Posts for category ‘Stories’

Today we welcome contributor Liz Petruska to the GFS family with her story of three women who up and did what a lot of us dream about: opening a bakery in scenic Maine. Spoiler alert: the Village Bakery and Cafe made its debut this summer, and we hope she’ll be back to share more stories of life as an entrepreneur as the business grows.

Seven months ago, over beer and ping pong, on a chilly January night, our new bakery was born. The idea was to keep it simple, to gather our recipes, mixers and aprons and start…from scratch. Our journey since then seems epic to us, three friends who share a love of baking and love to share tasty treats with others, but really our adventure has just begun.

On July 2, my two partners and I opened the Village Bakery and Cafe in the small coastal village of Waldoboro, Maine. The town was in need of a place for people to gather, and quite simply, to get a decent cup of coffee. Meanwhile, we were looking for an opportunity to pursue our passion for baking.
>> Opening a bakery takes more than 75 pounds of flour. Read on to find out. >>

Last Sunday, Casey and I turned Good. Food. Stories. into a live show! We demo’d our signature dish, spaghetti carbonara, at New York Botanical Garden’s Edible Garden series. While Casey did the majority of chopping, grating and tossing (someone please give this girl her own tv show already!), I—being the history geek—shared some of the stories about the origin of carbonara.

Much of Italy’s cuisine has been shaped by the different groups that have conquered parts of Italy throughout history. Sicilian food often includes dishes with saffron and raisins which reflects the Arab culture that dominated the island in the ninth and tenth centuries. Tomatoes didn’t even exist in Italy until the 16th century when Spainiards, who controlled the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, brought them back from their New World explorations. You may be surprised to know that a distinctly American influence can be found on spaghetti carbonara.
>> Shocked by this revelation? Read on! >>

Time flies when you’re having fun and Good. Food. Stories. is officially one year old. (GFS, like me, is a Leo.)

This all got started with a simple desire to share our love for food. Casey was regularly answering emails from friends requesting restaurant recommendations and all sorts of cooking advice. I was always snooping around looking for unusual places to eat and an outlet for my never ceasing curiosity. A few emails were bounced back and forth, we picked a name, bought a domain and our chronicle of delicious conversations began.
>> More of Good. Food. Stories.’ greatest hits after the jump. >>

All summer, I’ve been obsessing over the ghosts of old New York, lamenting the loss of iconic diners and landmarks that maybe never existed and thinking of Frank O’Hara. O’Hara, a poet who lived in New York in the 1950s and ’60s and who died young, as the great ones do, in an accident on Fire Island at age 40, was a jauntily heartbreaking chronicler of everyday life and the small details that make the city sing.

(You might know his work if you’re a Mad Men fan and remember Season Two’s plotline hinging on the book Meditations in an Emergency, read by dreamy Jon Hamm.)

But why am I telling you all of this? We’re a food site, not American Lit 103. Well, my dears, instead of wolfing down some halal chicken from a street vendor during his lunch breaks at the Museum of Modern Art, Frank used the time to write poetry at breakneck speed. His 1964 tome Lunch Poems was thus named by City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti (the same man who published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and defended the book against obscenity charges) for the provenance of its contents.

And so, for all you readers dreaming of the freedom of your lunch hour, here’s one of my favorite pieces summing up New York in summer, celebrating those few shining minutes when you’re released from your windowless cubicle and are able to immerse yourself in a glass of papaya juice and the crowded lifeblood of the city.
>> Read on for Frank O’Hara’s ode to lunch hours in New York. >>

Moving on from the global cuisine of London, intrepid contributor C.C. finds herself in an old outpost of the British Empire: McLeod Ganj, India, home of the Dalai Lama and the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile. She eats, prays she won’t develop a stomach virus, and loves much of what she finds—especially the chocolate desserts.

In a particularly efficient way of checking major experiences off life’s to-do list, C.C. has fulfilled two lifelong goals simultaneously by going to McLeod Ganj, India to do a yoga teacher training course. It’s a rigorous program with early morning meditation, classes in anatomy, philosophy, ayurveda, yoga ethics/business, and four hours of asana practice a day, which makes a girl hungry and justified to eat whatever she wants, even typically taboo foods like crepes, cupcakes, and pizza.

This is a good thing, since 14 of the 16 people on the course become predictably ill as will happen to western travelers to India, thus requiring a paranoid girl like C.C. to beef up her attempts to avoid parasites, amoebas, bacterias, giardia, hepatitis, and all other manner of unsavory stowaway germs lurking in the hill town’s water supply and on any cooking or cutting surface. She assiduously avoids anything that may have been grown in manure like fresh vegetables, things with absorbent qualities like tofu, and all meat—not a big deal for C.C. and really appropriate in mostly veg-India anyway, not to mention yogic.

This means restricting her diet to very cooked and safe foods like bread (C.C. has no appreciation for rice, which she considers a useless carb. Sorry, Asia.); omelets (thankfully McLeod Ganj isn’t that vegetarian); “curd,” which is the most relentlessly watery yogurt known to humankind and may quite possibly be crying as you eat it, such is the endless seepage of water that spews forth; pizza; and the occasional curry when feeling daring.
>> C.C. finds a lot to eat in McLeod Ganj, India – even some leafy greens. >>