A garden in absentia
November 8, 2005
These are images of my kitchen garden in Occitania. Although I’ve been away for more than two months, it hasn’t been left to it’s own devices. My garden allotment neighbour Al Gouche, and my dear friend KvR have both been kind enough to water it. This amazing growth (I can’t even see the fig tree, the plants are so high) is the result of lovingkindness and very inexpensive water.
Before leaving in September, I asked all my neighbours to eat whatever edible produce they could find from this garden.That’s lots of leafy greens, probably too many eighteen-day radishes, and lots of green tomatoes for pickling. My garden has become a hangout zone for the middle-aged, a communal garden and a platform for Jewish guilt. Which is a nice thing, ultimately.
Thank you, KvR for these photographs that are making me so very, very homesick! Would you please tell Al Gouche that I’ll start slashing and burning in the middle of December.
debra at 11:28 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
Culiblog dot org is one year young
November 5, 2005
Museum Night 2005 marks the one year anniversary of the domain culiblog dot org and the ladies were there to celebrate with me at the restaurant that incorporates this domain name the most into its interior design. For the time being this is could only mean Food Facility, but lord only knows what the future will bring! The Ladies Debra, Julie, Renée, Helena, Quirine, Klazien and Aya especially enjoyed our bubbles with croquetas d’amour, presented in an inside joke of absorbant Dutch design.
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debra at 23:31 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
Chef Thor, Croqueta d’Amor, Medaille d’Or, Cultural Sectór!
November 4, 2005
images top to bottom: Croqueta d’Amor in process, the chef formerly known as Thor, Chef Croquette works on a Croquette Japonais
At a top secret location in Amsterdam’s PostCS cultural hub, Chef Croquette and the Croquette Family get to work on the hundreds of croquettes ordered for a weekend filled with cultural events. It’s as if the PostCS (home to the Stedelijk Museum, Mediamatic, Club 11, numerous artists’ initiatives and one of the thirty-eight locations for the 6th annual Museum Night) suddenly needs it’s very own croquette chef. Of course croquette commissioners from the cultural sector are the most demanding of all. To posh up their menus this weekend they unanimously chose two of the newest creations from the chef formerly known as Chef Thor; the Croqueta d’Amor (‘No More War!’ ‘7 Sabors!’) and the Croquette Japonais.
Just like Willy Wonka’s Magic Chewing Gum, each bite of the Croqueta d’Amor and the Croquette Japonais yields a different taste explosion, seven flavours in all. In the film as well as the book by Roald Dahl, the magic chewing gum is still in beta when bitchy Violet Beauregard (chewing gum expert and glutton) snatches a piece of the gum to give it a chew and to sell the recipe to a rival candymaker. Due to the side-effects caused by the experimental nature of the gum, Violet blows up into a giant blueberry and has to be juiced forthwith!
Let that be a lesson to us all.
Chef Croquette joked to me, ‘er zijn kapers op de kust’ , which is a charming Dutch way of saying, ‘many is the chef that would pirate this recipe.’ Indeed, as we prepared the croquettes in a location deep under the earth’s crust, at least five chefs happened to ‘pop in for a little chat’. I think they could sense that Chef C. had perfected the technique of creating an entire meal in ten cubic centimetres of croquette with no ill side-effects. That or the fact that the location was also a central storage place for beer. Either way, the concept of Open Source is not alive and well in the culinary world.
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debra at 23:31 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
