I cook because I love to eat. I garden because I love to cook.
The other day while I was searching for an archived document on very old floppy disks, I came across recordings of my son, Jacob, singing nursery rhymes. They were adorable. He must have been about two years old. Of course, it made me think about …
As a very young child, my daughter Ariana was the meanest teacher around. She loved to play school with a pointer and easel, standing in front of the class made up of my wife Marci, my son Jacob, and me. She wielded the stick dangerously, …
As I took my daily walk on this early February morning, I couldn’t help but notice the green stalks of spring flowers already peeking through the ground. It left me conflicted. On the one hand I love that spring – my favorite time of the …
I thought I had the perfect, original recipe; one that no one else had thought of, let alone posted online or to social media. But it was not to be. As I mark the sixth anniversary of Max’s Kitchen and Garden this month, I think …
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 …
