We were in Atlanta for the annual Atlanta Food & Wine Festival a few years ago. The folks who started this up, have hit the sweet spot on all manner of Southern cooking and drinking with this fest. My son Justin and I were busy as bees over the 3 days and…
Postcards
Strike Gold With The Heavenly Taste Of Avocados
I was out walking Bounder, the little dog our son Justin brought home from a shelter a few years ago, and almost back home when I spotted a McArthur Dairy milk crate brimming over with a harvest of 20 or more backyard grown avocados on the edge a neighbor’s lawn. Perfectly imperfect,…
Cut Up: A Key West Gem
A gathering of Conchs surrounded me. No. I was not skin-diving in The Bahamas. I was having dinner in Key West at a beautiful home. And I was happily encircled by some of the smartest, funniest people I have come to call friends. As many of our South Florida listeners know… folks…
Happy Fourth of July! Happy Hot Dogs!
You may be making plans to celebrate our day of “National Independence” from the once “Tax Mad” English by having friends and family over for backyard parties. Possibly your menu will be featuring one of the all-time icons of American gastronomy, “The Great American Hot Dog”. When most of us think of…
How To Make Killer Fried Green Tomatoes
Have you seen that now classic commercial where a bunch of cowboys get all freaked out about a salsa that is produced in NEW YORK CITY?! Well, I found it similarly amusing to be in an elegant restaurant in NEW YORK CITY! recently where they were offering me a menu which included caviar…
Get Yourself Some Loving
“Folks, I’m telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean. So get yourself some loving in between.” — Langston Hughes Almost everything in life seems to have two sides. Its ups and downs. Love almost inevitably suffers loss. Salt finds its way into the sugar bowl. Men are from Mars and…
Mother’s Day (Reprise)
Tall Food. One of the cooking shows was on one morning back when my Mother was still with us. I was hurrying around, as usual, looking for some papers I needed before I could jump in my car and get to the restaurant. She exhaled a long column of cigarette smoke from…
Sweet Corn (PG Rated)
Corn is native to the New World. Pueblan Indians speak of corn as the fifth element; there was earth, air, fire, water—and corn. That last sentence should be read slowly. We are keenly appreciative of how central rice is to the Asian diet. Perhaps we take more for granted that the European…
In The Houses Of Pancakes
An ascending spring sun played a gentle game of tag with a retreating winter wind the morning I left my home. But as the day darkened the game turned rougher and the wind kicked the yellow ball like a schoolyard bully. Off it rolled, into some hole and the forest of night…
Coffee
Given my ‘druthers’ I enjoy a properly made cappuccino or a café con leche in the morning. But there are times when we are on the road and the means are not easily found to have those delicious ways to break from a night of heavy slumber. Our hosts for the Ft….