Cooking

Ferida Wolff Ponders: "Well, the bushes are beginning to flower again and Bebe is back! It seems to have even more energy than last year. It is there when I open the door but it isn’t threatening. It keeps its distance as I watch it discourage any other bees that seem interested in the bushes. The strange thing is that I don’t see any nest in the bushes. What is it protecting?"     more »

"Menus are minor, transient documents that tell us how people have dined outside the home over time. Examine one and be transported back to the everyday life of the past - whether to a lavish banquet in the Gilded Age or a food-relief eatery during the Great Depression. They aid our cultural memory by providing historical evidence, not only of what people were eating, but what else they were doing and with whom they were doing it; and what they valued." more »

"Imagine walking into your local grocery store on a frigid January day to pick up freshly harvested lettuce, fragrant basil, juicy sweet strawberries, and ripe red tomatoes – all of which were harvested at a local farm only hours before you’d arrived. You might be imagining buying that fresh produce from vertical farms where farmers can grow indoors year-round by controlling light, temperature, water, and oftentimes carbon dioxide levels as well. Generally, fresh produce grown in vertical farms travels only a few miles to reach grocery store shelves compared to conventional produce, which can travel thousands of miles by truck or plane." more »

Other than receiving a diagnosis of a terminal illness, what’s the worst thing you can hear in a doctor’s office?  For me it’s a toss-up between, “It’s time for another colonoscopy” and “When were you born?” I am the proud owner of an impressive collection of imaginative recipes of veggies from asparagus to zucchini which I have Googled, printed and filed in a folder that I keep right next to my pristine Air Fryer and Instant Pot. They are pristine not because I am a meticulous housekeeper but because I have yet to use them. I keep hoping that simply buying each new appliance will magically transform me into Julia Child II. So far, however, the only one of her “talents” I’ve been able to emulate is dropping food on the floor and picking it up before anyone notices. more »