Monday Night Dinner

After a rocky start – I was not emotionally prepared for the snow in early October – Massachusetts is gracing us with a lovely Fall. The trees are crimson and gold. The weather is crisp, but not freezing. The skies are clear blue and cloudless. The markets are filled with autumn vegetables – piles of chard and beets, baskets full of every kind of apple you can imagine, and small mountains of pumpkin and squash. Read the rest of this entry ?

I come from a family that firmly believes that you should try everything at least once, and that when in Rome you should eat like the Romans, or like the Istanbulians or the Athenians or the Toledans or the Singaporeans or the Siamese, depending on where you happen to be at the time.  I’m absolutely on board with those theories right up until the food in front of me is raw, because I know it makes me a bad foodie but I really can’t get past the uncooked thing when it comes to raw meat/fish.  Read the rest of this entry ?

In a move that apparently surprised absolutely everyone, Conde Nast announced last week that it would be shutting down Gourmet magazine while its sister magazine, Bon Appetit, would survive. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.

Gourmet was the original food magazine. Founded in 1941 it was the ‘it’ magazine for the foodie crowd long before the term foodie came into existence. It was the magazine that presented gourmet food to the American audience and epitomized the concept of haute cuisine in America. It was also the magazine that presumed that its readers all lived somewhere that they could get fresh apricots in February, and find obscure ethnic ingredients in their local grocery store, which is to say New York or California. It was the magazine where every recipe involved at least one ingredient I’ve never heard of, or would have to special order from the internet. Read the rest of this entry ?

My mother stopped baking about the same time I entered high school, and didn’t start again until well after I’d graduated from college. According to my father when they were first married (or, as my father would rather you say, when at first they were married – because when they were first married implies that they were second married at some later point in time) my mother made pie all the time. I don’t remember this ever being true, but I’ll take his word for it. Read the rest of this entry ?