When a friend innocently asked me for my chili recipe I froze, then I panicked. Then I lied. “It’s a secret.” That was simply boneheaded and I apologize. There is no secret to this chili, just a mystery. A mystery because I have been making it for so long that I hardly think about what […]
You know you’re a bad parent when your teenagers beg you to stop ordering pizza and cook something. It was one of those weeks; I was sick (and tired) and the will to eat, nevermind cook, was gone. But, by Friday I realized my kids had consumed enough sodium and bad mozzarella to warrant an […]
I have to take off my shoes to count the number of years I have been making these crab cakes. They are near the top of the list of comfort food requests in our house, mostly when we’re nostalgic for warmer weather and Southern charm. Adapted almost two decades ago from a recipe for ones […]
Sometimes lucky little things happen that change everything for the better. Things like meeting a life partner at a party that you weren’t planning to go to but got dragged to anyway; or having an errant bullet stopped by the bible you always carry in your breast pocket; or, better yet, discovering a spectacular new […]
If you’ve only had the supermarket variety, you could be forgiven for thinking that tourtière is the French word for torture. The Christmas Eve tradition of eating the previously frozen, dried-out discs of often-under-spiced and over-cooked ground pork is a chore many people with a French Canadian branch somewhere on their family tree have learned […]
Whenever I think of not eating “right,” my mind immediately heads south. Maybe it’s all the barbecue or the bacon or the fact that southerners use gravy on just about everything, including breakfast. Or, maybe it’s because the food is just so good, I know instinctively that it can’t be good for me. But, whatever […]
I am not sure why we don’t eat more duck; it’s juicy, it’s lean (once most of the fat layer is rendered in the cooking process) and it’s easy to make, especially the breast. Except for the time the whole bird I was roasting on the barbecue rotisserie caught fire (there is so much fat […]
I find quail a little bit intimidating because I really don’t know how to eat them. There isn’t a whole lot of meat to begin with and picking out all the flavourful flesh is difficult without getting your hands into the action. Fresh quail are cooked fast and hot in a 500 F oven for […]
We eat pretty well most nights and try to stick to real food that tastes good. But Sundays are one of the few times in the week we’re all together for dinner and a little deviation from the norm is okay every once in a while. Tonight was one of those nights. Chicken fried steak […]
Meats, Roots and Leaves 