Even reclusive people — homebound due to a pandemic — can go stir-crazy. I’ll admit, as a recluse, I was likely not as opposed (though still as discombobulated, mentally) by the imposed exile to which we had surrendered in March. I’m fortunate I can work from home (and am rarely […]
[G]rowing up, we ate lots of homemade soups. All very basic, simple, homey and quite delicious: rich beef stew, flavored with lots of vegetables, including chopped cabbage that cooked to a clear tenderness holding all the rich juices of the chunks of chuck roast; pots of beans that, depending on […]
[I] don’t need much urging to head for the soup pot, whether the weather is cold…or if it’s hot! Rhyming aside, soups, to me, are the perfect food. A good soup is filling and satisfying and if the right components make up the soup, everything a body needs is in […]
[P]robably the most curious item I’ve ever seen brought to a potluck was a tortilla espanola. It was served in a basket, wrapped in a towel…a potato and onion omelette, so firm it was cut in wedges and could be eaten by hand. Having consumed more eggs over my years […]
[P]eople may joke about the Irish and potatoes, but the true story of what happened to the Irish in the 1800s is no laughing matter. If you know anything about the Great Famine, you know the Irish were oppressed on their own land, forced into tenant farmer-hood, working on properties […]
[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, […]