Despite our (we thought!), carefully planned strategy for a lunch of divine sushi… we were in for a shock as we slowed to pull on to the side street off the 79th street causeway. The shock was due to the line of even more prepared folks lined outside the still locked door…

The summer I became a golf caddie was one filled with suddenly unfamiliar routines and the deep lows and soaring highs of messy adolescence. I was 14 years of age and not skipping smoothly along the surface of life’s waters. My childhood pals, the Harris boys seemed to suffer no similar quandaries…

‘A Word on Food’ is done with … words … of course. Where would I be without them? Our blonde-haired, blue-eyed granddaughter Audrey is not yet two… yet she is teaching me to try more communication … with the hand language known as ‘signing’. She has been taking lessons to learn how…

We were in the Miami International Airport joined in a shuffling line of other travelers at ‘La Carreta’ …  the famously successful Miami restaurant chain that also boasts ‘Versailles’ and ‘Casa Juancho’ in its culinary stable. It is one of our common stops in that airport despite the lines. They also own…

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda,  wrote in “Ode to Salt” “I know you won’t believe me, but it sings, salt sings… Dust of the sea, in you the tongue receives a kiss from ocean night… in it, … we taste infinitude.” ‘Elizabeth the Beautiful’s’ face lit up. She said it smelled like…

When I was 19, 20 and 21 years of age … I seemed to be on a yo-yo between my boyhood home in Illinois and the place I was seeking. I wanted sunlight. I wanted music. I wanted good books. I didn’t know I wanted … Fried Chicken too! I rode a…

I walked into our restaurant kitchen and I inhaled an aroma I’d known before I knew it’s name. It was blood. It spiraled me back in time to a grocery store where my mother shopped. She carried me in there before the age of three and slung me from hip to hip…

I learn words in many ways… but the best may be in eating. The words on the menus and in the cookbooks I have from around the world have helped me conquer at least ‘parts’ of foreign languages. I have a good knowledge of French, Italian and even some Japanese…if you allow…

I was near a small sandwich stand in an open-air market. It was like many you could see almost anywhere in the world. A radio was playing a vaguely familiar tune. Soft drink cans and cigarette packs lined the windows inside the stand where a lady was stuffing soft buns with meats….

I’ve been making Souse. Right? Got that? Know what I’m talkin’ bout? You might be confused. You might stay that way. Let me unravel a bit. Here’s souse as defined by the Wikipedia geniuses: “1. to plunge (something or oneself) into water…or other liquid. 2. to drench or to be drenched. 3….