And finally, A Painter's Kitchen compiles recipes from the surely very uncluttered and tidy home and hearth of artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Authored by Margaret Wood, who was O'Keeffe's companion and mentee when the artist was in her nineties, A Painter's Kitchen includes classic yet distinctive recipes (meat included) with the same rich simplicity of O'Keeffe's artwork. Organic long before it became trendy, O'Keeffe had a large garden at her New Mexico ranch. As Wood details: "Miss O'Keeffe owned a small mill for stone-grinding her flour, and most of her bread was homemade. She bought eggs and local honey from various neighbors and preferred to use herb salt rather than the commercial iodized variety." The White Fruit Cake from A Painter's Kitchen is delicious and a lighter, tarter version of the traditional holiday staple, using lemon juice and golden raisins and pecans instead of molasses and candied fruit and walnuts.
"There were rows of squash and corn and tomatoes, lettuce and peppers...raspberries, apples for applesauce, peaches and pears. What was not eaten in the summer was put up for the winter, just as had been done in the kitchen at Sun Prairie sixty years earlier." From Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life -- Roxana Robinson
(Pictured: Two Pears -- Georgia O'Keeffe, 1921)
