In writing this blog it’s tempting to only recount the successes, to post only photos of the beautiful finished dishes and regale you, gentle reader, with semi-authoritative recipes.
In short, it’s easy to make cooking look easy.
But cooking is not easy. Nor is it safe.
There are the everyday, ordinary debacles. Biscuits that look beautiful, but [...]

This just in from the The (Va.) Daily Press in Tidewater:
In the beginning, there was ham.
The very first English settlers in Virginia — the original Jamestown colonists — brought pigs with them when they crossed the Atlantic. The first wave in 1607 brought three, historians tell us.
In short order, that trio of oinkers increased to [...]

“Sugar and shape are the only difference between biscuits and scones,” posits famed New York Times food writer Molly O’Neill.
In her 1998 piece “Jam Session,” she explores the connection between the American south’s long marriage to light, airy biscuits and Scotland’s fondness for the sweet tea cakes called scones.
Both are leavened with baking powder [...]

I can’t wait to throw my next dinner party just so I can show off everything I’ve learned about wine since watching “John Cleese’s Wine for the Confused.”
Based on the premise that good wine is what tastes good to you and fits your budget, Cleese’s show makes a supremely useful introduction to the overly complicated [...]

ELLISTON — Dave Long can remember when Montgomery County had more than a dozen dairy farms and supported four family-owned feed and flour mills.
Today he can count the number of local dairies on one white powdered hand, and Big Spring Mill, owned and operated by his family since 1935, is the only mill left standing.
Read [...]