The very friendly people at General Mills and particularly Betty Crocker have invited me to come out to their test kitchens to take a stroll about, sit in on some classes they are running for us, and generally take a peek into a company that has been a part of American Food Lore™ for a...

Some foods, like homemade bread, are more than just “cooking” and can be more like therapy. Pasta is like this. I was raised in a family where pasta was considered junk food, needless carbohydrates (obviously, we are not Italian or Asian!). In Colombia, the starch of choice is rice and various tropical starch crops like the...

Some time ago I reviewed a cookbook called “Tassajara Cookbook: Lunches, Picnics, and Appetizers” by Karla Oliveira where I covered Tassajara, a magical mountain retreat for the San Francisco Zen Center. Today’s review covers the related book Tassajara Dinners & Desserts by Dale and Melissa Kent, a beautiful and delicious cookbook that shares simple go-to vegetarian...

(Ingredients) A couple of posts ago, I showed you how easy it is to make sprouted whole wheat flour. In that post, Making Sprouted Whole Wheat Flour, I talked at length on the reasons for sprouting your grains so I wont delve into that today. Instead, I am going to share one way I have used...

Ever since I have not been spending every moment either driving to or from work or at work, I have been able to spend some time at home reconnecting with the family in ways I have not been able to do in the whole of this past year. There is some qualitative difference for us between 2 and 3...

(This was cross posted to two of my other blogs Peaknix and Humble Garden) Recently, I came across a solar cooking wiki and a whole group of YouTube videos about how Africans are adopting parabolic solar cookers in their villages. The importance of this didn’t really sink in for me until I saw how women...

Things were going ok and then pow, time contracted and chaos ruled the house! I hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving. We had an excellent time. Today I am going to step through a few more shots. Food photography in our kitchen is tough so you will have to forgive the somewhat scary images,...

Arrggg, my food processor has died. I wanted to show you a photo of it exploding into tiny pieces as it was hit by a sledgehammer but I barely have time to write this and get it off my chest, so much to do. In the grand scheme of things, whats happened is exceedingly irrelevant but in...

No disrespect to Martha and those who aspire to her homemaking pinnacles I just have to be honest about this – my act doesn’t include perfect house cleanliness nor coordinated napkin rings. Our table is more likely to be set with Ball canning jars and mis-matched plastic plates (antique ones marked on the back from...

Maria Speck I recently had the pleasure of meeting Maria Speck, a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), Les Dames d’Escoffier and Slow Food USA who is a food writer and journalist. She publishes in the German magazines Stern and Brigitte, the DPA news agency in Germany, Saveur, Gastronomica, The Vegetarian Times,...