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...

There is a requirement that goes unstated on the application to cook at any upstanding restaurant. Sure, worthwhile experience is helpful. Jeez, education can even contribute a bit to the potential for meaningful employment. But, there is a certain degree of insanity that must go with the wanton desire to be bitten by the most dangerous of bugs, the Passionus Cookus, as if Passion is The Force. The Mojo. The Moxy. If you do not have that pickle in your jar, there is little in the way of a long term...

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...