Athens, Georgia; March 8, 2025: I have lived on three continents and in the Caribbean. Most of the meals I have eaten I have prepared myself. And while I learned to make French fries in Paris and pesto in Liguria and dan dan noodles in China and coconut patties in the Virgin Islands and lutenitsa in Bulgaria and green mango salad in Cambodia, I have continued to fry chicken and make hoppin’ john and shrimp and grits wherever I have lived. And...

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Athens, Georgia; February 28, 2025: I guess it is a bit ridiculous to write about roast chicken since so many others have already tackled the subject. But everyone has a different take on fowl. Laurie Colwin, the novelist who penned for Gourmet for many years before her untimely death, wrote that roast chicken is “the perfect dish no matter what the circumstances.” Simon Hopkinson, the renowned British chef, declared in Roast Chicken and...

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Athens, Ga; February 23, 2025: I posted a photo on social media of egg cartons (each containing a US dozen Grade A Large eggs) costing $8.99/ea and got all kinds of comments, many from upper middle class folks like me who can afford to buy fresh, so-called free-range eggs from local farmers’ markets eggs whose bright orange yolks stand up tall and whose whites whip up taller and whiter than those industrial, grocery store eggs. (More on that...

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February 16, 2025; Athens, Georgia: The past few months have been a whirlwind as we have bought a house and car and are getting used to being back in this country which seems to have changed dramatically since we last lived here. Friends posted overseas in various government and nonprofit jobs are trying to figure out how to get by as their jobs are ripped out from under them and they watch the humanitarian, educational and medical programs they...

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Somewhere deep in the South, July 21, 2024: I have written about native American “slip-skin” grapes so many times in the past that it seems redundant to repeat my musings now. An essay I wrote thirty-five years ago appeared in the anthology of my work, Charleston to Phnom Penh, published last year by the University of South Carolina Press. Alas, scuppernongs and muscadines are appearing in the markets now, and I thought I would...

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This is a repeat of an early blog, from July 2007. This squash casserole is so simply perfect that it bears repeating: Washington DC; July 2027: I got involved in a community garden here in DC. My neighborhood, traditionally African American and Hispanic, is rapidly being gentrified, but I wanted to grow some traditional old southern favorites like okra and cowpeas with my neighbors while introducing them to other heirloom varieties such as the...

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