When I was a kid, my junk food of choice, purchased at Pat’s Food Center across the street from my house, or at the park store in the Missaukee County trailer park, was Twinkies or Mars Bar or Three Musketeers bar (Pat’s) or wax lips or wax coke bottle with that syrupy pseudo coca cola…More
Tag Archives: food
Chickpea and Swiss Chard Soup
You stumble onto things. It can be a fortunate fall. When I married into an Italian family, I had never eaten a chickpea. If you were raised in the Saginaw Valley, you ate navy beans. End of story. More
How About Some Breakfast?
Watch and listen to excerpt from “Alien Pleasures,” an essay in Get Thee to a Bakery.More
Are You Going to Eat That?–on donut desire
Listen to a short excerpt from “Psyched,” an essay in American English, Italian Chocolate.More
The Geometry of Dessert–figs and cake, a story problem
This one is for you, Mr. Frank, my high school algebra and geometry teacher from Freeland High School, 1966-67, 1967-68. I think you’re out there… Shown in these photos, pan de higo, a fig and almond cake from Spain. This exotic confection dates back to Muslim rule of Spain (711-1492), when, seeing the plentiful fig…More
Yick–wine and cheese, maybe
A Yahoo headline greets me this morning: “Study says cheese and red wine could boost brain health.” That’s good news. Two things I like, and I’m all in favor of brain health. The ten-year study, published in the Journal of Alzheimers Disease, involved 1787 people who participated in a Fluid Intelligence Test, “which provides a…More
Let There Be Beans on Earth
My wife and I are beanophiles, pure and simple. And could there be a food more pure and simple? Time was, I bought navy beans at Kroger, plastic sacks of old dry beans grown who knows where and who knows how long ago. I soaked them, and they woke up from their long sleep, and…More
You Gotta Have Peas–the ragu requires them
No one is neutral on peas. In England for a conference a few decades ago I was taken to dinner by a local guy who ordered something the English like to eat. It came with a side of mushy peas (mushy rhymes with bushy). To the eye the peas looked like they had been cooked…More
Alt Pizza–on the grill?
We’re having pizza for lunch at our daughter’s house. She says she’s going to do it on the grill. Not what I expected. My wife and I often buy a pizza dough at the Italian market when we go for goodies. We have one in the freezer right now. Thaw it, roll it, mark it…More
Quick and Spicy–what a pasta dish
In just thirty minutes, you can make a pasta sauce that will change your life. Sausage and leeks and tomato. Salt and pepper. And if you’re a spicy person, red pepper flakes to hot the sauce up a bit, or a lot. A word about sausage.More