My grandmother, 1st generation and 100% Greek, was an example for me of someone who loved to cook for people (and even animals!) she loved. She was a great cook, and she passed that on to my mom. (It had to be in the genes...

a lot. After farm labor and after being a short-order A&W, a baker, a Forest Service engineer, and grad school followed by living and working everywhere (as an agricultural scientist), I’ve done more and more cooking throughout...

Blas that were like yellow water balloons, mosquitos be damned. Villages were homes of adobe and coke signs, with burros, chickens and pigs. Many rides were on trucks with animals. Fast forward: first pescado entero in...

" in the agricultural / botanical context has a clearly-defined, well-understood meaning to a reasonably educated audience. Some menu writers lie to make their stuff sound better. This kind of unethical marketing is as old as the...

're going to react. I can picture some people getting offended by me offering them my leftovers. And unless you’re physically there to monitor who eats the leftover food, I think leaving food around for animals has the...

Years ago there was a T-giving episode of The Simpsons where Bart served “Cranberries a la Bart” straight from the can, lines and all until the cylinder collapsed into a pile of jelly. That 30 second clip of animated...

. Consider the Japanese, for example. A grapefruit can be an ephemeral work of art, coddled in a net bag, on a tree thinned to grow very few fruit, so it becomes sonething special, WORTH the $14 or so that it costs. A piece of...

I also happen to generally prefer Vermont (and let’s not leave out Massachusetts, NY, Quebec and New Hampshire) cheddars to British ones, but I think they’re really very different animals. It’s like comparing a...

, overs salted, greasy bad food. The cause of the problem is that there are no Chinese in Cali. On the other hand, large immigrant populations in the agricultural Central Valley of California created the opposite effect....