, Chicago, IL
Thank you Debby for that! Your words went right to my heart. Please check out the class. I would love to have you among us!
Over the Moon with Happiness
When I talk about Jim, I have referred to him as my husband. Well, because he is my spiritual soul-mate and common-law husband. But truth be told, we are not married. On August 4th, my birthday, he asked me to marry him. I. AM. ENGAGED. WAHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am like a little girl. Giddy. Elated. Thrilled. I have always wanted to be married. It was part of my little girl and twenty-something dream. Jim’s commitment to me has validated and honored me. I felt an energy shift in my body – at the cellular level. And in perfect heirloom meals style, he gave me his mother’s engagement ring. I will treasure it forever. It is so much more meaningful than some huge showy diamond. I always said that when I found the right man, a Cracker Jack box ring would do.
For whatever reason, this is the time and place in my life I am meant to be married. I get to plan a wedding my way! My parents get to see me marry the love of my life. It is perfect timing.
I will be sharing the wedding journey from designing my own dress to figuring out how to do all the food and be a relaxed and rested bride!! EXCITING!!!
I am blessed. To have a life so full.
Thank you all for being part of it!!
Love
Carole
PS No post is complete without a recipe. I am hanging onto summer with dear life. Here’s my signature summer salad recipe!
Saturday August 22, 2015
Flour, Too: Indispensable Recipes for the Cafe's Most Loved Sweets & Savories
We all have that favorite spot -- the breakfast place around the corner, the coffee shop up the street, the bakery with the awe-inspiring case of baked goods staring back at you. Joanne Chang’s Flour Bakery + Café in Boston is all of these, but it has established itself beyond sweets and breakfast confections alone. Flour, Too is Chang’s second cookbook, following the success of her first, Flour. Though recipes categorized under “Sweets” and “Desserts” dominate its pages, the cookbook spreads its focus to the savory as well. With recipes like the Classic Split Green Pea with Smoked Ham soup or the Mushroom and Leek Lasagna with Creamy Béchamel, you quickly gain the sense that Chang isn’t trying to overwhelm your sweet tooth, but rather provide you with the comfort and nourishment of food.
You can mimic the most loyal of Flour’s customers and use the book to follow the daily experience of the bakery. Start with a stack of CJ’s Spiced Banana Pancakes, which are perfectly moist and not overly-sweet from the natural flavorings of the fruit and are matched with the underlying smokiness of allspice and black pepper. A drizzle of maple syrup as the accompanying image suggests is all you need to make resisting these fluffy delicacies impossible. You can take the savory route for lunch with an updated American classic -- the Applewood Smoked BLT. Chang complements the salty-sweet bacon with the added pepperiness of the arugula. Dinner can become a more complex affair, beginning with the colorful Heirloom Tomato Salad, stepped up with feta, watermelon, and a delicious Red Wine Vinaigrette. The main dish options include a Slow-Baked Atlantic Salmon with Tabouli, whose inventive cooking method gives the fish, as Chang puts it, “a delicate, buttery texture and flavor.” End the evening just as you began, with a small, two-bite French Macaron. Crisp and light, satisfyingly sweet.
Flour, Too invites us to sample a sugar-specked brioche and instills a desire to test the elasticity of Chang’s focaccia dough. Every page is a representation of the ease and contentment enjoyed in passing the time at one of the Flour locations. Use the book to bring to your kitchen the iconic smells and tastes of the bakery -- a place many people already consider home.
Monday August 17, 2015
What a summer! I promise to write a blog post and share the gamut of experiences that rolled through my life. Suffice it to say, I have been sad, afraid, elated, and now proud. Proud to announce the official launch of the Heirloom Meals Recipe Project. The pilot program exceeded my wildest imagination. We wrote, we shared, we cried, we laughed, we bonded, we created. Our final products are getting their finishing edits and then everyone will have their very own heirloom family cookbook. The program was satisfying on so many levels!!
Here is the link to everything you need to know. (I am working on creating a new section for workshops but for now the blog post will have to do!!) I hope to see you in the September 10th class or the others I have scheduled.
Also - check out my recent interview with Dale Gillis as a result of working with the National Onion Association!
