Caroline on Cortes

It is 3 pm and I just finished my day shift in the Hollyhock kitchen, which started at 5:30 am, with breakfast and then lunch service for 135 people.

I am sitting at the wooden table in the incredibly beautiful Hollyhock garden, filled with flowers, produce, and herbs. Any photos I take never seem to do it justice, the incredible beautiful of it all. It reminds me of the famous Tangled Garden by MacDonald, but prettier, and if we understand gardening we know that messy English gardens are actually well planned out gardens. This garden reminds me of people of Cortes and living here. There is structure but wildness at the same time. Like anywhere else, people have jobs, go to work daily like, they try to make ends meet, and they often take care of kids and extended families.

But at the same time, there is a sense of wildness and freedom to the people here and their lifestyles, and that's why they are attracted to here or perhaps the island was attracted to them and has held them captive. I often hear people coming here for a short time, but stay because of the incredible beauty of the scenery and nature. It's like a god or goddess, seducing you at every turn, enticing you to watch his or her movements and come play outside in its beauty. And because they are captured by its beauty, they will do whatever they can to stay on the island. So this love comes first, and what they do, secondary. They work to live on this island, and if the island gods or goddesses like you, they reward you, but that's another story.

I have several pantries from where I gather my ingredients and inspirations to cook from, but the garden is by far my favourite and the one I am most giddy about. I love meandering the garden seeing what is there and talking to the farmers about what is at its peak and needs to be used right away, what is coming up and what they grow all season. I love that it's not just a garden but the produce and herbs and interspersed among all the flowers, which are used to decorate the centre and rooms, and we can use in our food as well, which I adore doing. It's not exactly a farm, more like an edible garden. Because there are hundreds of flowers and many of them edible, I need to consult with the farmers for the size, taste and colours. There is actually list that is posted we can refer to. I've always loved using flowers to decorate with and be part of the food, so I am excited by this.

Farm-to-table cooking is one of the reasons I was attracted to Hollyhock. I've always loved the concept and we tried to do that at the restaurant, but to actually live and work in a place where the farm is right out the back door and works in sync with the kitchen is special to say the least. I get to see what is growing every day, and talk to the farmers about what I want harvested for the next meal and how much. When my delivery comes in just picked, with some remnants of the earth like dirt and ear wigs or worms, it feels like the stork bringing in a new delivery and I am excited. I had thoughts about what to do with it before, but actually seeing, feeling and tasting the produce inspires me often to do something different. For example, I asked for some rainbow chard, and when I saw it come in this morning, it was so incredibly beautiful I couldn't bring myself to change it by cooking it, so I decided that I would slice it thinly and keep it raw, and then I cut up the chard stems in a spiced hot oil mixture, which I put on the greens so that they deflated it slightly but kept it's character. It's really important for me to keep the character of produce in particular and I hate when it's over cooked or over touched so you can't recognize it or it loses it's original character and personality.

And because almost outside the kitchen door is the ocean, you could say there is ocean-to-table, or should I say ocean to people. Once a week, they bring the guests down to the beach by the ocean for a pre-dinner oyster reception. There are also loads of calms on the beach and we have a salmon dinner once a week for guests. Besides this, the kitchen is mainly vegetarian and mostly vegan and gluten-free when I cook :). Hollyhock's mission is to nourish, inspire and support people making change in the world. I love that my food is part of this equation.