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Learning to Love What You Don’t Like
On a recent restaurant visit for a plate of sushi, a discussion arose about why pickled okra was acceptable to our palates, but other forms of cooked okra were not. Our server responded with a discussion about his picky-eater niece.…
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Vietnamese Food – 55 Years Later
Fifty-five years ago this month, I left the U.S. on a tour. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, I got a free plane trip to the Central Highlands of Vietnam. If you’d told me then that I would one day be extolling…
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Nostalgia for the Meals of a Farmboy
Lately, I’ve been thinking nostalgically about some of the dishes that I ate as a youngster. Maybe it’s because it’s the time of year when we began to prep the vast fields for planting – discing under the prior year’s…
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Cocido: The Spanish Way to Cook Seasonal Stew
What to eat this time of year? It’s too warm for winter comfort food, but spring vegetables are not yet available in the farmers’ markets. A loyal reader suggested that I write about cocido, a classic Spanish dish. Claudia Roden,…
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Lenten Season in NOLA, the Big Easy
Lent is one period in which it’s OK to be a quitter – as in, giving something up. When I was young, it was something most people in my community adhered to during this 46-day period from Ash Wednesday to…
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British Pie Week 2025
I thought I knew pies. I grew up in pie country – the farmland of the Midwest – where pies were the preferred dessert over cakes. Homemakers had high standards and were true connoisseurs of pie crusts. But leave it…
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The Comfort of Good Food and Friends
I was inspired this week by, of all things, an obituary in The Economist. This story colorfully detailed the life of Pableaux Johnson, a man I didn’t know but wish I had. And it gave me an idea. The piece…
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Eating Well in Changing Times
Given increasing uncertainties on multiple fronts, we all need to pay more attention to what’s happening to our food supply. As spring approaches, this is the time of year when farmers are thinking about the upcoming season’s crops. Weather extremes…
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The Curious Dining of Medieval England
What we eat has obviously changed considerably over time. Today, we’re pretty spoiled. We can prepare almost any food from any cuisine in the world at home. But what would likely have been on the table during the medieval period?…
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What Ever Happened to Casseroles?
I sometimes miss casseroles. When I was growing up, these baked meals were the farm cook’s saving grace – a filling meal that could be assembled and baked in the oven to satisfy a hungry bunch of harvesting farmers. Besides…
