The early sun is just touching the far shore of Lake Maggiore, lighting it up with a clear golden glow at odds with the chill breeze in the air. A cold front has blustered its way in over night, and though the sun is out it will be a leather jacket kind of day. This…

Sorry for the long silence – turns out it’s hard to blog with your mouth full. We’ve eaten some fabulous food in the last few days – but it has been far more than food that just tastes good. Long, leisurely meals of traditional Piemontese fare, shared with very good friends, a couple of whom…

Not too much cooking in my house lately as we are scrambling to get ourselves ready to get out of town next week. This trip has been in the works for a while and while we have put off most of our travel this year to nurse our sick dog (yes, Zoë is still with…

This weekend my mother in law, Doris, turned 91, and we drove over to St. Louis where she had flown in from Portland to celebrate with her two younger sisters (they are 86 and 89.) The three of them were like giddy girls –just a hoot. I want some of those genes! Dinner was great…

The other night we were having dinner with friends, talking about their old dog Fred, our old dog Zoë, and the 16 year old dog of a fellow food blogger who wandered through a door left accidentally opened and never came home. We exchanged sorrowful exclamations and some rueful grins over the bittersweet aging process…

I am a fiend for cheeses, in general the stinkier the better. That barnyardy funk that some cheeses acquire after being washed with brandy or wine and stored away in a cave? It draws me like the aroma of truffles or baking bread, a powerful harbinger of good tastes to come. But recently I’ve been…

I think the world must be divided into two types of people – those who taste their grapes at the grocery store before they buy them, and those who glare at the grape-tasters as if they have caught a robbery in progress. I am an unapologetic member of the first group and believe me, it’s…

In general, I’m not a meat eater. I am not really a strict vegetarian either, but I don’t care for most meat and I adore vegetables, so that’s what I eat, and mostly, that’s what I cook. Still, given that I won’t eat them, I’m really having trouble accounting for my current obsession with braising…

Last Saturday Slow Food Bloomington and the Parks and Rec Dept. sponsored an heirloom tomato tasting at the Market and it was a sight to behold. A constant line of people patiently snaked its way to tables laden with every color and size of tomatoes, waiting to savor their different flavors, acid sharp and sugar…

Sorry for the silence this week; it’s been a tough one. What time I’ve spent in the kitchen has been devoted to cooking not for us but for Zoë. Zoë is our 12 1/2 year old shepherd mix, a gorgeous lanky girl who back in the day could run like an arrow, pluck a tennis…

I just had the most amazing lunch – a medley of leftovers from last night’s Slow Food potluck. Slow Food, if you are just joining us, is an international movement that celebrates, and increasingly advocates for, a way of eating that is local, sustainable, leisurely and fun. Read all about it here, here, and here….

We all know the classic fruit and cheese combinations — grapes and brie, apples and cheddar, manchego and quince paste just to name a few. A couple of years ago I watched Dave Tallent do a cooking demo at the Bloomington Farmers Market where he made a salad with watermelon, feta, and tarragon, in a…