I haven’t mentioned it much, but real estate has been much on my mind the past couple of months. With another pastry in the oven and the timer ticking, we need a bigger place to live. Last night the missus and I left little Josephine with a neighbor and strolled down the street to look […]
READ ONI know that there are more than a few food writers who have ascribed the origin of the word pizza to the Italian word for point, which is indeed very similar: pizzo. The connection there is supposedly that pizza is cut into wedges, which are pointy on the ends. The problem I have with that […]
READ ONI can just hear a few of you out there rolling your eyeballs (yes, that makes a noise…sort of) at the idea that “pita” is related to the Greek word for “pitch”. Not being a Greek scholar, I can’t say proof positive, but it does makes sense if you consider where pitch comes from and […]
READ ONBased on the previous post and its comment string, I’m starting to think I should change the name of this blog to “Joe Meat”. Hm…maybe a spinoff or something. But for now my job is baking and pastry, and dammit, I’ve been delinquent the last ten days or so. So let’s now get to what […]
READ ONImagine my surprise and delight when I walked into my favorite Chicago hot dog shop this past Wednesday and found a brand new special on the menu: a duck sausage on a bun with fat pats of foie gras plopped on top. Was this heaven? No, just Hot Doug’s, a Northwest-Side hot dog shrine owned […]
READ ONI was called out of town on business Wednesday…had to make a mad dash back to Chicago only three days after I left it. But I’m back with plenty of good stuff to report. More soon.
READ ONOh there’s nothing like an evening at the State Fair. Back when I lived in Chicago, I had to travel 300 or so miles to get to it. Now that I live in Louisville, it’s just a fifteen minute drive away. The place has it all, world class horse shows, carnival rides, cock crowing competitions, […]
READ ONThe really good late-season freestone peaches are coming in here in Kentucky. There’s no way I can ignore that. So I figure a little of this action might be in order: Peach Cobbler And if you’re like me you spend a good chunk of your time these days trying to think up ways to consume […]
READ ONI’m very glad to have had a full week before debriefing this project, since I’ve never known a refrigerator pickle that didn’t benefit from several days of ripening. Oh the deep down contentment of opening the fridge to a big jar of home-pickled goodies. I’m frequently disappointed by the fading that usually happens with watermelong […]
READ ONWhile in Chicago I had the opportunity to try the new fudge mint and peanut butter Oreos. I pronounced them good. The mint was especially nice, with a pretty decent minty flavor. The peanut butter was less satisfying, lacking a pronunced PB bouquet. But come on, how bad can an Oreo be? There was a […]
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