Author Archives: John Cutrone

Mar 19 2025
4 Comments
Equinox, Spring, St. Joseph's Day

Approach of Spring, & San Giuzeppole

It’s the 19th of March: St. Joseph’s Day. And what St. Patrick’s Day is to the Irish, so St. Joseph’s Day is to the Italians. In Sicily, folks will be eating Pasta con le Sarde: very often Bucatini, and always with chopped sardines and anchovies, with chopped fennel, raisins, and saffron: flavors which nod to the Arabic influence upon Sicily and the rest of Southern Italy (from where my family hails). This pasta dish, which is topped with toasted breadcrumbs (to symbolize St. Joseph’s carpentry sawdust) is particularly Sicilian.

My Grandma Cutrone, who was from Palo del Colle, in Apulia, near Bari, would build an altar to St. Joseph in her home each March, and to all the visitors who came to see it, she would give oranges and boxes of animal crackers. This was before my time, so I never got to see the altar, save for in poorly-lit silent 8 mm home movies, nor did I ever get to ask why the animal crackers, though I can guess why the oranges: oranges, for centuries before they were commonplace, were beautiful, valuable gifts that symbolized the golden sun and its promised return after a long winter. Oranges made lovely gifts at Christmastime, and, I imagine, were just as welcome at the start of Spring.

St. Joseph’s Day is also Father’s Day in Italy, which is fitting, as Joseph was Mary’s husband and foster father to her son, Jesus. One of my favorite songs for the day is an old carol for Christmas called “The Cherry Tree Carol.” In it, Joseph is so very human and he comes across as a real jerk until he comes to understand, thanks to the cherry tree’s bowing down, the greater mystery he has become part of. It’s a song that’s been sung for many centuries, but I have two favorite recordings of it. One is by Emmylou Harris and is just so beautifully done. The other is from a Christmas Revels performance called Ribbon of Highway. It’s sung by Charmaine Li-Lei Slaven and I just love her emphasis on Joseph’s standing around while Mary gathers cherries… Joseph’s grumpiness and humanity really shines through in Charmaine’s version.

We call St. Joseph “San Giuseppe,” and while my family does not make Pasta con le Sarde (we are not Sicilian, after all) for St. Joseph’s Day, we will enjoy Zeppole di San Giuseppe. We make zeppole at New Year’s Eve, too, but Zeppole di San Giuseppe are different: these are delicious pastries that are filled with custard and Amarena cherries. They are Lenten treats that are meant to be eaten just on and around the 19th of March, though some Italian bakeries now bake them all year long (which, as you might imagine, I do not approve of). Seth has come to call the day San Giuzeppole Day (and that I do approve of). If you do nothing else today to celebrate, find yourself an Italian bakery and buy some Zeppole di San Giuseppe (or Sfingi di San Giuseppe, which are filled with sweet ricotta cream (like cannoli), rather than custard) and be sure to serve your pastries with strong espresso. Perfetto!

This year, as is often the case, San Giuseppe welcomes us to Spring, for the next day, March 20 at 5:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time, will bring the Vernal Equinox to the Northern Hemisphere and a brief period of roughly balanced sunlight and darkness across the globe. It is the start of Spring by the almanac for us, while in the Southern Hemisphere, it is the start of Autumn. The Wheel of the Year never ceases its slow turning, and now, once we pass this equinox moment, our Northern Hemisphere days begin to log more daylight hours than night. We are halfway between the Midwinter Solstice we left in December and the Midsummer Solstice we approach in June. But San Giuseppe, he begs us to put the Moka pot on the stove, brew an espresso with a nice crema, perhaps, and sit at the table and visit with friends and family and some zeppole. There is plenty of time for work, and plenty of time for Lenten austerity. Today, we get to enjoy ourselves.

*

Those are my sister Marietta’s homemade Zeppole di San Giuseppe in the photo above. So good!

A reminder that our shop will be closed for the rest of March, but we will reopen again on the First Saturday of April, and indeed all the Saturdays of April, for our Springtide Saturdays series. Your online orders are still welcome, and we will be filling orders this week, but orders placed on March 20 or later won’t be filled until the first week of April.

