Magali Pès Schmid

Dear piggy friends,

I grew up in a family with Italian/Greek/Spanish roots where my mom cooked two hot meals every day, including starters, main dish, cheese platter, fruit and dessert. Sundays were special, of course, and always involved the making of a yummy cake….and licking the bowl. *slurp* I watched, mostly, for my mom always said that I took too long and wasn’t much of help… So I started trying my hand at cooking only when I went my own way to the university in Aix-en-Provence. I never liked eating in canteens, so I quickly started cooking both lunches and dinners, first for myself, then pretty soon for an array of friends and family, hosting dinner soirées and theme parties as well as home-made Christmas dinners involving drinks and dishes inspired from my travels.

I still have strong memories of a delectable melon fresh sherbet from my first time in Italy at the fond age of 12; Polverones / Montecao in Spain; blinis and fish egg with a strong black tea at 5 a.m. in Moscow; mutton and mint samsa baked in a stone oven buried in the ground in Samarkand; the sweet and powerful scent of cinnamon rolls baking in the oven during my exchange year in Kansas City, Missouri; nalesniki z serem in a Mlecny Bar in Krakow; mercimek corba in Anatolia; lontong banana leaf rice in Jakarta; amazing grilled sea food in Maputo; and pasteis de nata in Lisbon. Then other more “exotic” experiences… I had fried lungs in the streets of Ladakh; wonton soup squatted on a curb in Hong-Kong; boiled dog in China (though I have to admit that I didn’t know it was dog at the time); crocodile stew in Australia; grilled hearts and livers on the sticks in the “Churrasquerias” of Brazil; frog’s legs too, of course, as a typical French girl is supposed to! In fact, the only “food” I ever turned down was live grasshoppers sold as nibbles in an open market in Shanghai! So, yeah, you could say I am a pretty open-stomached kinda girl.

In my mid-twenties, I started making home-made yogurt, then I started making my own cheese from scratch: from books and research. Needless to say, the first tries were not always optimal! But I succeeded in creating two new varieties that are a great success in our house and among friends!

A few years later, my parents told me that my grand-mother (a strong-willed woman who had 18 kids but whom I didn’t know as much as I wished, for she died when I was only a child) owned a couple of ewes and made her own cheese! And no one had learned how to make cheese from her when she was alive! Other times, other needs, other interests. 

In my late twenties, I had some sort of a shock when I realized: we all knew where to buy zucchinis, but couldn’t tell the difference between the male and the female Summer squash flowers; we knew how much a bunch of asparagus cost, but had no idea how it grew!

So one day, I decided to go to an asparagus farm and asked the owner if I could spend one day on the farm to watch, learn, and help with the harvesting/plucking. For free. The farmer was kind of shocked at first, but after a while, when he saw how eager I was and dedicated to my task, he couldn’t stop teaching me all kinds of things: how you plant and tilt the bulb; how you mix sand and soil; how high you mount the pile a little bit more each year so that the asparagus grow a little bit taller each year; how to pluck the asparagus without hurting the bulb; and the reasons why you carefully burn the twigs at the end of the season to be sure and get rid of a special mean worm located in the center of the stem, main nuisance for the asparaguses.

I was thrilled. And I guess he was too. For at the end of the day, he gave me a dozen free-range eggs from his hens, three bunches of asparagus, and two ox-heart heirloom tomato plants for my balcony.

When my husband and I finally settled in a house with a proper garden, we decided to plant heirloom, endemic, forgotten orchard trees and shrubs instead of building a fence around our property. That’s when I discovered Saskatoon berries, Black Chokeberries, Sorbus aucuparia, Cornelian Cherry, Danziger Kant Apple, Josephine von Mecheln Pear and many more... and tried to learn what to do with them – how to cook them and use them in our everyday life. This year I also started learning more about wild edibles we can pluck from our garden and the prairies and forest near our house. I find it fascinating!

Once, humans knew what to pluck, what to eat, what herb to use as cures, etc. We have forgotten so much about it, and we have fallen so far away from nature and its pace, that I found it was my duty almost, maybe one purpose in this life, to learn back all of this knowledge.

I've pretty much been an “eat-all and meat lover” all my life – until the birth of my daughter Alessia (now 3) and my breast feeding experience. At the clinic, I'd been given at least 2 yogurts per meal, so between 6 to 8 serves of yoghurt a day! When I got home and found almost no time to feed myself between Alessia's 8 breast-feedings 24/7, I bought yogurts by the kilo, and ate almost nothing but bananas and dairy! I started feeling bloated and moody, and I suffered violent headaches. Of course, I thought it was all because I was sleep-deprived, tired, and was eating poorly. Even though Alessia's birth was as smooth as can be (5 hours between my waters breaking and Alessia's first cry), it was an extremely stressful period: I handed the translation of a 500+ pages novel just 2 days before giving birth; and we moved from our apartment in Basel to our unfinished newly built house in the countryside 5 days after Alessia's birth. And it was our first child so we knew nothing!

I don't remember exactly when I decided to try a couple of weeks without dairy. Maybe while arranging our cooking books in our new kitchen, and stumbling upon Sandra Cabot's books a friend in Australia had sent to me. But I do remember that it didn't take me two weeks to realize I had become lactose intolerant. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure I've been lactose intolerant for a long time, maybe for 15 years, suffering from headaches and migraines, bloating and such.

My husband and I enjoy each other's company. A lot. We share fantastic moments and love each other fondly. But we are very different on many levels, and our metabolism is one of them! I've been trying to find the "perfect" diet for my family, so that I don't have to cook 3 different meals: one for me, who loves grains and pulses; one for my husband, whose body just rejects lentils and nuts but thrives on meat and dairy; and finally, one for our fast growing 3 yr-old.

I'm originally from a little town called La Ciotat on the French Riviera, and I was an AFS exchange student in Kansas City, MO just over 20 years ago, where I had a wonderful time in High School and with my adopted American family. When my sweet "American sister", Lori, who now lives and works in Springfield, MO told me about Tess and sent me the link to her website, I felt like I had found a gold mine! I was excited as can be to try her recipes, and put my man to the test eheh. That evening, I made Tess’s scrumptious pumpkin and red lentil soup, her delicious "creamy cauliflower millet mash" and the delectable "damp lemon and almond cake" (using oil instead of butter, honey instead of agave syrup, spelt and buckwheat instead of the “so-hard-to-find-here” rice flour). When we sat at the family table and enjoyed our meal, I put my man to the test and asked him, “What were the ingredients?” He could name some, but was wrong on most of them, and couldn't believe how delicious it all tasted, considering this was "very healthy food"! And Alessia loved every bit of it!
So here’s to you Tess, one of my inspirations for better food and better health! *tchin-tchin*

Now, I don’t have a recipe blog. I guess Facebook is some sort of a blog for me, where I post pictures of what we grow in our garden and what I make with it. Eventually, I would like to issue a cookbook with my favorite recipes and photos in four languages (French, English, German and Italian), a bit like the TeNeues Guides. But I have no idea how to go about publishing a book: who to contact and how to make it happen! The goal would be to share quick and easy recipes (20 minutes max for a meal) and maybe also have four sections/menu ideas according to the seasons. (I started a chart in that direction when my daughter started eating solid food, but there is always room for improvement!) You think you can help? Any input would be greatly appreciated :)

Hope you enjoy the Montecaos as much as we do in this house!
In healthy joyful piggilicious friendship,

Magali