[T]ime gets away from us. It was fall, and I looked up and it was almost winter! Before fall closes (and even after the season has turned), I wanted to express an appreciation for butternut squash — namely in soup. Early in autumn, a friend brought me a container of […]
[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]’m glad to see long-overlooked vegetables having their day. But…cauliflower — wow! All of a sudden, cauliflower — the albino broccoli, that veggie that for decades was relegated to be the pale, raw dip delivery device on the crudité tray, the roughage round-out in the bag of steamer veggies or […]
[W]henever I cut fresh corn off the cob (or get anywhere near corn-on-the-cob, actually), I think about my Grandpa Merwin. Toothless, he was undaunted by such propositions as sinking teeth into cobbed corn. When a platter of steaming ears was presented, he simply whipped out his pocket knife, clicked the […]
[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 […]
[M]y heart sinks a little every spring. Sounds odd and somewhat off, but when you consider California’s rains conclude in late spring, maybe you’ll understand. There is so little weather here, and the change in seasons is merely by light and feel and temperature, so our winter and spring rain […]
[S]ometimes, nothing else but soup will do. As the whole country has been enshrouded in cold and darkness this winter, why not make up a soup fit to fight this foe? I’ve been spoiled by homemade soups these past few years, as I am fortunate enough to work where a […]
[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, […]
Luck. Some folks believe you make your own; others think it’s out of their hands. I do believe there is a magic — call it luck, fate, what-have-you — beyond our control, a force and a direction that determines what will be. That being said, I also think you have […]