We also have two in-house workshops coming up this spring! Collagraph Printmaking with instructor Kim Spivey is on Sunday April 6, and I’ll be teaching a workshop called Pure Bookbinding (these are books made without adhesive) on Sunday May 4.

 

Mar 17 2025
6 Comments
St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick’s Day: A Recipe & a Poem

For St. Patrick’s Day this year, I come bearing gifts: a quick and easy recipe for my sister’s Irish Soda Bread, and a poem to read whilst the bread is baking, or to improve upon your enjoyment of the bread later this evening with tea, toasted, with butter and perhaps a bit of Orange Saffron Preserve (which has been my favorite way to enjoy my soda bread this past week). And that’s it. Just simple, comforting stuff, which feels like just what we need these days. Nothing elaborate, nothing too celebratory, as that’s a mood I’ve just not been feeling lately. But good bread and poetry: these are things that bring me a bit of joy. Maybe they’ll help you feel better, too.

MARIETTA’S IRISH SODA BREAD

5 cups flour (plus up to an additional cup, depending on stickiness of dough)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons butter or shortening
1 cup raisins
1 tablespoon caraway seeds (optional)
2 eggs, beaten (reserve 1 tablespoon for later)
1 ½ cups milk (or buttermilk, if you have it)

If you’re using a stand mixer, place all ingredients in the mixing bowl (except for reserved tablespoon of egg) and mix. Start with 5 cups of flour, adding up to an additional cup, if necessary, if dough is sticky. Next, using dough hook, knead in bowl for a minute or so.

If, like me, you have to mix things by hand, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl. With a pastry blender, cut in butter or shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in raisins and caraway seeds. Add beaten eggs (be sure to reserve 1 tablespoon of beaten egg for later), and then add the milk or buttermilk. Mix well. If the dough is very sticky, add up to 1 additional cup of flour, a little at a time.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 F and butter a 2-quart round casserole; set aside. Flour a board and turn out dough onto it; knead for about a minute. Shape into a ball. Place the dough in the casserole, and in the center of the dough, with a sharp knife, cut a cross about 4” long and ½” deep. Brush dough with reserved egg.

Bake about 1 hour and 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the bread comes out dry. Cool in casserole on wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the casserole and cool further on rack.

*

The Stolen Child
by William Butler Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

*

Mike Scott and the Waterboys set the poem to music late in the last century, and that is worth a listen today, as well. And so, Céad míle fáilte. A hundred thousand welcomes. St. Patrick’s Day blessings upon you and yours and upon us all.

Take note that our shop will be closed for the rest of March, but we will reopen again on the First Saturday of April, and indeed all the Saturdays of April, for our Springtide Saturdays series. Your online orders are still welcome, and we will be filling orders this week, but orders placed on March 20 or later won’t be filled until the first week of April.

We also have two in-house workshops coming up this spring! Collagraph Printmaking with instructor Kim Spivey is on Sunday April 6, and I’ll be teaching a workshop called Pure Bookbinding (these are books made without adhesive) on Sunday May 4.

Mar 04 2025
2 Comments
Ash Wednesday, Lent, Shrove Tuesday

A Pancake Supper, and the Entry to Lent

Lent, it seems, has been a long time coming this year. It has, indeed, for most often this movable season of penitence arrives in February and here we are now, well into the first week of March. It’s also, you must admit, if you are an old Democrat like me, been a very long few weeks since the 20th of January. There are those who view Lent as a time of trial and travail, and it has most definitely felt this way in recent weeks for those of us who see the world in a very different way than do the current folks in charge. I’m in for a long four years.

