This morning I had my first Bartlett of the season. It was not my first pear, just my first Bartlett. For some reason, I have only bought Bosc pears for my recipes. Later this Fall, there is a Tuscan recipe for pears baked with pecorino and honey. It never occurred to me that I should use anything other than the Bosc. However, this morning's circumstances left me with only a Bartlett for my breakfast. What a delightful surprise to find a slightly more acidic juice and a thicker flesh than the pears I have become used to. From now on I will be more open to different pear varieties, and try to apply this lesson to all of the other wonderful fruits of the season.

My aunt is visiting us for a few days from Colombia. She is Venezuelan, but has been living in Bogotá for the greater part of a year now. When we were younger she would bring us jewelry, but now she brings us books of poetry or literature written in Spanish. This time she brought Tratado de Culinaria Para Mujeres Tristes by Héctor Abad Faciolince, a Colombian author that both she and my mother admire. The title in English is basically “Culinary Dealings for Sad Women”, and is broken up into small chapters, which are usually a page long, in which he describes a universal problem, and then provides recipes and dietary recommendations to cure the ill. His recipes are basic, imaginary, and have a sense of humor. One of my favorite chapters is about how to deal with pregnant women and their cravings. His first recommendation is to boil water, then freeze it, and give them the ice to chew. He suggests that if she doesn’t like it, at least she will not ask for anything for a while. The second recommendation is that she walk through the house naked, with one hand on her chest, the other on her stomach, while singing a childhood song. He then says that this recommendation might not cure a pregnant woman’s cravings, but that it is always a good idea for anyone to walk around the house naked, even if without one hand on the stomach, and the other on the chest, then sit in the “belly button” of the house, and spend ten minutes sitting on the floor doing absolutely nothing. I am halfway through this book, but I am loving the recipes he provides for curing our moral ailments. His writing really gets to the point of soul food. It is not always a recipe involving a lot of ingredients and complicated cooking technique that feeds our souls, just a little bit of imagination.

My new obsession is chestnut honey. I had my first taste a few months back when my boyfriend brought some to me from Italy. The first time that I tried it I did not like it at all. Honey is supposed to be unabashedly sweet, yet this was not. It was dark and bitter, the Guinness of honeys. Yet I found myself intrigued. This honey is not going to just give itself away, I remember thinking to myself. It was not like the flowery rhododendron honey or loose agave nectar that quickly dissolved happily into any salad dressing or steeping brew that I prepared. Unlike most honeys that I have tried, chestnut not only sweetens the foods that it is added to, but it also makes them sit up straight. And that is only if it likes what you put it on. So how did I learn to ever love it? I began by slowly starting to use it to sweeten my teas. I went from drinking plain tea, to then adding an exaggerated spoonful of the honey, to ignoring the tea altogether and just using it as an excuse for the sweet, thick resin I found awaiting me at the bottom of each mug. Now it has even creeped into my morning ritual. My favorite breakfast has become puffed farro and kamut mixed together with blueberries or peaches, set in some soymilk, and drizzled with a spoonful of chestnut honey. My days of this Guinness honey are just beginning, as it will be the center of much of my culinary attention.

So I am chronicling my boyfriend’s stay here in the United States and documenting his likes and dislikes of my cooking. As I mentioned in my previous entry, I was going to try and wow him with my special dishes. The other night I made my famous Amor Prohibido Pasta (Forbidden Love Pasta), which will appear in our Pomegranate episode late in our fall season. Basically, it is a roasted acorn squash sauce served over pasta and garnished with different nuts and seeds (I can’t give too much away here now!). I am happy to announce that he ate it all and really liked it. They do not have acorn squash in Italy, but he was open to trying a pasta prepared with something unfamiliar. While I was cooking, he kept gobbling up the pumpkin seeds that I had toasted and sprinkled with chile ancho. He praised the final dish and said it was really good, and I really did believe him. I had complained to him before that I felt he was not happy with the dishes that I make him, which had made me nervous that he would overcompensate with his praise, and be overly emphatic about how much he liked anything that I prepared afterwards. But in reality, he seems to be opening up to a new style of cooking- mine. Although I do not get the “oohs” and “aahs” that the Rhode Island lobster rolls and broiled flounder receive, I am happy that he is open to exploring the unknown. I, too, am coming to appreciate his tastes and make things that are more simple and authentic, which is something that I started exploring early on in our relationship. It is easy to get caught up in fusion cooking, new versions of classic dishes, and changing familiar textures, but with him I have learned the beauty in the simple things. Great ingredients prepared well can never go wrong.