It all started with an acute lack of pickles. As in, I had not a jar of pickles to my name, not even in the deepest back recesses of the middle shelf of the refrigerator. But golf-ball sized potatoes from yesterday’s Midtown Farmers Market were demanding to be made into potato salad and if there’s […]

I make as much an effort as anyone to feign enthusiasm for ramps, but the real excitement of spring and the produce it brings doesn’t begin for me until I see the first spears of asparagus at the farmers market. Asparagus is a bellwether crop, like the late summer tomato, that signals the arrival of […]

This bright Saturday morning marked the fourth consecutive week of the Midtown Farmers Market 2011 season. May is a month of many market openings, but it never quite feels like real farmers market season since the crops aren’t quite growing and the weather is inconsistent, even for Minnesota. May 7th, opening weekend, was beautiful: sunny […]

As I was biking through downtown Minneapolis on my way home from work yesterday, I noticed the new exterior at Solera, a tapas restaurant that I have enjoyed many times. I didn’t enjoy the new look. I find the Spanish flag awnings are a bit garish – not to mention nationalistic – compared with the […]

As I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a Saint Patrick’s day post for this blog that wasn’t corned beef and cabbage – because I had to post something, right? – I kept coming back to bangers and mash. I’ve never been to the Emerald Isle, and while like many Americans I […]

In a world where many people don’t get enough to eat, the fact that Americans waste nearly half their food represents a moral failure. What’s more, with the economic crisis in this country family food budgets are stretched tighter than ever; American families can ill-afford to waste so much. A lot of this waste results […]

Some days, everything goes right: the sun is shining, you can ride your bike around town carefree after a winter full of slow ice-patch vigilance, you’ve just eaten a fine lunch and there’s nothing in particular to do that afternoon. You roll into your favorite butcher shop – just to say hello – and suddenly […]

Conventional wisdom – among burger bloggers at least – is that it’s not worth it to make your own buns. This matches my experience: chalky, crumbly, too chewy, too rich, the list of sins goes on and on. So many broken promises, so many tears. These bitter bun experiences have taught me better than to […]

Tilapia has a lot to recommend it: it’s cheap, grows fast, can be sustainably farmed, and is low in mercury. Probably the only thing not to love about tilapia is its flavor. Not that it’s actively offensive, just that even in terms of white-fleshed fish tilapia is pretty bland. That blandness can be remedied with […]

As a relative newbie in the world of cocktails, I find them totally mysterious. How is it that pouring apparently random amounts of ingredients that are often quite challenging to drink on their own transform in the shaker into a magical elixir? When I am cooking, at least, I have some confidence in my ability […]