I had quite the 4th of July weekend. It began with a long road trip from Austin to Arkansas. I drove the entire span of Arkansas and I marveled at how different it is depending on where you are in the state. It was purty country.The weekend can best be described as Foodapalooza. There have…
I like all things pickled. Pickled peppers, pickled ramps, pickled... things.Sorry. I'm not feeling very eloquent today. I just read a lot of legal jargon and it fried my brain and my eyes are blurry. I can barely see this screen. I'm waiting for things to return to normal... which isn't necessarily eloquent either, but…
I have a custard addiction.And I recently discovered that custard is socially acceptable to eat at breakfast. I don't know why it took so long to find this out. I haven't had enough exposure to doughnuts I think.So I immediately made lemon curd. And after I spooned it into the jar, I licked every last…
No, it's not Thanksgiving silly. It's April. Also known as turkey hunting season in certain paradigms.My very first hunt was for turkey. It was deep in the Arkansas delta, on a three-thousand acre hunting preserve that runs five miles up the length of the great Mississippi. It was Spring, early on a Saturday morning after…
After our Arctic morning on the river, contending with Mother Nature's bad, bad mood, we had lunch on the shore.This kind of shore lunch requires some acrobatics. It's also a time to keep things really, really simple. Simple.Keep things simple. Okay?Simple.
The first thing you'll need is a sharp knife. Which I didn't have.The second…
I've been keeping secrets from you.Well, just one wonderful secret.This is the woman who is responsible for my love of food:She took care of me when I was young. She would pick me up from nursery school and bring me to her house and sit me at the end of her long wooden table so…
I had a pork chop yesterday. I was dining alone, and I ceremoniously made myself a proper meal. I took a visit to the butcher who had all sorts of glossy selections piled high in the coolers, and I settled on a pork chop, bone-in. It was a good choice because it was well aged, and came from…
One of the first little bits of wisdom I learned when I decided to get serious about cooking, was how to make garlic paste in 30 seconds. It was a revelation and I thought, "Wow! These are all the shortcuts that pros know!" So then I began to work in professional kitchens and was peeved to see…
I can't really tell you where they came from. All I'll say is that I may or may not have smuggled them from Provence. I may or may not have loved them so much in the restaurant garden that I worked in, that I may or may not have dried the seeds on the windowsil of…