Patchouli: From Head Shops to High Demand
If you recognize the word “patchouli” it may conjure up visions of Grateful Dead concerts, hacky sack-playing hippies, drum circles, or perhaps a line from Al Stewart’s song, “The Year of the Cat.” This essential oil, derived from a perennial herb native to Southeast Asia, was embraced by 1960s counter-culture—whether for its reputed aphrodisiac qualities...
Pharm to Table: Field Apothecary Invigorates Herbal Traditions
When I first started my radio show “Spice: The Final Frontier” I was planning to focus on interesting historical facts about herbs and spices along with some tips on how to cook with them. As I continued researching what I thought of as strictly culinary herbs and spices, I found that a long history of...
A Shell-Shocking Discovery: Eggs
Years ago, when print magazines ruled the Earth, an article in Gourmet lit the first embers of the fire that eventually led me to culinary school. It was about the humble omelet. The essay by Francis Lam (now a judge on Top Chef Masters) extolled the French omelet as the pursuit of perfection. The French...
Flying the Coop: The Return of the Backyard Chicken
While eggs have been called Nature’s miracle food, they simply wouldn’t exist without chickens. Or, wait… would chickens not exist without eggs? Hmm. The age-old riddle. Like the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa, we’ll probably never know, but in the spirit of fowl play I did some digging into the homegrown chicken industry and made some...
A “Taste of” the Hudson Valley
If you’re looking for a true taste of the Hudson Valley, mark your calendar for the fifth annual Hudson Valley Bounty ‘Taste of’ Dinner on August 5 from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. The Coumbia County Fairgrounds in Chatham, N.Y. sets the stage for this popular fundraising event, which this year commemorates its original founders....
Preserving Memories
When I was growing up in North Carolina, we had a huge garden. My mother hated to garden or pretty much anything to do with the Great Outdoors, but with three young children at home, she was thrifty. While Dad and we kids toiled in the soil, she came up with ways to use the...
An Heirloom Whale of a Tale
“She said she wanted to see beautiful things. I took her to where I planted my seeds.” —Darnell Lamont Walker When I was a girl growing up in California, whales fascinated me. It was the 1970s, the heyday of Greenpeace and knowing whales existed is inseparably entwined in my mind with the knowledge that these majestic...
