A Georgia O'Keeffe Cookbook

Following up my posts about Southwest cookbooks, I want to dedicate this post to the cookbook A Painter's Kitchen: Recipes from the kitchen of Georgia O'Keeffe by Margaret Wood. In the last years of O'Keeffe's life, Wood was her companion, and often cooked the dishes that O'Keeffe loved, learning O'Keeffe's favorite recipes. At that time, O'Keeffe had lived in New Mexico for around 40 years. She had two homes, one in Abiquiu, and one at Ghost Ranch not far away.

A vegetable and herb garden provided much of the produce for O'Keeffe's table, and she obtained other foods from local farmers, shops, and gatherers of wild plants. Thus, although O'Keeffe's culinary background was from the midwest and New York, food at her two homes was very much local. For holidays such as Christmas, O'Keeffe served traditional foods such as tamales to her neighbors. Throughout the book, Wood provides background on the origins of O'Keeffe's recipes and ingredients. Photos included show O'Keeffe working in her kitchen or serving coffee or food in her home.

The Abiquiu home is now a very popular museum, while Ghost Ranch offers a variety of places to stay and activities to longer-term visitors. I once visited this area, and I was overwhelmed by seeing the landscapes that O'Keeffe painted -- unfortunately, no artworks by O'Keeffe are included in Wood's book.

My photo of Abiquiu

My photo of Ghost Ranch showing Pedernal,
the mountain near Ghost Ranch.

O'Keeffe's very famous 1936 painting of Pedernal:
Brooklyn Museum

As I'm fascinated by the relationship of food and art, I also wanted to share
the above images of two other artist cookbooks from my collection.

Cookbook Wednesday is inspired by
Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations.