The website, ‘Atlas Obscura’ reported , “The world’s oldest surviving cookbook isn’t a book at all—it’s a set of ancient Babylonian tablets from around 1700 B.C. It doesn’t so much have recipes as explanations of certain dishes, such as a ‘clear broth’ that begins with steps like “meat is used”…

The greatest rulers to ever preside over a table are color blind. Yet they color every taste. They are the spine, the illumination, the narrator, the judiciary and the jury to each taste on all buds. The directions on nearly every recipe in the endless library of recipes states it…

Fusion cuisine has been around for a long time. Maybe since the origins of fire. Certainly since the ages of exploration. It just didn’t have a name. That was something I gave it. I was searching for an understanding on what I was looking to do with my cuisine. That…

When I was a young boy I was raised by our Nana and Mother along with my older and younger sisters. We spent many hours watching television shows together.  Those trans-generational moments of shared emotions were important bedrock in our growing up.  It’s a shame that the modern environment for…

I did have an inkling it was the day of celebration called, ‘Chinese New Year’. But it graphically sunk in when our beautiful daughter-in-law Lourdes sent the family a video showing our granddaughter Audrey dancing to a traditional Chinese song with her school classmates all wearing Chinese garb. I was…

Not long after our son was born in Key West, my wife, Janet got homesick for our native Illinois. So … we returned driving the somewhat beat up pickup truck we bought ourselves from the wedding gift money six years earlier. I looked for a cooking job but while we…

Shakespeare wrote in his play, ‘As You Like It”, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances”. I seem to have entered via the kitchen door… and thus far have never left that room for long. Shakespeare mentions…

The coconut tree is a member of the palm tree family. Coconut as a term can refer to the whole coconut palm, the seed, or the fruit, which botanically is a drupe, not a nut. If you are wondering what else is a drupe look no further than an avocado….

Over my head on my writing desk I have a pen holder with the iconic graphic of the Sun Maid Raisin girl. She wears a broad sun bonnet and holds a large basket of luscious grapes. I carried a small box of those raisins in my lunch box to grade…

We, like many families … and families of many faiths keep the tradition of making Christmas cookies. It would be impossible not to begin with our Nana’s shortbread cookies. They actually got better as the months pass kept in a treasured cookie tin. Gingersnap cookies are another favorite. Once I…

Years ago we were in New York City to do a culinary event. We went to a new restaurant making waves back then operated by our chef friend, Bobby Flay.  Bobby has a lot of genuine passion for Spanish foods. He knew I did and do as well. The name…

Not too long after I became serious about cooking … and the passion gripped me tightly .. I’ve twisted and wrestled around with food composition ideas while still in the requisite lunacy of dreams. Sometimes something useful comes out of the nocturnal pageant. Yet often it is a mishmash, so…

Our mother was proud of us as she watched us like little ducks following in some ancient rite of passage as we went to our first swimming lessons at Happy Hollow on Diamond Lake in the late days of May or early June. Truth was that the lake was still…

I mostly talk about food here. And I will be doing that with this show. But it is impossible to speak about food without remembering the farms that make it available to us. The poet, philosopher and farmer Wendell Berry put it so well when he wrote, “Eating is an…

When I was becoming more of a chef than I line cook I was beginning to take on the tasks of writing my own menus. I was living in Key West at that juncture of my life. Key West was a great place to buy certain plants…. but unlike a…

A man was in the restaurant for lunch just the other day and enjoyed his meal very much, but wanted to know why no restaurants serve duck anymore.  Well I had to fight back a smile because just the very night before we had cooked a charity fund raising dinner…