‘Tis the season. For a lot of things, actually. I hear talk of comfort food and big cozy sweaters, fires in the fire place and hunkering down to watch old movies and read a good book.
And with all this rain, cooling temperatures, it’s also the season of wild mushrooms. I’ve lost track of how many [...]
Entries from October 2009
October 29, 2009
Green Bean Casserole, Revisited
October 21, 2009
Vancouver Island Trip: Part Two
Ok, so where was I? Ah yes, lounging in my Victoria hotel room on a lazy Saturday. This was the view at one point in the morning, typically Victoria: incoming float plane and a Black Ball ferry heading in from Port Angeles. Outgoing whale-watching trip (that bright orange boat center) and a tugboat on some mission or [...]
October 16, 2009
Return of a NW Tea Icon
Welcome back, Mr. Smith! I was wondering what had come of you…..
About this time last year I was working on a feature article for Horizon Airlines Magazine recounting the lives and times of Northwest tea companies. It’s a story impossible to tell without the name of Steven Smith coming up. The one-time manager of the first [...]
October 13, 2009
Les Hamburgers
I hope you read that title with an appropriately thick French accent, as I’d intended. Lay am-behr-gehr. It makes a difference. Because this isn’t about the all-American hamburger we all know and love, instead a Gallic take on our Yankee icon.
It really had never crossed my radar in all the time I’ve spent in France that [...]
October 8, 2009
Sipping Olympic History
Having had a fabulous trip to Vancouver, BC earlier this year, which included a cocktail or two (plus an amazing dinner) at Yew in the Four Seasons Hotel, it grabbed my attention to read about the Olympics-themed cocktails recently unveiled for the restaurant. The Games will be starting in 127 days, and yes, there are a lot [...]
October 7, 2009
Kitchen Tricks: Tomato Paste
Sometimes I presume that everyone does all the same little tricks in the kitchen that help make our cooking lives easier and more efficient. Like laying down a dampened paper towel under a cutting board to keep it from slipping around on the counter (though my no-skid KitchenAid cutting board makes that unnecessary). Or using the [...]
October 1, 2009
Kindness of Keftedes
I was nearly tempted to pick up the phone on Saturday and call in. Rick Steves and his radio-show guest Don George were discussing the kindness of strangers, the subject of a book George had edited. At the mere mention of the theme—influenced, in part, by the travel-show context—I immediately thought of her. A tiny wisp of [...]
