food

The average American household throws away more than $1,500 worth of food every year, according to the James Beard Foundation. Last year the foundation launched Waste Not, a multi-year campaign to educate consumers on full-use cooking –  how to use all the food you buy and avoid food waste. Waste Not: How to Get the […]

Buckle, grunt, cobbler, Betty, crumble and crisp. What sounds like a ragtag cast of characters from a comic book are actually the shining stars of the summer’s dessert scene. Quick, adaptable and simple to make, these are recipes that every home cook should have in his back pocket. All are baked desserts, often in a […]

Just as a pilot trains in a flight simulator before taking off in a 737, before I ever performed a dental procedure in the mouth of a living person I had rehearsed the operation numerous times over a two-year training period on plastic models, extracted human teeth and jawbones of butchered pigs. Even with all […]

The grill can be difficult to master. Grilled chicken legs, for example, sounds straightforward enough, but cooking them evenly without burning the skin into a mess of char takes attention and time. And while I love grilling out for a party, I don’t like fooling around with meat thermometers, waiting for food to be done. […]

We were two hours from Disney World, but I only had one thing on my mind: sweet, luscious oranges. Originally we’d planned to fly, but I managed to talk my family into driving so we could load up the car with fresh citrus to bring home (not to mention I wasn’t terribly excited about flying […]

The English poet and playwright Robert Browning wrote: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a heaven for?” This phrase has been cycling around in my head these past few days. An interesting chain of events has landed me in the kitchen of Michelin-starred Elizabeth, one of Chicago’s top restaurants, where […]

Increasingly, we seem to live in a world divided. Folks seem to fall firmly on one side of the proverbial fence or the other: conservatives versus liberals, paleo diet versus plant-based diet, Cubs versus Cardinals and so on. We are a society of strong opinions. Apparently, this binary attitude even extends to condiments. Not long […]

I love cooking outdoors, even in winter. The aromas of roasting meat and wood smoke intermingling in the crisp, cold air call out to me and awaken my appetite.  Recently, however, the prolonged cold spell we’ve been having has taken away much of the appeal of cooking outdoors. When the cold winds of winter have […]

Fifteen years ago, when my wife began thinking about teaching cooking classes, she asked me to help her come up with a name for her new cooking school. I asked her what she wanted to accomplish. Did she want to teach people how to cook fancy “gourmet” foods? She pondered my question and responded: “No…what […]

Every morning as the clock approaches 7 a.m. the folks in my CrossFit gym cluster in little groups to socialize for a few minutes before the workout begins. I hang out with the Fasters. We are the ones who get motivational text messages from our coach at 3:30 every morning reminding us not to eat […]

Recently I spent a week visiting a good friend and her husband, who happens to be Dutch. One morning he asked if we’d like Dutch pancakes for breakfast. “Ooh, like a Dutch Baby?” I asked. “Um, no,” he replied with a confused look on his face. “Dutch pancakes. We call them Pannenkoeken. What on earth […]