Is ‘herb’ a verb? It is now.     I was recently asked to provide some desserts for a party in late September, a request I usually decline because I’m not baking-inclined, but they wanted the entire event to be gluten free so my empathetic streak took over.  A chocolate chile cake was of course on my menu but then I stumbled upon gluten free angelfood cake recipes online, and on chow.com found the idea of combining strawberries mixed with fresh herbs as a topping.  What

    Purple lisianthus from the Canoe Creek Produce at the Farmer’s Market.  I hear they’re difficult to grow because they are slow to germinate, but it is so worth the wait.  I’ve found myself sitting and just staring at them over the last week and a half that they’ve lived on the table.           In these August days we’re so free with how we use fresh produce here in the midwest, vegetables are mounded into salads because they

  It’s amazing to eat produce when it is still warm from the sun.   These ingredients of summer that I’m finding in my garden or the Farmer’s Market—cucumbers, tomatoes, cilantro, onion—there is just nothing like fresh and connected to the vine or the soil sometime in the last 24 hours.   photo by David Cavagnaro   It’s been a busy summer of catering with back-to-back and mid-week events crammed into the first two months of summer, but this is the flip-side payback

  A ridiculously simple snack it is, yet it’s been a (sometimes daily) staple for us when we need a no-grain high-protein crunch.  If you’ve ever done a cleanse-diet or a few weeks of eliminating sugars and grains and reducing carbs, you know the near-desparation that can set in as you search for something you can eat.  This provides a satisfaction that is hard to describe if you’ve never experienced that frantic hunt for foods that are not sugars or grains—it’s fast to make, fulfilling with

  Once again I find myself wrapped tightly in the schedule of catering events and I’m not able to do justice in writing the experiences of the last ten days on our adventure into the south.  This sunset tells the story much better than I ever could, it was the gift given as our group gathered to celebrate our friend, teacher, family, mentor, writer and artist Mary Kay Parker Deen. .       . These angels are trees in Bay St. Louis, resurrected

    NOLA a.k.a. the Rebirth City. I’m traveling with friends this week to New Orleans and Bay St. Louis, visiting friends and eating delectable dinners everywhere we go.  Not much time for words so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.         A sweet morning on the porch while we visited my friend Beatriz who owns the Fairchild House B&B on Prytania in the Lower Garden District.     It was recommended we take the ferry across to Algiers and

  I’m beginning to understand why people do this.   A year ago I signed up for my first cross country ski race on a 12.5 kilometer classic-only course. Having started this sport as a not-so-young adult it was not an obvious trajectory for me to race, but hanging out with enough people whose lives are somewhat shaped by the races they sign up for, I thought I could give it a whirl. Last year the temperature was a couple

    I finally got a good photo of the Ukrainian jackets at the International Paralymic Championships here at Telemark, they’re beautiful.  I wish I would have had a cool jacket to trade with him…     Twenty countries! For more amazing footage check out the video of the 2014 Paralymic Winter Games in Sochi.     A much better shot of the Russian jacket.  The Russians and the Ukrainians were even hanging out part of the time….   A week after the IPC

… Fresh tarragon with sugar was not my original idea, but reading it in a menu convinced me this was the meal I wanted to attempt to recreate for a Scandinavian dinner for my friend Dennis, the generous Dane who loves to host elaborate festivities. The Faroe Islands were the geographical highlight of this year’s feast, small bits in the North Atlantic between Norway, Scotland and Iceland, an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark.  Puffin, seal and whale blubber are common foods eaten there…but we

  The Holiday Music Motel We were wandering around Sturgeon Bay looking for a place to stay since it appeared as though a storm was descending, and though we like camping…it takes real dedication to set up WHILE it’s raining.  Vacationland of Door County is host to a plethora of cabins, cottages, condos, campsites, B&B’s, hotels, motels, resorts, and it didn’t help that we are easily overwhelmed by choices, especially when tired.  The warm neon sign of the Holiday Motel