A search for secret sauce

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 […]

Tourtière

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 […]

Freezer burn

(Based loosely on a partly true story) “What are you doing?” I asked even though it was perfectly clear what she was doing. She was cleaning out the freezer because we were expecting half a pig from our CSA farm any day. I was supposed to have done that by now. L’s head was deep […]

Southern fried chicken

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 […]

Sunday night bad

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 […]