THE SHARING CORNER
A space I dedicate to all the women that influence me and ignite my creativity.
Nina Lorez Collins.
Nina Lorez Collins is the founder of an online forum for women over 40 called, The Woolfer. She’s written a book called What Would Virginia Woolf Do? and is interested in issues around female empowerment, sexuality, aging, health and general well-being. She’s a graduate of Barnard College, has a Masters degree from Columbia in the field of Narrative Medicine, and has a long professional background in book publishing, both as a literary scout and then as an agent. She has four nearly grown children and lives in Brooklyn.
I love everything that Nina writes and since reading about her in the NYT a year ago I immediately became a WOOLFER my self.
The Woolfer is a sisterhood of literary-minded feminists over 40 who offer each other support, resources, inspiration, and humor in a realm private from our everyday lives of work and family. The WOOLFER Facebook groups are Closed but not Secret, which means you can find them easily by searching Facebook and membership is upon request.
Check out the Woolfer Shop to grab a jar of Coconut X Oil the new hot edible lube by The Secret Ingredient Girls.
Coconut X Oil is designed to help women take charge of their own sexuality, naturally and hormone free. The massage oil works to protect, moisturize and automatically stimulate a woman’s natural lubrication. It retails at $24.99
Flavors: Moist Chocolate Cake, Leather & Spice and Fresh Cut Grass
Carolynn Carreño.
There’s someone I want you to know. She and I share the same philosophy regarding food. We both believe food that’s good for you doesn’t need to be boring or tasteless. That food can be healthy AND satisfying. Wholesome AND tasty. She’s a flavor first kind of gal, just like me. And she’s as passionate to the point of crazy about sharing food as I am. (I think maybe she’s part Italian.)
Her name is Carolynn Carreño. I’ve known Carolynn for decades and I’ve always admired her passion for cooking, her knowledge of all things food, and her irrepressible sense of humor. We once shared a house in Bridgehampton(oh if those kitchen walls could talk!) and although the past many years we’ve lived on opposite coasts, we’ve kept up a long-distance relations
hip by continually swapping recipes, cookbook ideas and culinary philosophies—and she never fails to add a smart twist to my stubborn Italian ways.
Carolynn’s writing, like her food, is anything but boring. She’s a James Beard award-winning writer whose essays have been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Saveur, Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Playboy, The Los Angeles Times, and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and more. She’s also co-authored a dozen cookbooks with chefs whose names I’m sure you know, including culinary goddess Nancy Silverton, with whom Carolynn wrote The Mozza Cookbook. As Silverton says, Carolynn is the rare combination of a home cook with a chef mentality. That means Carolynn can tell you how to put amazing things on your table without needing a sous chef, a trust fund, and someone else to do the dishes.
I just got my hands on Carolynn’s most recently published cookbook, Bowls of Plenty: Recipes for Healthy and Delicious Whole Grain Meals., and the book is everything I love about Carolynn in recipe form.
The book is a mix of surprising, practical, daring, casual and sophisticated. And oh yeah, everything in it just happens to be healthy. Imagine that. It goes way beyond just grains and vegetables and stretches your imagination as well as your notion of healthy. Like Rice with Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad, which is an inspired example of how to stretch a little extravagance a long way, and Pomegranate-Glazed Lamb Meatballs, which have a lovely sweet and sour thing happening and rely on rice rather than breadcrumbs as a gluten-free binder. The book is crowded with recipes simple to complex, weeknight fixes to easy and elegant entertaining, breakfast as well as dessert. I have an obsession with rice pudding and have my eye on her version made with black rice and coconut milk. Not only are the finished dishes doable and impressive, they’re gorgeous, too, thanks to inspired food styling by Susan Spungen and masterful photography by Beatriz da Costa. I’m really excited to cook from her book. You should be, too. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it if I were you. You’ll be so glad you did.
