Ramps and I started off on the wrong foot this year. It’s nothing personal against ramps; I just want to hate them because they’re so hip. But that’s not really fair. Ramps are pretty great: for one thing, they’re members of the onion family, and I could never hate an allium for long. And, in […]

The plantable space available to Martha and me near our apartment is limited  to a 8×20″ window planter in which we raise a jumble of herbs every summer and fall (last year we also tried small pots with tomatoes on other windowsills, but they jumped to their death in a windstorm). This is hardly enough […]

Loving garlic as much as I do – and I love garlic – I was briefly in heaven when I discovered at a Lebanese restaurant in Cairo a dip called thoumiya. The name presumably derives from the Arabic thoum (ثوم), which means garlic, and this dip was all about garlic – almost pure garlic, touched […]

It’s springtime again, which means the Internet is running rampant with reports of ramps. Amidst all the gushing over this early allium, I read probably the best assessment of ramps ever written: Most “spring” menus are cruel teases. The good stuff we really want, like local peas and asparagus, doesn’t turn up for at least […]

Tom and I returned from a long weekend in San Francisco on Monday evening. Guided by Tom’s brother Mike and a rented PT Cruiser (never even consider buying or renting this car by the way… it will only confuse you!), we walked the Mission, Upper and Lower Haight, and a drove through several other neighborhoods. […]

We’ve enjoyed an unusually mild March with no snow fall–something that hasn’t occurred in Minnesota since 1878. Tom and I have been taking advantage of the weather with bike rides, after dinner walks, patio happy hours, and Bell’s Oberon (released this week!). The coming of spring has another thing on our minds as well: the opening […]