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A Guy’s Gotta Eat!
My mother was a farm wife on a 400-acre farm in northern Illinois in the 1950s. She could feed a hungry crew during the harvest and could help in the fields, when necessary. This is the environment in which she…
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Homemade Soup
Here we are in cool weather again, hungering for a big bowl of soul-satisfying soup. That got me thinking about the way the original human habitants of our region fortified themselves in the cold months. Native Americans had a dish…
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Celebrating Democracy with Election Cake
Activists these days have been busily encouraging voters to participate in the upcoming election. Forget the ads and mailers; these folks are using postcards, texts, e-mails, phone calls, social media, friends-and-family networks, and old-fashioned door knocking to get out the…
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Is Yours a Potatoes or Rice Family?
Did you grow up in a rice or a potato household? Mine was definitely potatoes. In the 1950s Midwest, it was likely an inherited generational and cultural decision. The local Scandinavians who settled in the area in the late 19th…
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Regional Dishes You Didn’t Even Know You Wanted to Try
Travel adventure, for me, includes the chance to try some of the local dishes that I don’t find at home. Not some new, fussy French or Italian fine meal but the foods the locals share at the small diners or…
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The Wide World of Curry
When most Americans think of Indian food, they usually think of well-known curry dishes such the chicken tikka masala pictured above – rich, creamy sauces, a variety of spices, served with naan bread. But in Britain, curries come in countless…
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Comfort Food in Another Language
Fall is the season for comfort food, that chow that stokes nostalgia for our childhood meals and home cooking. It’s the pot roasts and beef stews, fried chicken and ham and dumplings, and, of course, spaghetti and meatballs. Typically, they’re…
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The Nature of Flavor
In the 1950s, when dairies were small local operations, I could taste the slight difference of the milk when the dairy cows moved from the grasses of summer pasture to the grains and silage of the barn lot. Today, when…
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A Fruit Beyond Compear
Most food lovers agree that pears are among the most delicious of fruits. James Beard, for example, proclaims in American Cookery that no fruit rivals the Bartlett pear “except fine strawberries, perfect peaches, and Tilton apricots.” Beard, like many other…
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Pumpkins, Fall’s Golden Globes
On a lark, I bought a couple of pumpkin plants this spring and planted them in a raised bed. I forgot about them until a couple of weeks ago when I spied two telltale orange globes. It brought me back…
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Fall Vegetables from the Farmers’ Market for Easy Dinners
Now that Labor Day weekend is over and done, it’s back to work, back to school, and back to the other events that fill our social schedules in the evening. When it comes to dinner, we’re looking for something that’s…
