One of the drawbacks of living in Alaska is that you can’t grow tomatoes. Where I grew up in Virginia nearly everyone had at least a couple tomato plants growing in their yard. The sight, taste, and smell of ripening tomatoes was as sure a sign as any that summer had come into its fullness. […]
When is a peach not a peach? When it is a nectarine. While the similarities between peaches and nectarines are obvious, few people realize that they actually belong to the same species. In fact, the flower and leaf of peach and nectarine trees are indistinguishable, and it is not uncommon for the branch of a […]
Sometimes you learn about new things from unusual sources. I first heard about brown rice almost 30 years ago from a fellow named Minor Lyle. Minor was a street person who’d blown his mind in the ’60’s taking one too many acid trips. He was prone to rambling soliloquies on various topics, but every so […]
A recent news story announced the discovery of the oldest human meal in the Western Hemisphere, and it wasn’t hamburgers. Cooked and partially eaten seaweed was found at a 14,000 year old site in southern Chile. Archeologists found no fewer than nine species of seaweed and marine algae in the hearths of the most ancient […]
My last two columns talked about miso and seaweed respectively. Both are staples of Japanese cooking. This week I will complete the trifecta by discussing soy sauce, known in Japan as shoyu. Perhaps no item is as ubiquitous at Japanese tables, where high quality shoyu is treated with the same sort of reverence that some […]
