creative practice: soup

I read cookbooks for the stories, for inspiration, for ideas about technique and approach more than for specific recipes. Sometimes those are fun too, and you learn a good bit by following one exactly. What you learn, though, if you’re really taking in either strategy, is about the creative process, your own and that of the people who created the recipe -- or the music,

I’ve been reading New England Soup Factory Cookbook
lately. Chef Marjorie Drucker, storyteller Clara Silverstein, and photographer Ron Manville have collaborated on funny, creative, and inspiring presentations of a lot of soup possibilities (several sandwiches and salads along for the ride too). Spicy Chickpea and Butternut Squash Soup, Chicken and Rice Flu Chaser Soup, Corn and Roasted Red Pepper Chowder, Pumpkin, Lobster, and Ginger Soup, The Fallwich --just reading the names conjures up whole kitchens full of ideas. As many times as I’ve been to the Boston area, I’ve never yet been to the New England Soup factory restaurant -- has to make my list for next trip.

music to go along

a few posts ago, you heard about the latest recording from the band Crooked Still, called Still Crooked. Their first album, Hop High
shows the Boston based group doing what Drucker and friends do with their recipes, looking at familiar ingredients with a fresh approach and opening new doors with that.

Music Road: now playing: Crooked Still: Still Crooked

a favorite Boston area restaurant (it's in Cambridge) Veggie Planet

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creative practice: music & cooking

I was having a conversation a while back with a friend who is a musician, and we were both struck by how much music and cooking are both about imagination, about sharing, and about making space.

Music and baking bread

I bake my own bread and --- these days anyway -- do not follow any recipes. There are a couple of familiar standbys I often make and then there are the variations and experiments. First loaf I ever made was hard as a rock, but, that was years ago and I’ve learned from the results, from trying others’ breads, and just from the making of it.

What does all that have to do with music? You decide.

Tassajara Bread Book

photo: winter's eve in Louth

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.