Should the first soufflé you’ve ever eaten be the one you made yourself? Should the first soufflé you’ve ever made be served to anyone other than you and perhaps one other trusted friend? I’ll have to say “yes” to both questions, as my experience with soufflé — long on my […]
Easter has always been a favorite holiday, between the arrival and celebration of all things spring and all things rabbit, to the traditions of goody-filled baskets (our childhood Easter bunny was a rock star who gave us kites and books) and an egg-enhanced meal, what is there not to love? […]
Every year on March 17, many Americans channel their inner Irish…wait, I’m not even going to dignify it with that kind of phrasing. A number of Americans use St. Patrick’s Day, like many other holidays, as an excuse to overindulge. They drink – a lot. And it’s ridiculous because the […]
I came to know of King Cake because “I Was a Teenage Food Editor.†Actually, I was just a few years beyond teenage-dom when I was as the helm of a weekly food section at a Southern California newspaper, but I was certainly as inexperienced, naïve and pimply as any […]
Before the Internet, before Food Network, before Julia Child, before TV, there was a writer of food and her medium (Egads!), was the humble printed word. There was a writer whose words were so potent, her prose so swarthy, that, upon seeing her work, publishers decided a woman would never […]
Time was – and maybe for some still is, making homemade ice cream was a near daylong feat of strength. This ordeal involved a huge contraption with a hand crank; a 50-pound bag of something called rock salt, a clear to grayish gravel that had the diametrical abilities to both […]
Imagine a morning, a coming of winter morning when you exclaim, “Oh, my! It’s fruitcake weather!†Truman Capote did, and upon reading his story, “A Christmas Memory†for the first time about a decade ago, I never quite felt the same about Capote, Christmas or fruitcake. I was always a […]
Long before “blog†was a term or even yet a twinkle in some bright penny’s eye, the name for my blog materialized. It was the early ‘90s, and through what I could have looked at as divine timing but instead considered professional misfortune, I was in a position where I […]