My FedEx delivery guy’s name is Gary. I hadn’t known his name until a couple days after the blizzard that dumped 18 inches of snow on central Illinois last week. In fact, I hadn’t ev
For many Americans, ham is the traditional centerpiece of their Easter dinner. In other homes – ours included – it’s roast leg of lamb. Lamb’s natural association with spring m
Southern-style music and soul food are inseparable – Springfield’s own Blues & BBQs festival attests to that. The legendary Thelonious Monk, who hailed from North Carolina, wore a coll
I’ll never again be able to make some of the best things I’ve created in my kitchen. Not because they were complicated and/or expensive, although I’ve made a few of those, too. It&rs
It’s ironic. The best-known, even iconic American Anabaptist sect is “Old-Order Amish,” despite – and because – their insular communities shun contact with the outside wo
True, the name is a little off-putting. And their exterior, mottled with vermilion and/or brownish purple, sometimes looks more like a nasty bruise rather than something good to eat. But the first sig
These days, people eat salads throughout the year with ingredients that used to be available only seasonally. But salads geared to cold weather are particularly satisfying when the temperature dips an
There’s coffee and then there’s coffee. It ranges from gas station black swill you buy at 1 a.m. solely to push through the last hour of an extended road trip to fragrant ambrosia made fro
They’re gone. Kaput. Fini. When the Hostess corporation, maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Ho’s, announced last November that it was filing for bankruptcy and closing its factories, the
Americans think of braised dishes – those delectable concoctions of long-simmered ingredients surrounded by, but not submerged in, liquids – as quintessentially American or (primarily West