Know Thy Cheese

How well do you know the food that is on your plate? Do you know anything about the farm it was grown on? Where it was located? What the climate was like? Was it a large or small farm? And what about how it was processed after it left the farm? These are important questions, […]

Heirloom Turkeys Make a Comeback

When the founding fathers were deciding on what bird to depict on the national seal, Benjamin Franklin argued for the turkey over the bald eagle. He wrote: “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character….the Turkey is […]

Wild Rice is Holiday Favorite

Throughout history, cerain foods have been so important as to be considered sacred by the people who ate them. In North America, there are many examples of this. For the Plains Indians, it was buffalo. For the Hopi of the American Southwest, it was blue corn. And for Native Americans of the upper Midwest it […]

Potatoes Deserve More Respect

Considering the amount of them we eat, the potato has a curiously low profile. When I was growing up, we ate potatoes nearly every day with the evening meal. They were usually baked, sometimes boiled and invariably bland, although I do remember discovering at one point that baked potatoes are a lot better with a […]

Eggplant: A Beautiful Vegetable

If there were ever a beauty contest for vegetables, eggplant would be a serious contestant. Indeed, there are enough lovely varieties of eggplant to have a competition consisting of eggplant alone. In addition to the common deep purple Globe eggplant with its smooth shiny skin, you would have to give strong consideration to the long […]