Gluten Free and Low Carb—perfect for summer!  You can put nearly anything in a lettuce leaf and it provides a handy shell to hold the flavors.  I often am looking for edible vehicles that can deliver the punch line and in the summer lettuce leaves are a refreshing meal-holding-husk.  But they can be a little messy so watch out for those after-Memorial-Day white pants.    . Fillings can be as simple or complex as you want to create.  A vegan alternative to bacon could be

  These buddies were a scrumptious success at a luncheon I recently catered.  You can make them without smoking the salmon, of course, but smokiness adds a rich depth, a ‘something extra’, oooh I could even say “je ne sais quoi”…whatever you want to call it, it will compel you to eat at least ten of them.   Do you need a smoker?  No, a charcoal grill works splendidly.  My grill-guru cousin swears by the Weber grill for all of his smoking activities.  There are smoker boxes for

  This was a Comfort Meal in the deli, a bowlful of both Brothy and Filling.   It’s another soup with the tangy buttermilk-secret-ingredient, added at the end when the soup has cooled slightly (so it won’t curdle) and with the addition of a little baking soda to reduce the acidity (so it won’t curdle). The baking soda trick can also be used is to make beans more easily (and quietly) digestible.       Tamari is a great addition

  Question: What does one eat when coming home after weeks on a ski sabbatical? Answer: Whatever is in the house because the catering has not yet begun and we blew our wad for the winter.  I think it’s time to revisit pintos and Pinto Fuul because my sister fed it to us on our way home, and since then I’ve been utilizing my big bag of pintos making various versions of it.  Today it was with feta cheese, yesterday

    Croquettes enable you to eat mashed potatoes with one hand and no fork. Isn’t that what everyone has been asking for?   Last week we found ourselves driving home in the midst of another blizzard, perfectly bookending the trip with driving north in the snowstorm at the beginning.  I suppose we did yearn for the snow to come with us and prolong our skiing affair…and this was another reminder to be careful what we ask for!  Countless times

  Packing into ABR‘s remote cabin with cubes and a pulk and a sherpa.  As my cousin says…why travel light when you can travel well?   . For the most part the absence of internet access is welcomed when we travel or stay in remote locations.  But posting these recipes and staying in touch with family and catering clients means finding creative ways to turn everything into a digital form, including sitting in the car in church parking lots and pirating

  This may sound a little like ‘stone soup’ or just a way to use up loads of onions in a pie but it really is scrumptious, summer or winter.   These tangy squares will be our travel food—snacking in the car or popping it in the oven to heat as we unpack the hundreds of pounds of gear and food into the home-base cabin.  It seems fitting to eat this caraway-sour-cream-onion pie in heart of Old Bohemian northern Wisconsin.

    Eat Good Luck for your New Year!   There was an idyllic snow on Christmas eve, and after walking home from a Norwegian Jule dinner on quiet streets in the falling flakes, we awoke to more snow and a perfect day for a beginning-of-season ski on that slippery powder.  As we skied through the woods we watched a gorgeous orange sunset through dark silhouettes of bare trees—but I forgot to take a camera!  So no photos from me,

  Two liver posts in one year?!?  I must really have a need to push your boundaries, and this time there is no conclusion to the cliff-hanger story.  Just think of it as another tasty grey spread….creamy and rich and great on a cracker. Step outside your comfort zone in this life. Eat Liver.   You can’t get any more powerhouse than liver. They say liver contains more nutrients than any other food, gram for gram.  Protein, iron, folate, calcium,

  This is another recipe that appears the November/December edition of The IOWAN magazine.  They asked for “Iowa-Sourced” holiday recipes so polenta seemed like a good direction to take the classic dish since organic polenta is grown and produced near Cresco.  It resembles cornbread stuffing—flavorful and hearty as the night is long.  La Quercia pancetta was an obvious addition to the mix, rich with a hint of juniper berries….and from Iowa.   The polenta can be made a couple days in