Saturday August 15, 2015
Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes
Food memoirs are among my favorite genres. They connect food to our relationships, experiences, and lives. Elizabeth Bard follows this in her first book Lunch in Paris, by interspersing the memories of falling in love with a charming Frenchman, Gwendal, with traces of her culinary journey marked by recipes of her past and the ones she gains along with embracing a new culture. The dishes are inspired by the fresh ingredients from Parisian markets; they contrast the fussy, complicated reputation of typical French fare. This focus allows Bard to not only write about international cuisine, but about international living, and how she discovers French culture from her time around the table, whether it be during a meal, at a market, in a restaurant, or only in a single taste itself.
The recipe for Gwendal’s grandmother’s, Mary Simone’s, tabouleh, shows the memoir’s function as a family recipe book, giving the tricks of culinary techniques passed down through generations. The secret to this dish is replacing the bulgur with couscous, lightening the salad and mixing well with the acidic, slightly sweet taste that Bard confessed to me she loves. This coming-together of the savory and sweet shows the gustatory connectivity of food, but in Bard’s descriptions of food and the narrative that follows it, we discover the French culture alongside her own discovery of their passion for cuisine: for good, simple food done right.
Her new book Picnic in Provence, came out this spring. I can’t wait to read it and share my thoughts with you!
Saturday August 08, 2015
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
In Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl has the reader hooked by the first page, working through the inedibility of her first food description: “... a squishy brown square of meat surrounded by a sticky stockade of potatoes that might have been mashed last year. The wrinkled gray peas look as if they were born in a laboratory test tube. The roll glows with such an unearthly lunar yellow that I can feel its chill before my fingers even touch the surface. The lettuce in the salad has gone brown at the edges, and the tomatoes are too tired to even pretend that nature intended them to be red.” Reichl, however, moves quickly past this vignette and the immediacy of the food itself, and delves further into the book’s primary focus: the importance and challenge of anonymity in being America’s most well-known food critic.
She reflects upon her hilarious and heartfelt experiences in some of the greatest restaurants in the world, all the while trying to navigate the intersection of public and private life. She supplements this narrative focus with deliciously elegant but approachable recipes, giving the reader a greater understanding of the techniques and flavors Reichl puts to paper. The book’s final recipe, “Last-Minute Chocolate Cake” speaks for itself, with the spice of the unsweetened chocolate, the intensity of strongly-brewed coffee, and the contrastingly sweet bitterness of Grand marnier, all it needs is “a scoop of vanilla ice cream on each slice” to result in something worth writing about.
From her writing, it’s obvious that Reichl is a profound appreciator of food, and a lover of the joy it brings to her everyday life: “My yogurt was nestled into a bag, waiting to turn into aushak, and all around us were sausages and pastry, lollipops and spices, chicken and cheese. Any world that contained all this, I thought surveying our loot, was a very fine place. I felt reinvigorated, alive, optimistic. The thought of getting back to work suddenly seemed like fun.” Because the reader is introduced to this perspective so early on, we ask the same question Reichl tries to understand herself: how do you tell someone what they should know about a restaurant, and more importantly, the food they will eat there, if everyone is lingering behind your back watching you do it?
Saturday August 01, 2015
Tomato: A Fresh-from-the-Vine Cookbook
Tomatoes are often seen as the humble fruit, taking the backseat to more vibrant and exciting options like artichokes, asparagus, or peppers, but when they’re picked at the height of summer, they possess a flavor complex in its simultaneous sweetness and acidity, that is made all the more delicious with just a single sprinkling of salt.
Author Lawrence Davis-Hollander understands this in his cookbook Tomato, and gives us visuals accompanying his recipes which exhibit the fruit’s simplistic beauty. His recipes center in upon the tomato to give them interest and depth, showcasing a spectrum of different varieties as the base to sauces and salsas, allowing any heirloom paste tomato to be the focus of his Italian-Style Fresh Tomato Sauce, what he calls a “basic, unadorned recipe.” The flavors are anything but boring though, as Hollander’s restraint in the number of ingredients allows you to taste the delicious quality of a freshly-picked tomato.
As the founder of the Eastern Native Seed Conservancy, Lawrence highlights not only the taste of the tomato, but the importance of their preservation alongside preserving our traditional eating experiences, saying that coming together for a meal “... is a legacy that needs to be passed down to our children and reinforced at home. The hearth was and is the gathering place for family and friends. Eating is one of the most basic and pleasurable experiences as human beings.” Lawrence captures the essence of his work at the seed conservancy and his passion for heirloom tomatoes in his book. It is informative, inspirational, useful and beautiful. Go out and find those heirlooms, get Lawrence’s book, and enjoy eating tomatoes to your heart’s content!
Page 7 of 88 pages ‹ First < 5 6 7 8 9 > Last ›