Like every good Vermont kitchen, mine is a meeting place for friends who migrate to the stools at my counter and don’t want to leave. So I’ve made my kitchen a welcome center, and placed all of my favorite art on the walls. This includes three prints by my favorite wood cut artist, Mary Azarian, who I first met in 1984 when I visited her studio in northern Vermont in search of prints for our seed catalog. Back then, we printed only black and white, using soy inks and recycled paper and her artwork dovetailed nicely with our simple farmhouse lifestyle. For two decades, her images filled the pages of our catalog for two decades and appeared in my first cookbook, From the Cook’s Garden. Recently I came across a box of prints, and was reminded of how much I love her images of jam cupboards, Glenwood woodstoves, and harvest baskets, as well as the flowers and gardens, always with a bench or a cat that bring it to life. I can honestly say that much of what I most appreciate about living in Vermont and the food that I bring from my garden into my kitchen is captured in Mary’s woodcuts, and to her I am grateful for all the years her woodcuts have graced my kitchen walls.
