Stoves & Suitcases: Searching for Home in the World’s Kitchens
September 18, 2021
My latest book is out, a story of culinary discoveries and life’s big-and-little adventures.
Category: Cookbooks
A Dearth of Pleasure: The Curse of Modern Food Writing
August 28, 2021
Thankfully, the Millennium Bridge across the River Thames didn’t sway under my feet that day, giving lie to its other name, the Wobbly Bridge. But the chilling wind whipped at everything not tied down, painting a disagreeable redness on my nose and a deep-seated hunger in my belly. The aroma of roasting sugary peanuts floated … More A Dearth of Pleasure: The Curse of Modern Food Writing
Discovering Cookbooks, a Memory
August 2, 2021
Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again. ~ Julia Child Everybody says it happens, yes. Love at first sight. It happens. I must concur―it was true, at least for me, when it came to cookbooks. The summer I turned fourteen, I fell hopelessly in love with the … More Discovering Cookbooks, a Memory
Feral Pigs & Yellow Squash: A Tale Woven in a New World Kitchen
May 14, 2021
Soon summer will again bless the Virginia mountains. Once the tall oaks leaf out, that is. And I’m already thinking of my old garden, Mary Randolph’s cookbook, and Hernando de Soto’s feral pigs. All ingredients, more or less, in my dealings with one of the three American culinary sisters: corn, beans, and squash. A tale woven from the … More Feral Pigs & Yellow Squash: A Tale Woven in a New World Kitchen
Sonoran Flour Tortillas = Culinary Mestizaje
May 7, 2021
Culinary mestizaje signifies fusion. And when the Spanish arrived in the New World, that’s exactly what took place: little by little the Spanish introduced key ingredients from their traditional pantries to their new subjects. Pork, beef, olive oil, and more.. And vice versa. Mostly chiles, tomatoes, beans, squash, and corn. The Roman Catholic Church played … More Sonoran Flour Tortillas = Culinary Mestizaje
Stoves & Suitcases
May 5, 2021
Wanderlust infiltrated my blood from early on. I joke that I left the womb three months early, so impatient was I to get a head start on life. In the beginning, just my mouth got to travel. And those exhilarating experiences of tasting and eating new things consoled me through a turbulent childhood. As did … More Stoves & Suitcases
Tucson: The Gastronomic City
April 19, 2021
Daddy always told me about being born in Miami. Yet it took me years to realize he wasn’t talking about Miami, Florida. Rather, he meant Miami, Arizona, near Globe, where my grandmother Winnie Gibson grew up, where she lived among Native Americans, miners, ranchers. Where all sorts of drifters came and went. Where one such … More Tucson: The Gastronomic City