Bowls of Plenty is a testament to the fact that flavor always come first with Carolynn. Which makes perfect sense when you learn a little about her upbringing. “I grew up in the 1970s in Southern California with a pseudo-hippie mother,” says Carolynn. “She drove a van with wall-to-wall shag carpet and made macramé plant hangers in her spare time. But she didn’t do any of the dirty stuff like compost or wear Birkenstocks. She billed herself a ‘health nut’ and she wouldn’t let us eat anything white. We would sooner have found a monkey in the house than a loaf of Wonder Bread. Instead, she stocked the pantry with Oroweat Honey Wheat Berry Bread, which was packed with chewy wheat berries and sunflower seeds (and is to this day my favorite base for avocado toast), and when my sister and I would lobby for Fruit Loops or Cap’n Crunch cereal, she would tell us, ‘You might as well eat a Hershey’s Bar for breakfast!’ Instead into the cart would go boxes of Quaker 100% Natural Granola and Kellogg’s Raisin Bran which, despite the hefty sugar content, must have made her feel better because they were in the shape of something that may have come from the earth and they were brown.” You can understand why flavor has been an obsession for Carolynn.
Contrast her health-conscious American mom with her Mexican dad, who owned a restaurant in Tijuana, and whose legacy to Carolynn was dozens of recipes from her Mexican great grandmother, and you begin to understand the gamut of Carolynn’s culinary upbringing. And, perhaps, the reason for her intrepidness.
Put simply, Carolynn possesses an ability to make everything better. I’m not the only one who thinks so. She’s worked with countless professional chefs who feel the same, including Saveur Magazine co-founder and former editor-in-chief Colman Andrews and chef Jonathan Waxman of Barbuto in New York City and Waxman’s in San Francisco. They adore her. And so do I.
Bowls of Plenty: Recipes for Healthy and Delicious Whole Grain Meals goes on sale today on Amazon.com. I suggest you get a copy ASAP. It might be the nicest thing you do for your-self and your taste buds this year.
Follow Carolynn:
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RENEE SCHETTLER
RENEE SCHETTLER. EDITOR IN CHIEF AT LEITE’S CULINARIA.
I’m such a disciple of Renee’s work. I have been following her, or some would say stalking her, for years. She is the superb editor in chief at Leite’s Culinaria, one of my very favorite food and cooking sites by the very talented David Leite. I’m so excited to finally share with you her beautiful and elegant words, her wit, her invaluable cooking insights, and of course her divine grandma’s apple pie recipe.
Pour yourself, words straight out of her mouth, a well-deserved glass of bubbly, curl up on the couch and enjoy all the bounty she kindly shared:
ALL ABOUT RENEE:
I guess you can sum what I do by saying I play with words. I’m an editor and writer and social media consultant specializing in lifestyle content. Mostly food-minded stuff. Yes, that means I get to spend a crazy amount of time flipping through cookbooks. But I actually also spend a tremendous amount of time studying readers and understanding their concerns and observing what inspires and engages them. The result is less me telling readers what’s trendy and more me sharing solutions to real-life situations that readers encounter and are frustrated by every damn day. In other words, I try to keep it real. You can see what I mean at Leite’s Culinaria where I’m editor in chief. Before that I did the same thing as an editor at Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple, and The Washington Post, except now I also get to spend obscene amounts of time onFacebook and Pinterest voyeuristically observing how readers respond to various content and call it work. I’m also a holistic health coach, which, when you think about it, is basically me doing the same thing I do with words and ideas when I edit—I help something or someone become the best version of themselves, whatever shape that takes.
Follow Renee: reneeschettler.com pinterest twitter
My husband. He’s inquisitive in the kitchen. Intrepid, too. The guy simply isn’t afraid to fail or to laugh at a failed attempt and he has a blast along the way. He’s inspiring to me as I sometimes—okay, a lot of times—get too wrapped up in my head and how to get something exactly perfect when it comes to cooking and I lose the loveliness of just trying something on a whim.
I find that there are several secrets to a memorable apple pie. Toss in half as much ground ginger as ground cinnamon when making the filling and I use turbinado sugar rather than granulate. After tossing the apple slices with sugar and spice, I let them set a spell until the apples exude their exquisite juices. Drain off the liquid and gently reduce it to a syrup before dribbling it over the apple slices you’ve piled in the pie crust. Don’t forget to splash in a judicious pour of a decent bourbon as the spiced syrup simmers. Also, there better be lard in that crust. My grandma, from whom I learned much about baking, kept her recipes secret. And I respect that. But mostly when someone asks, I tell.
