November 11, 2010

Dark turkey meat and the first Thanksgiving

I have often pondered what it is about the dark meat on a turkey carcass that evokes such a rabidly negative response from so many of the folks we feed at Thanksgiving. It's approaching rather rapidly I'm told. If the way many of us turn up our noses at the notion of dark meat is any ...

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August 14, 2010

Her Jelly Was Jammin'

Got a little story for y'all. Small town southern Arkansas was a tough place to be in 1930. Depression-era living was anything but easy, even in summertime. The working class family my father was born into struggled hard to make ends meet. He was the fifth of six children. Christmas was of ...

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July 26, 2010

Lard Help Me, But I Love It

Holy cow — Waco is a hard place to try to buy pig. None of the conventional area grocery stores carry or even have access to the pig parts I've needed lately — parts like back fat and fresh bellies. Not even the Mexican groceries carry junk like that any more. Oh, for just one Asian ...

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May 19, 2010

Cooking by Oz-mosis

Like many cooking enthusiasts, I own a bunch of cookbooks, in fact most of my bookshelf space is dominated by volumes relating to food and how to cook it. I've had over 20 years to collect them, ingest the information contained between their respective jackets, and digest, over time and through reflection, ...

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April 15, 2010

Exit-Stential Shopping

The Los Angeles Times is in the heart of downtown. It is a venerable and massive institutional construct, built in the late 1940's and occupies a whole city block between 1st and 2nd Street. It's across from City Hall and about a block from LAPD Headquarters. Look uphill and you'll see the iconic ...

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April 02, 2010

Do me a fava, will ya?

Inquiring minds want to know what I've been cooking out here in El Lay. I have to say this test kitchen gig is fun and challenging, and the short answer would be, I'm making all kinds of crazy stuff. Since Los Angeles is the second biggest city in the nation there are ethnic neighborhoods all over ...

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March 26, 2010

I drink, threefour eye yam

The passage of the historic health-care bill has given everybody a reason to drink — Democrats want to celebrate, Republicans need to commiserate. At any rate, and regardless of your party affiliation, I can't think of a more appropriate time to throw a cocktail party. That's one idea that could ...

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March 11, 2010

I wanted fries with that

Polite society dictates that one should not publicly discuss personal stuff such as religion and politics. It makes some people uncomfortable. I've got some pretty strong convictions on food politics, and the way I see it, lots of folks are getting downright religious about what and how they eat. ...

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February 11, 2010

Post-Big Game Big Game

The collective wistful sigh of angst at the close of another football season might be powerful enough to push that wacky jet stream out of Texas altogether, if only we could all sigh in the same direction. So what's a rabid fan supposed to do with the weekend now that only wimpy winter sports like ...

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January 10, 2010

El Lay--Hoo Ray

For the next few months I'll be blogging about food from Los Angeles. I sort of lucked into a reprieve from the bitter New York winter and have found myself living in la-la land. I'm at the point in my schooling where a five-month externship is required. Most of my classmates are slaving ...

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