The Puget Sound Business Journal featured an item recently about a new kind of cultivation coming on the scene: that of the truffle. It's no easy feat to cultivate truffles, they're still going to have some unpredictable, wild tendencies and take their time to (hopefully) flourish. But at least one 2-acre plot of [...]
Everyone at my Thanksgiving table this year is going to have their own wishbone to break. No, I'm not cooking up 8 turkeys just so everyone gets a wishbone. I love my family, but not quite that much. I'm looking forward to the spice-brined and grilled Cornish game hens I'll be [...]
Can you believe it? Just two weeks from today is Thanksgiving. That's what I get for blinking. I just started to make up my mental menu plan for dinner here that day. And though I am a traditionalist so often when it comes to my favorite things to eat and [...]
This funny reflection came to mind as I was surveying my small backyard patio-garden a few weeks ago. As my eyes cast over one corner, where I have an espalier apple tree framed across the top by a trailing vine of golden hops, I realized it was a tiny little [...]
Crossroads. The new Corson Building in Seattle's burgeoning Georgetown neighborhood rather epitomizes the term in a figurative sense, serving up a dinner experience that represents the intersection where "small independent restaurant" and "private dinner party" meet. It's a communal meal, strangers can blossom into new friends over the course of [...]
I hadn't yet opened this week's issue of New York magazine before making yesterday's post about the celebrity farmer (I do hope those of you in the Seattle area will try to make it to the Incredible Feast event in a couple weeks, "where the farmers are the stars"). A [...]
Some day I'm going to actually get around to this, checking on the earlier history of my Seattle neighborhood to see if cherry trees figured prominently back when. Our house is nearly surrounded by them. To one side an ancient, sprawling Rainier tree packed with cherries that I can spy [...]
Great minds think alike, don't you agree? My food-writing cohort and friend Nancy Leson spelled out a few days ago--in delicious detail--the steps she (and her husband Mac) uses to turn out perfect whole chicken roasted on the backyard grill. I'd served at home last Saturday night very much the same [...]
After having made a post recently in anticipation of this year's Yukon River salmon season, I received some sad news about this month's openings. Alaska Fish and Game agents moniter the fish heading into the river and will only approve an opening of the commercial fishing season if and when [...]
This is a post I hesitate to start because, like gin in the previous post, salmon is a subject near and dear to my heart. Once I get rolling, it's hard to not follow various tangents about my experiences with the glorious fish. I'll take it as a personal challenge [...]