Even though I’ve been living away from Springfield for the past 10 months I still get text messages out of the blue from my former CrossFit coach Mike Suhadolnik. Mike is an audacious crusader obsessed with helping older people reclaim wellness in the second half of life. He has taken on the medical establishment and […]
Peter Glatz
After the passing of his wife, Julianne (former Illinois Times food columnist), Peter Glatz decided to retire from a 40-year career as a dentist to reinvent himself as a chef at the age of 66. In his short culinary career, he has worked at Chicago’s Michelin-starred Elizabeth Restaurant, Oklahoma City’s Nonesuch (Bon Appetit’s “America’s Best New Restaurant- 2018), Savannah’s The Grey, and Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis.
Posted inFood & Drink
Pot pies reconsidered
With the recent legalization of recreational marijuana in Illinois it might be “high” time that an alternative weekly newspaper publishes a food article about the nuances of cooking with cannabis. As a chef working in Oklahoma City, where there are more dispensaries than there are McDonalds and Subways, I just might be the one to […]
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Salad days
I’ve been accused of being a bit of a Scrooge whenever I climb onto my soapbox and pontificate about the evils of sugary holiday treats. I promised my wife that over the holidays I would stop telling the grandkids that every sugar cookie or piece of candy they consume brings them one step closer to […]
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Ravioli Christmas
Growing up as a young child in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, I always envied the neighbors who lived next door to our 1950s ranch house. My parents had an unhappy marriage. My father always liked to say, “When I took the vows, it was for better or for worse,” and he wore it […]
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Stocking stuffers for cooks
Looking for budget-friendly gift ideas for someone who loves to cook? Needing a stocking stuffer? Gifts that will actually be used and appreciated? Here are my recommendations for the 2019 gift-giving season. Because my restaurant gig gets me home after midnight, my wife tends to watch PBS documentaries during her evenings alone. A documentary that […]
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For something different, Cassoulet
High atop the kitchen cabinets in my apartment sits a pottery bowl known as a cassole. It is quite large – about the size of a basketball. It is wide at the top and is tapered down to its base. My cassole is glazed in its interior and rim but is unglazed on the outside. […]
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Sunchokes
I was 17 years old in 1970 when Joni Mitchell released her album Ladies of the Canyon. I’ve always found her music to be very impactful, and her early recordings are among my favorites. A line from the album’s track “Big Yellow Taxi” has always stayed with me: “Don’t it always seem to go that […]
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Economies of a scale
Has the experience of spending my first six months of retirement working in a restaurant kitchen made me a better home cook? It definitely has, but not in the ways I would have expected. Much of my time in the kitchen is spent picking little leaves off of thyme sprigs or cutting a basket of […]
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A fond food memory
While attending dental school in Chicago back in the 70s, I was on a limited budget and always on the lookout for good but cheap dining experiences. One of my favorite discoveries was a small storefront restaurant in suburban West Dundee called Mama di Pinto, named after its chef owner, Virginia Pinto, who died last […]
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Finding connection and comfort over cauliflower
On this day 18 years ago I was on a plane flying to New York City to spend a weekend with my daughter, Anne, who was attending law school at Columbia. The flight had been rescheduled from a week earlier due to the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack. The mood on the plane was […]
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Fish in a bag
What a long strange trip it’s been! This line from the Grateful Dead’s song “Truckin” keeps going through my head as I look back at the events of the last three days. It all started with an email I received: “Hi Peter. I work with Nonesuch on public relations, and we’ve received quite a bit […]
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Cool food after a hot run
“It’s too darn hot! It’s too darn hot!” These lyrics from Cole Porter’s musical Kiss Me Kate have been going through my head these past few weeks. The temperature around the stove at Nonesuch, the restaurant where I work, consistently hovers around 96 degrees F, even with the air conditioner going full blast. The temperatures […]
