A trip to Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market just before the dawn of summer is as much a visit to a showcase of a glorious food as it is an entertaining flight of discovery. Most of the produce is domestic, if not local, and the spring bounty bears a selection of such timely items that at no other time of the year will they be available; the fiddlehead ferns are gloriously verdant, the asparagus...

This is not so much a rant as it is a commentary. An observation. Or, more accurately, a series of observations. Perhaps diatribe is more apropos. It is welling up, like the steam in a pressure cooker and needs somewhere to go. Now, the lid is off…
To where did consideration go? No, not the ‘r word’. “Yo, you don’t give me no respect… I don’t give you no respect.” Nor is this a polite issue. Considerate: “showing concern for the rights and feelings of others.” Showing concern for others....

Somewhere just past indulgence, but before uncomfortable gluttony comes a meal so profoundly over the top, so historically significant to the gourmand, it can only be captured with a flutter of the heart, perhaps skipping a beat, gentle sweat across the brow and trembling to the toes. A raised hair on the back of the neck is not out of the question. Somewhere around foodgasmic is apropos. On a recent foray to Las Vegas, I made my way to the MGM Grand to be in the presence of some of the greats....

Before I became a teacher, or more accurately, before I started learning how to teach, I had to learn how to cook.
I never wanted to be a cook. Actually, I never thought about being a cook. It was not that it was not reputable enough, nor that it lacked moneymaking potential. I really did not have an inkling of what went on behind the door that the blue-haired lady disappeared behind. It just was not on my top-ten list of “things to do.” Rock drummer, yes. Computer geek, yes. Roadie for...