Devotion Tastes Delicious
Hi friend,
Here at the Elliott Homestead, we are quickly approaching Thanksgiving and the holidays. The Cooking Community is bursting with feast-worthy recipes to feed a crowd, and our Limone shelves are stocked and waiting for you during our first-ever sale starting next Monday, November 17. (Sneak a peek now to make your wish list!)
As always, I’ve got one foot here with you in our online spaces and the other foot tapping to music while I stand at the stove, stirring a pot of this and that to feed my own little flock.
Wherever you find yourself, my prayer for all of us this holiday is that we may pause, reflect, do the meaningful things our souls truly want to do, and be filled with delight.
Thanks for being here… and enjoy today’s Notes From the Homestead!
When Food Used To Be Fun
It’s been thirteen years since I published my first cookbook, From Scratch. Back then, when my work in the kitchen was just beginning to lift off thanks to Nourishing Traditions, culinary tasks were filled with inspiration and excitement! Tasks that are now second nature, like simmering broth, making bread, cooking cuts of meat besides steak, and sourcing produce from local farmers, felt earth-shattering at the time.
Food used to be really, really fun. Do you remember those days for you?
Fast forward a decade and a half, and it’s not that food isn’t fun, but my perspective and relationship with it have changed significantly. How could it not? Back then, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And now I know. Make sense? Ha.
In this week’s video, I’m talking about what’s changed since I started off all those years ago, including the challenge of finding a new way of cooking to support a dairy intolerance in the family. Come spend some time in the kitchen with me — let’s talk food!
It only took thirteen years…
Speaking of thirteen years ago… that was when Stuart and I were living in Alabama without two nickels to rub together. We were able to barter and bargain our way with a local farmer to eat fresh local produce from his farm that year — and during the winter, in Southern Alabama, that meant we ate a lot of persimmons.
During that season, I fell in love with this fruit. When they’re ripe, they’re very squishy — almost like an underfilled water balloon. We cut them in half and scoop the flesh out from the skin, slurping it down like vanilla pudding with excitement.
When we moved back to Washington, I immediately planted a persimmon tree hardy to our zone. It blew over in a winter storm. The second persimmon seed I planted didn’t fare much better; at some point, it failed to thrive and withered away. The third tree took root vigorously, but the fruit we harvested was bitter and consistently failed to ripen.
Yet, year after year, we cared for the tree and harvested from its branches each autumn.
Yesterday, we ate our first ripe persimmon. Glory be!
It took thirteen years, but I was finally able to cut open its round, orange body and offer a spoonful of the soft, sweet fruit to the children. Even though we each only ate a few spoonfuls, we delighted. Now, our children will be able to continue to taste this fruit each autumn; it will be a harvest that they know and look forward to.
Devotion tastes delicious.
Date Night Recipe
In an effort to encourage our children that they can (in fact) do hard things, we challenged our family to not eat out at all during the month of November. Sure! We can do hard things! The challenge is made a bit easier by the fact that with Georgia’s dairy intolerance and mine and Stuart’s avoidance of sugar and potatoes, eating out at any restaurant besides our favorite Mexican cuisine is genuinely challenging.
I do love a table full of enchiladas and tamales, though.
For date night this month, instead of venturing out to a local café with overpriced and mediocre pasta, I decided to make a five-minute carbonara. A few ingredients, a few minutes, a beautiful glass of wine, and we had everything we needed.
Five-Minute Spaghetti Carbonara
Date night in tastes delicious. And a bit like Parmesan.
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
8 ounces pancetta, diced into small cubes
1 pound dry spaghetti
3 egg yolks
2 cups finely grated Parmesan cheese, divided
Instructions:
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil to cook the spaghetti.
While the water heats up, combine the olive oil and pancetta together in a small pan. Over medium heat, cook the pancetta until it is crispy and browned. Set aside.
Add the spaghetti to the warm water and stir to prevent clumping. While the spaghetti boils, combine the egg yolks and the Parmesan together in a large bowl. Stir to combine.
When the spaghetti is cooked al dente, use tongs to transfer it immediately into the bowl of egg yolks and cheese. Stir the spaghetti into the yolk and cheese — it will quickly melt and become a thick sauce. Add a spoonful of pasta water as needed to loosen the sauce to your liking. Stir in the pancetta and any remaining pancetta fat/olive oil reserved in the saucepan.
Serve the carbonara with a fresh grating of additional Parmesan cheese and black pepper to taste.
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I Forgot I Loved Gardening
I could write a book on my love for Tasha Tudor, illustrator and gardener who lived in Corgi Cottage in Vermont. In a moment of quiet, cup of dandelion tea in hand, I grabbed a coffee-table book called Tasha Tudor’s Gardens to snuggle up with by the living room fire.
I hadn’t made it more than two pages into the book, worn on the edges from years of enjoyment, and I found myself on Etsy ordering foxglove and poppy seeds to sow before the snow falls. This is what Tasha Tudor does for me: she reminds me that I love gardening.
It may sound silly, but wadded-up tarps, broken pond pipes, a bumper crop of weeds, invasive grass, and a tight schedule can easily cause me to forget that I actually do love to spend time with my gardens.
I promptly finished my cup of tea, tore myself off the warm couch, and threw on my coveralls and muck-boots. Though I only had an hour or two to spare, it was enough time to dig volunteer echinacea and Japanese anemone from the garden path and spread their beauty to my new garden bed — the one that winds under windows and around into the shade of our back yard.
I saw roses still blooming and woodpeckers harvesting berries from Virginia Creeper.
The soil was moist enough from the November drizzles for me to easily dig up strawberry starts and spread them further down the garden pathway.
The rose hips were sprinkled with dew drops.
…and I even found three forks from summer lunches that had been left behind!
Sometimes it just takes pulling on my boots, getting outside, and being in my garden to remind myself that YES! I LOVE THIS! I really do.
Even decades after her passing, Tasha Tudor’s vision and gardening wisdom still live on in my own little cottage garden, thousands of miles away from Corgi Cottage.
I hope your hands and heart are able to taste, see, and work in beautiful ways this weekend.
