The month of October brings one of the days that all my friends love to celebrate: Halloween. But before we jump ahead to the time of the veil lifting between the living and the dead, let’s look at what foods are celebrated this month. It’s National...
Now that I don’t cook in professional kitchens, I can sit back and take an objective view of my chosen career. It’s a brutal job. We ran morning to night. Food is all I thought about. Personalities were a focus. Who I was working with that day affected my...
Chocolate and chilies, as we’ve discovered, go together. I’ve played with this dessert aspect in a chili chocolate mousse and there are several chocolate bars on the market that celebrate the marriage of these two foods, but what about the savory realm?...
Chocolate pervades every part of our society, from candy bars to hot cocoa, from truffles to molten lava cakes. Most of us enjoy a good chocolate bar any day of the week and a steaming mug of cocoa can warm the soul on a cold winter’s evening. Chocolate is the...
National Potato Month is underway and I hope you are all enjoying this glorious, versatile food. If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you'll know that potatoes are one of my favorite foods -- and a favorite of the Spouse as well. In honor of this month-long...
Eating some form of apples in a sauce dates back at least as early as the 4th Century C.E. when Apicus’ book on Roman Cookery was published. The tartness of apples back then hadn’t been bred out and the sharp flavors offset the taste of the fat in the food...
Over the next three months apples are in full bloom and while I can get them year round in my market, the fall season is the time they really shine. But what is an apple and where did it come from? Apples were once tart, bitter, and almost inedible. The tree can be...
Fajitas are a seasoned Tex-Mex dish that has its origins in in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, in the heart of vaquero (cowboys) country. Fajitas were popularized by the early 1990's, due mostly to fast food companies catching on to the cost effectiveness of the...
Mushrooms are a part of our human heritage, our collective consciousness. Ancient cultures used psilocybin, the “magic” mushroom, to open the “gates of heaven” and communicate with the gods. Fungi grows in every part of the world; in crevices,...
Somewhere in Asia or India between 3,000 and 7,000 years ago people began to cultivate a wild grass known as rice. In several Asian languages the word for rice and food are the same, indicating the importance of this grain in the daily diet of Asian countries. There...
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