I cook because I love to eat. I garden because I love to cook.
When I was a five- or six-year-old kid, my father occasionally took my two older brothers and I to the Palestra, the arena that opened in 1927 at the University of Pennsylvania, to see Big 5 college basketball games. We would wander in, find our …
When I was a little kid, my parents occasionally had parties. They weren’t too frequent because my father was usually in bed by 8:30 pm. But when they did occur, it was often a fundraiser for some candidate for local political office or an impromptu …
We have a couch in our kitchen. It may seem out of place to some, but the kitchen is the room where guests inevitably gather. So why not make it comfortable? You invite friends or family over for a meal, gathering, or party and you …
It may seem obvious, but we should eat the season. In other words, we should eat fruits and vegetables that are in season locally rather than eating produce that has travelled from halfway around the world or all the way across the country. Our food …
Every year we host Early Thanksgiving for our friends a few weeks before the traditional holiday. And every year the menu has a pattern. The main course is typical, as it is with most families, with few major variations from year to year. Turkey, gravy, …
In the fall of 1987, I was a junior in college when I got a call that my maternal grandmother, Jeanette, had had a heart attack. The prognosis was grim. I had to return to Philadelphia from school in Indiana, as did my brothers from …
As the angle of the sun dips on the horizon and the first golden hues shine from leaves that are nearing their end, the harvest from my garden changes from summer to fall crops. The shift is not sudden. Summer green beans, peppers, and tomatoes …
Many of the things we eat are variations on a theme; the same type of ingredient that gets spiced, sauced, or wrapped a little differently each time, but is still, if you break it down, a similar idea. There is a myriad of types of …
I didn’t have any relationship with scallops until I met them up close and personal. Scuba diving in shallow bays on the east end of Long Island, brushing aside blades of eelgrass, occasionally I would come across a bay scallop, laying on the estuary bottom, …
In September 1995 my wife Marci and I were starting our second year living on St. Thomas in the Caribbean. It was the heart of the Atlantic hurricane season and an extremely active year. This is part two of the letter I wrote to friends …