Everything tastes spectacular when you’re sipping Champagne. And let go of the notion that you need an occasion to pop open a bottle of bubbly.
I’m a sucker for simple things executed flawlessly. To me, the most perfect steak on the planet is found at Le Severo in Paris. And while steak frites is fairly ubiquitous throughout that city, the quality is typically abysmal. When my husband and I dined at this tiny neighborhood destination, run by a former butcher, on the recommendation of Alec Lobrano, I stifled a giggle after my initial taste, it was THAT good.
I can’t last a day without my OXO Good Grips Flexible Spatula. The super slender metal blade is just the right mashup of bendy and sturdy. I make a lot of crisp-skinned chicken, eggs sunny side up, seared fish fillets, and crisp roast potatoes in my kitchen, and they require just the right touch to convince them to leave the skillet. The OXO spatula has not failed me yet. I always have at least a couple within reach of the stove. Otherwise I get a little anxious.
Union Square Greenmarket. It was a revelation the first time I walked among its farm stands and it remained a revelation each of the literally hundreds of times I was late to work because I took a detour to the greenmarket the way to work. In order to truly take advantage of the greenmarket, it’s best to arrive just as it opens at 8 a.m. so you can line up next to the chefs and not only observe what they’d haul away but ask them what in god’s good name are they going to do with all those fiddlehead ferns? My palate, my cooking, and my garden owe much to those chefs and farmers, including Marco Canora who once detailed with a naughty laugh how he intended to roast Scarlet Queen turnips in duck fat and Alex Guernaschelli who patiently explained, as though she had all the time in the world, exactly how she cooks the first ramps of the season in her cast iron skillet.
CARLA MARINA MARCHESE
CARLA MARINA MARCHESE. BEE KEEPER AND FOUNDER OF RED BEE HONEY
Carla Marina Marchese lives the sweet life on her beautiful farm in Ct . She is a bee keeper, a Honey Sommelier, the founder of the American Honey Tasting Society. and an accomplished author.
I love visiting her and getting my hands sticky and my belly filled with her delicious honey. I use her red clover honey to make my honey baked rhubarb and in my honey, citrus soaked cake.
When I asked her about her favorite meal she said:
“Food is love and for me dining should be a romantic experience….I love a wide variety of Mediterranean cuisine and cooking…olives, bread, sun dried tomatoes, pecorino romano, honey with a glass of wine. Eating and preparing every meal should be an event and leisurely served in courses or small bites like tapas. Ideally served outside surrounded by a garden, vineyard or in my case an apiary.” Tray Chic Marina!
To book a visit to her Apiary, buy some her honey or get one of her books you can go to her website Red Bee Honey.
Carla Marina Marchese is the designer and beekeeper behind the beloved brand, Red Bee Honey and the co-author of The Honey Connoisseur: Selecting, Tasting, and Pairing Honey. Her best selling memoir, Honeybee Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper chronicles Marina’s entrepreneurial journey into the world beekeeping. Marchese is the only American resident to complete the training and be accepted into the L’Albo degli Esperti in Analisi Sensoriale del Miele (Italian National Registry of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey) and the founder of The American Honey Tasting Society.
Marina’s Cooking Tip:
Don’t be afraid to use honey with all food groups, it pairs fabulously with cheeses, dressing, marinades and the perfect varietal can finish off any dish.
Spoons! Any type because I love the action of stirring food and of course to scoop it up to taste…especially if its honey.
The best meals are the unexpected ones, stumbling upon a random restaurant that is off the beaten path. This can easily happen in any ethnic neighborhood or traveling to a foreign country. During the summer, my favorite place to gather food is from my garden, I have fond memories of cooking with friends in Sardegna making Seadas with the local cheese and honey.
Since completing the sensory analysis of honey course in Bologna, I am offering my Honey Sommelier™ consulting services for chefs, restaurateurs, and food and beverage industry professionals on selecting and pairing honey. I welcome the opportunity to write tasting notes for rare, unusual harvest, both domestic and international. For those interested in tasting education, I am available to lead guided sensory courses for those who would like to train their senses to recognize aromas and flavors or defects in honey in conjunction with The American Honey Tasting Society.
Any roadside stand or farmers market offering locally produced food. And of course I always shop at The Westport Farmers Market.
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