[I]n the 1990s, I had the pleasure of frequenting an Italian restaurant in the community where I lived in Southern California. It was a smallish, but lively place near a golf course, with most of its seating in a walled-in, covered patio that stayed comfortable all year long. It was […]
[I] wrote a column recently for Kansas Country Living magazine about summers from my childhood that were virtually a real-life version of the “attack of the killer tomatoes.†In essence, there was an overabundance of these juicy red fruits, to put it mildly. Dozens of tomato plants were cultivated in […]
[I]’ve eaten a lot of good garlic bread, even making some myself (often an herb-infused-in-olive oil version), but I had not eaten GREAT garlic bread until I sat down at the table of Liboria Salerno (for more about her, please see blog entry, “Presenting Pavlova to a ballerina†of 6/16). […]
[W]hen I first began conversing with Al Dente Floyd at work, he gave me his mother’s phone number, saying, “Since you do the food thing, you might want to talk to her — she has a lot of recipes.†But, he admonished, “Whatever you do, DON’T talk to her about […]
[T]he tomatoes have been long-coming this year. It’s typical in this climate, which tends to be cooler than tomatoes would like. Still, we want our tomatoes. We plant them and wait, and long months later, we begin to see red. With anticipation comes longing. As I waited out my slow-growing […]
[S]pring heralds with it certain tastes, pushing up like new grass in a warming earth. I find myself craving mushrooms, and I know why. Years ago, our springs were spent in pursuit of them in the wild. While other families played miniature golf, we scavenged the brush- and tree-clotted timber, […]
I first learned of nasturtiums several years ago when they were included in a planned herb garden kit. The seeds were large and legume-like, similar — to me, at least — to garbanzo beans. I planted them, along with parsley, thyme, borage, sage, etc., having little to no idea of […]