(one of our neighbors down the street) We had a VERY close call here at Nika’s Culinaria. (NASA satellite image of the track of this tornado through our area) We were missed being hit by the Massachusetts EF-4 1/2 mile wide tornado by only a 1/2 a mile – living near a climate induced disaster...

I thought I would share a video with you that shows a little of what happens here, when I am NOT food blogging. If you are a longer term reader, you know I “homestead” or have a little farm here on our property. We eat local (backyard) eggs from our own chickens and diary from...

I have been utterly submerged in the process of milking our newly freshened dairy goat herd. We are milking 7 goats now, twice a day, whew. We use a machine that requires washing etc so there is still quite a lot of work to do. Since the kids are not all weaned yet, some of...

In the middle of March, I had the opportunity to go see Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto give the keynote speech at the International Boston Seafood Show. The room was packed to the gills with people who were eagerly awaiting the start of his talk. ...

Last post I spoke of how part of our family was adding to some grim statistics, this post I am sorry to say that I have added my own numbers to the December jobless number – was laid off last Wednesday. While the scene was a bit gory at work with some bombastic dramatics that...

Because the flash slideshow seems to be messing up the browser for some of you, I am moving flash show further down in this post. This way, if you want to see many more of these portraits, make the jump to the main article, knowing that your browser may not handle the flash slideshow gracefully....

Make no mistake, this post is absolutely for the beef lover and especially the connoisseur of the highest quality aged beef. Most of us know what non-aged beef tastes like, somewhat homogeneous or one dimensional in it’s flavor. Some people experience non-aged beef as slightly metallic in flavor (the iron in the hemoglobin?), not a...

(Dan Macey and assistant, packing up after their class, “More Than One Way to Roast a Chicken or Make a Burger” June 2, 2007) June 1-4 was the International Conference on Food Styling and Photography at Boston University, sponsored by the BU Culinary Arts Program. It was also some of the longest few days in...

Convivial: Late Latin convivialis, from Latin convivium banquet, from com- + vivere to live. circa 1668: relating to, occupied with, or fond of feasting, drinking, and good company. con·viv·i·al·i·ty /-"vi-vE-'a-l&-tE/ noun con·viv·ial·ly /-'viv-y&-lE, -'vi-vE-&-lE/ adverb Conviviality is not a complex or obscure concept; it has been practiced for millennia in the richest and most humble...

I have so many more photos I have taken at the Dole & Bailey Northeast Family Farms roadshow up in Maine, its been a shame to not share more of them. Some of them have been hard to wrap around a cogent topic but, after some further study of the photostream from that day, a...