Farm Stories
Unique and charming stories about Lynn growing up on a farm. What inspires his meal planning and recipes.
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Old-Fashioned Family Food Nostalgia
Each of us has a portfolio of recipes that we ate as children, but that are no longer on our adult menus. Think about your own experience. You can probably come up with a goodly number of meals that were…
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Gatherings 2.0: What Have We Learned in the Past Year?
After a year of rather lonely singular dinners, we’re finally easing back into dinner party mode, and I couldn’t be happier. But what have we learned over the past year, and how will those dinners that we organize change? People…
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How Do You Say Cheese?
Thinking about amplifying the flavor of dishes in my last blog led me to think more about adding cheese to a variety of dishes. In this day and age, there’s no lack of choices concerning cheeses. That’s progress. Growing up,…
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There’s Always Room for (Somebody’s) Jell-O
Just when I thought we’d heard the last of gelatin desserts and Jell-O, along comes an Epicurious e-mail last week enthusing about the Gelatina de Mosaico by chef Esteban Castillo. The headline trumpeted: “Looks Like Terazzo, Tastes Like a Dream.” …
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Don’t Dessert the Rhubarb!
Rhubarb season has begun. If you’re like me, you don’t necessarily choose rhubarb with all the other choices available. On the farm, we had a small patch of rhubarb when I was growing up, and my mother would occasionally dispatch…
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My Mom’s Favorites from a Depression-Era Childhood
I’ve recently written about the foods that I missed from my childhood, and that led me to think about other people and other times. My 95-year-old mother, Ginny Kettleson, was an obvious choice. That’s Mom on her wedding day in…
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Modernizing Classic 1950s Farm Recipes
On a rainy spring day, I’m musing about some of the recipes that I miss from my wastrel youth, and I’m thinking that some of those out-of-favor dishes deserve a second, modern look. I’m not talking about tuna noodle casserole,…
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A Paean to Pie
Growing up in the Midwest farmland of the 1950s meant that I was living in the pie capital of the world. In most homes, it was the dessert of choice. In my grandmother’s time, pie suppers, where the local bakers’…
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Making Sausage the Right Way
If only making laws were like making good sausages, we could all feel a lot better about the way our government operates. Back in the 1860s, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck reportedly said, “Laws are like sausages. It is better…
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I Scream for Ice Cream
Ice cream has been a big part of my life. Starting in the late 1940s when I was about two years old, I would cry if my parents drove past Sipes Corner, a roadside diner, without stopping for ice cream.…
