Food Features

On a snowy evening in late January, Chef Denise Perry of Copper Pot Cooking Studio was busy ladling plump meatballs onto swirls of freshly made spaghetti while containers of crisp salad and fudge brownies waited to be packed and made ready for pickup. Down the street at Maldaner’s Restaurant, Chef Michael Higgins had steaming containers […]

I’ve always thought that the phrase “as easy as pie” was confusing. Pie-crust phobia is an affliction that affects many otherwise high-functioning individuals. It is probably the fear of failure and public shaming that fuels this phobia. My late wife, Julianne, was a wonderful pie-maker who mastered her craft at an early age under her […]

Throughout the pandemic, I have been binge-baking, dutifully feeding my sourdough starter every day, and feeling pangs of guilt every time I scrape my extra sourdough starter “discard” into the garbage. Having trained under a Michelin-starred chef who is renowned for her perfect sourdough boules, I struggle constantly to live up to her lofty standards […]

Dry January, or opting out of drinking alcohol for the first month of the year, is an idea that has become increasingly popular. Some folks do it to jump-start their resolution to better health, while others may be looking to reassess their habits and relationship with alcohol. Many have even made it an annual tradition. […]

Drink a LOT of water The old adage of eight glasses of water a day doesn’t necessarily apply. Smith advises drinking at least half your body weight in ounces per day, so a person who weighs 200 pounds should be drinking a minimum of 100 ounces of straight up water. For folks who worry they’ll […]

We’ve been traveling and living in our converted school bus since the start of the pandemic, often without Wi-Fi or a decent cellphone signal. For self-amusement (or just wanting to feel I’m doing something purposeful), I’ve probably spent close to 1,000 hours standing at my bus’s kitchen counter engaged in cooking, baking and food preservation […]

It would seem improbable that a soup made with highly perishable shellfish harvested from coastal waters would become a Christmas Eve tradition in the Midwest long before the advent of refrigerated transport. However, oyster stew, a simple preparation of oysters gently poached in milk and butter and seasoned with black pepper, has appeared on our […]