The Meal Ambassadors

By Herb Gardener - During the Cold War’s chilliest years America dispatched prominent Jazz musicians including Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington to unaligned countries as tools of cultural diplomacy. Dave Brubeck and Louis Armstrong captured the contradictory experience of African-Americans representing their nation abroad while suffering segregation at home in the song “The Real Ambassadors.” In an echo of those jazz...

Crisp Apple Season is Now

By Chef Judi Gallagher - I recently roamed the aisles of Green Market in NYC, crunching on the first of the season’s crisp apples. Yes, it was an 80 degree day, but the emotional pull of autumn and apples is as strong as a delicious gingered apple bread pudding. Apple dishes taste like comfort and crispness all rolled into wonderful recipes that grandmothers share with their grandchildren. When we lived in New England, apple...

Bringing Portland, Maine Flavors Home

By Anna Dantoni - Anyone who has ever spent a table-hopping weekend or a longer culinary vacation in Portland, Maine, appreciates and wants to join the chorus of praise for that city’s reputation as a genuine eating town. Portland is famous for its restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, seafood shacks, dives and diners. Like New Orleans, it’s hard to get a bad meal in that town. Portland’s proximity to the farms of southern...

Autumn Food Pleasures and More

By Chef Judi Gallagher - Fall is here! I can start bundling up in cozy sweaters, break out my long-neglected boots and drink hot beverages in the afternoon. I love Fall. Even though I’m a Connecticut Yankee by birth and spent glorious autumns in New England growing up, going to culinary school there and owning my first restaurants in the Northeast, I live in the South now and I can tell you we feel the change of seasons too....

When To Decant Wine

By Robert Paul - The short answers is, you can (and should) decant wine more often than you think. Over years my wife and I have amassed a nice collection of wine decanters. They sit on the sideboard and sometimes in the china cabinet and a few I haven’t seen in years, which means they probably ended up in a neighborhood  tag sale. Sometimes our decanters emerge without their crystal stoppers to be flower vases. But a few...

Successful Fall Planting

By Steven V. Philips - It’s Autumn. I can tell. Super-max-mart has Santas for sale. Hmm, Santa would be able to tell you what and what not to plant this time of year. He knows everything. But why Santa, is the Fall better than Christmas for planting? Well elves,  plants are starting to slow/cease growth and go into hibernation. Thus root stress is less. And there is still enough warm weather left to let their tense...