But I’ve never seen Lent in this same dreary way. Yes, we make some sacrifices, if skipping meat on Fridays is to be seen as one. We eat fish on Fridays, or lentils, or pasta fagioli, but none of this feels to me like a sacrifice. I’m very content eating meals like this. And I know people give things up for Lent, but I was not brought up with this tradition. Some of the most important things I’ve ever done in my life have happened during Lent, like the year I brought my grandma, Assunta, to church every night during Lent for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It was the year after Grandpa died, and it meant the world to Grandma to go every night, and we would stay, she and I, deep into the night in the little chapel, along with other pilgrims in this world. It was lovely. Father Seamus used to talk about “sins of omission,” as opposed to “sins of commission” –– the good things we fail to do, as opposed to the bad things we’ve done –– and his ideas have long resonated with me. I think of Lent as a time to perhaps do things you might not do (like take your grandmother to church every night for 40 nights), and I’m not so concerned about the things I might be missing because of Lent.

Be that as it may, it’s not Lent quite yet. That comes tomorrow, with Ash Wednesday. Today is Shrove Tuesday. It is the final day of the Carnival season that comes between Christmas and Lent each year, and it is a night, traditionally, when pancakes are on the table for supper. This is a tradition I fully support, and Seth & I: we are planning on two kinds of pancakes tonight: regular fluffy buttermilk pancakes for dinner, with bacon, and then later tonight, with our late night tea, Swedish pancakes, which are more like crepes. (There is a debate each year out in the world about which pancakes are the proper ones to eat on Shrove Tuesday; our approach, this year, is to eat both varieties.)

So, why the pancakes on this last night before Lent? Those who think Lent is a big sacrifice nowadays would most likely have been positively suffering through the season in years past. There was a time when the Lenten fast was much stricter. No eggs, no dairy, no meat at all… pancakes for supper on Shrove Tuesday was a ceremonial way of using up the last of the eggs, the last of the milk, the last of the sugar. In parts of Germany, the tradition calls not for pancakes tonight but for doughnuts! There, the night is known as Fasnacht or Faschnacht. And the Swedes: They will be eating semlor today: sweet buns scented with cardamom and filled with almond paste and cream. The day in Sweden is known as Fettisdagen: the same Fat Tuesday idea that gives us another common name for the day: Mardi Gras. The idea is the same, no matter where you are: using up all the remaining lard, sugar, eggs, and butter before Lent begins.

Seth and I, we will eat our pancakes tonight (both the American kind and the Swedish kind) with festivity and in good spirit, and in the morning, if we have it in us, we will approach that altar to have ashes smeared on our foreheads with the spoken reminder: Remember man that thou are dust and to dust you shall return. We are made of the stuff of this earth and we shall return to it. If nothing else, these forty days that follow tonight’s pancake supper will hopefully remind us that life is short, and we would do well to live the time we have with compassion and kindness for our fellow human beings, and to love each day, and, as we like to say here, to live the ceremony of each day, too. These are the things we feel are good and the things we feel are right.

 

COME TO THE SHOP!
Locals: the shop is open Saturdays from 11 AM to 4 PM at 1110 North G Street, Lake Worth Beach, FL 33460. (Do take note, though, that we’ll be closed Saturday March 22 and Saturday March 29.) And we’ve got two special events for you in March. First up, it’s our St. Patrick Market on Saturday & Sunday, March 8 & 9, from 11 AM to 4 PM each day. We’ll be playing Celtic music and featuring our offerings for St. Patrick’s Day and for St. Brigid’s Day and serving my sister’s homemade Irish soda bread and our own Löfbergs Swedish Coffee while you shop. The following week, come back for our San Giuseppe Market on Friday evening, March 14, from 5:30 to 8:30 PM, and on Saturday, March 15, from 11 AM to 4 PM. At this event, we’ll be playing Italian music and featuring our offerings from Italy and serving our Löfbergs Coffee with my sister’s homemade Zeppole di San Giuseppe, the classic Italian pastry that we enjoy once each year to celebrate St. Joseph’s Day. (If you wonder if perhaps my sister, Marietta, is a great baker, you’d be right to think so.) Both events should be great fun. You’ll love what we have in store for you! As for the rest of you, you’ll find all these offerings (minus the soda bread and zeppole, sorry) when you visit our online shop. We appreciate your support! (Click the images below to make them larger.)

 

Image: Annual Pancake Day Dance at Trewern (Wales). Photograph, February 10, 1940, by Geoff Charles. [Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons, The National Library of Wales.]

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