• Farm Stories

    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…

  • Food Stories

    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…

  • Food Stories

    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…

  • Food Stories

    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…

  • Food Stories

    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…

  • Food Stories

    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…

  • Food Stories

    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…