Apples & Thyme - Round Up #5 - An Addition

Marla at Bella Baita View has added an addition to the Apples & Thyme round up. It was an entry from Equal Opportunity Kitchen whose wonderful post came to us on time, but fell through the cracks. Our apologies to Giz and Psychgrad.

Apples & Thyme - Round Up #5

The April Apples & Thyme Round Up is here...well, thanks to Marla, it's been here and I'm just late letting everyone know. My apologies.

The Magnificent Marla of Bella Baita View posted the round up of this months memories and recipes. Please pop on over to her site to read all the delicious and heartfelt posts.

This will be our last Apples & Thyme event for the time being, given that Inge and I have very full lives at the moment. We thank all of you who have participated. You may see the event return in the future at some point.

A big thank you, Marla for your excellent effort. Actually, that reminds me...

Chris at Mele Cotte awarded me with an Award of Excellence that I haven't

yet acknowledged nor passed on. Thank you so much, Chris, for thinking so

highly of my blog! I think this is an opportune moment to pass it on to

Marla for her continued excellence in the blogging. I would also like to pass it to along to my wonderful partner in Apples & Thyme - Inge at Vanielje Kitchen. If you both already have the award, then consider yourself doubly blessed. You both have not only excellent content, creativity, stories, writing but excellent attitudes.

Lastly, I will post more soon about why I have been so absent lately. I have much to share and have missed the wonderful exchanges with all of you out there.

Apples & Thyme - April

First of all, apologies to my friends and readers out there for being MIA for a bit. As my husband finishes up his year-loooooong medical treatment, and I am still recovering from some big losses in my life, I find that I haven't been very social as of late. I am allowing this recovery process to take its own course and as I feel the need to stay quiet and turn inward, I am allowing myself to do that. I admit that it is a strange course for this normally extroverted, busy, conversation-loving, adventurous Gemini! I trust that it is just what I need right now.

In the meantime, African Vanielje and I am thrilled to announce that April's guest host of our Apples & Thyme event is the wonderful Marla of Bella Baita View. She and her husband own a B&B in the Italian Alps and her blog is filled with wonderful stories and recipes of the area. In the next few weeks we encourage you to tell us a story about your mother, grandmother or anyone else influential in your life and the time you spent with them in the kitchen. Do you have a family heirloom recipe to share with us? Do you have certain family cooking traditions that would be of interest to us? Is there a recipe that you have always wanted to seek out from your past that you don't have? There are so many stories like these waiting to be told. We await yours.

Submit stories to Marla by April 20 at info AT bellabaita DOT com.

The Importance of Passing Down Recipes

I must admit that I have procrastinated writing my Apples & Thyme entry for this month for two reasons: my life has been feeling a bit out of control and not allowing me to feel my usual ability to communicate, and secondly, I wasn't sure what I wanted to write about. Of course, my mother always is in the forefront of my mind, and I've written about her many, many times. Some days her absence feels so strong, filling me with sadness and an inability to write about her. Other times, it is easier.

After her death last October, my older sister and I sifted through her huge collection of recipes - she filed them neatly in binders, categorized and put handwritten notes on her favorites. We came across three - 3x5 index cards, each with the same recipe but each one having one of her three daughter's names on it. On the back, she had written "October 1975"! The recipe was simply labeled "Cornbread", but it wasn't just any cornbread - it was our Nanna's delicious cornbread. She wanted to make sure that we each had a copy of this legendary recipe.

Here's a little background: "Nanna" was my mother's mother and was raised in the back woods of West Virginia. I've written about here before. My grandfather was from Georgia and later Tennessee, and they settled in Ohio. They continued there humble, southern cooking traditions throughout their life. One of the staples at the dinner table was cornbread, and my Nanna's was the best. Cornbread from the south is savory, while the cornbreads I've tasted on the west coast are usually a little sweet. I have never gotten used to that sweet flavor and still prefer, and can taste to this day, an old-fashioned Southern cornbread slathered with butter.

When I read the recipe I called my older sister to question a few things. First of all, we don't believe they sell self-rising cornmeal anymore, although perhaps they do somewhere. I went on line and found this information on the Aunt Jemima Corn Meal site: To make one cup of self-rising cornmeal:
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup + 3 tablespoons Quaker or Aunt Jemima Corn Meal

The second thing I asked my sister is "Why did Nanna's cornmeal always taste soooo savory, almost like there was some bacon in it?" This recipe doesn't indicate anything like that. She immediately knew the answer. Nanna used to coat her pan with bacon grease before putting the batter in. Ah hah! Another old-time southerner's trick!

I remember my mom carrying on the cornbread tradition by making a simple meal of it with some cooked beans and coleslaw. Yum!

The point I started to make about the importance of passing down recipes is that a recipe such as this, which was never written down by my Nanna would have been lost if my mother hadn't taken the time to write it down for all to remember. We were all touched by mom's foresight at making a copy for each of us because she knew how important it would be to us one day - over 30 years later!

Over and over again we have read stories in this Apples and Thyme event of people wishing that they had a certain recipe one of their mothers or grandmothers used to make, but now it is impossible to get because the person has passed on and no one knows exactly how they had made it. Which leads me to why I love this event so much - it honors those age-old family cooking traditions and encourages us to write about them for posterity's sake. It even encourages us to seek out those living members of our family and ask them for their secrets before it is too late to do so.

Please visit this month's Apples & Thyme host - Mele Cotte - to see the full round up, which will posted sometime before the end of the month.

Piccola Cucina

One of the many things that has been keeping me busy lately is this new project. Obviously it is only applicable for those of you living in Southern California. It would be great if some of you local readers and bloggers out there could participate. I can't speak highly enough of my partner in this project - Christina Sbarra. She is an excellent Italian teacher and has come to specialize in teaching the language via activities. It has proven to be one of the fastest ways to learn. We are both passionate about Italian cooking, food and wine and thought that using those activities would be a fun vehicle for learning the language. Any level of Italian speaker - yes, even beginners - are welcome.

Piccola Cucina
Italian Cooking & Language Lessons
◊◊◊
Have you ever wanted to speak Italian?
How about learn to cook authentic Italian dishes?
Now you can do both at the same time!

All levels of Italian welcome – including beginners. Three hour class includes Italian language instruction along with a cooking lesson, in Italian, lunch and wine. Small group – limited to 6 people. Classes are held on Sundays from 11 am – 2 pm in Long Beach.

Sunday, April 13: “Stuzzichini” (appetizers, salads, bruschettas, etc.)

Sunday, April 27: A regional lesson on the cuisine of Tuscany.

Sunday, May 4: “Primavera” – cooking with the freshest Spring ingredients.

Sunday, May 18: A regional lesson on the cuisine of Le Marche.

Fees: Save money buying when you sign up for all four classes! 1 class $100, 2 classes $90 each, or 4 classes $75 each.

Your instructors:
Christina Sbarra is the Coordinator and Instructor of the Language Center of Long Beach (a branch of La Lingua La Vita from Todi, Italy – www.lalingualavita.com.) She has over 10 years of Italian teaching experience and specializes in teaching language through activities, which has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to learn a language. Christina has been a passionate home cook of Italian food for over 20 years.

Jeni Moretti is an Italian wine and food expert who owns Passionate Palate Tours (www.passionatepalatetours.com) a company specializing in group wine and food tours of Italy. She also has many years of working in the Italian wine business and studying the regional cuisines of Italy.

For more information, please call Christina at 562-930-9194 or email christinasbarra AT yahoo DOT com.