Before I moved to Brooklyn, the only soap I ever knew was a generic castile. It came in a big container that we’d pour carefully into each of the hand dispensers throughout the house I grew up in in Pennsylvania. We’d use it for everything: face, hands, dishes, and in the shower. It worked fine—nobody...
There’s a reason certain things have, in Darwinian fashion, managed to survive in the face of so-called “advances” in technology. Even though you can get amazing musical replication from a synthesizer, for example, true aficionados would claim it can’t replace a Steinway or a Stradivarius. In the kitchen, nothing cooks quite like cast iron. Stainless...
With approximately 25,000 hairs as hard and thick as copper wire, the almighty beard has separated men from boys throughout history. Some of the greatest leaders of all time have adorned their faces with this iconic symbol of masculinity, but where one generation perceived it as a sign of virility, dignity and higher status, the...
I have that kind of Scottish-Irish hair that doesn’t grow long, but rather wild, wavy and very big. I first started growing out my hair in college after 18 years of buzz cuts. My lush and loose locks were a new ‘me’ to present to a world away from home, but these curls were full...
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...
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Aug 28, 2013 • Comments Closed “Clothes make the man” –Mark Twain, American writer If Mark Twain was correct, then the high school version of me—donned in a mandatory cheap polyester apron, polo shirt and shapeless pants—knew my place. And it wasn’t at the top of the fashion food chain. I was working for a major bagel store (back when bagels...
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...
I’ll never forget the first time I picked up my mom’s disposable razor blade in a pathetic attempt to rid three or four pieces of fuzz above my upper lip. I was eager to join the bearded tribe and embark on the shaving rite of passage—a tradition that has been passed down since the dawn...
I don’t care much for bees, mostly because of an unfortunate incident involving a swing set and a sting when I was six-years-old. As much as I’ve tried to avoid these buzzy creatures, a bit of research reveals that bees are an important part of my daily living and can be found in my kitchen,...
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....
There are some foods—scallops, a steak, pork chops—that cry out for a solid, gorgeous, homogeneous sear on the outside. Sure, you can get browning from a regular sauté pan. But let me speak plainly: Nothing cooks like cast iron. Cast iron, you say? That heavy, slightly dirty-looking skillet your grandmother used? The skillets the pioneers...
Second Installment in a Two-Part Series “Wildman” Steve Brill, who had an interest in healthful gourmet cooking, was out for a bike ride when he came across a group of ethnic Greek women dressed in black among the greenery in Cunningham Park, Queens. As he likes to tell it, “I asked them what they were...
