The Kentucky Derby is a hard luck race in a hard luck town. It was settled by people who tried to beat life with a pair of treys. The pickpockets are the only ones who go home winners on Derby Day. Unless you count the concessionaires, who put a nickel’s worth of bourbon in a […]
Eat + Drink
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Rot from the Head
Sushi and chilés — they were the weapons of our courtship; dinner was the battlefield where we challenged each other’s culinary valor and food the forge on which our relationship was tempered. I was already verging into the more intense flavors that would define "Pacific Rim" cuisine. She had the most highly developed sense of […]
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Why Does Food Cost More?
If you’ve been grocery shopping lately, and paying attention at the check-out stand, you know the food we eat has gone up in price. Basic things like bread, milk and eggs are all more expensive than they were last spring — a lot more. And if you’ve been watching the news, you know food prices […]
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Living on the Water
Stephanie Silva directed her own modern dance company in New York City and is a student of American poet Diane di Prima. She teaches movement and writing. When I was 10 years old I came home with the rehearsed narration of a grown-up joke I had overheard. An impending flood of momentous proportions is about […]
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Here Come the Grains
A different kind of crop is currently growing on approximately 12 acres of farmland in the Arcata Bottoms. After experimenting with wheat and other grains in test plots, Kevin Cunningham decided to expand his production and established the Shakefork Community Farm and its Grain Share Program, based on the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. When […]
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Gone to the Dogs
Coney Island was a seaside resort as early as the 1820s. Close enough to Manhattan to afford easy access by ferry, it was distant enough to be an escape from city routines. Walt Whitman wrote of "the long bare unfrequented shore I had all to myself … and where I loved after bathing to race […]
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Pan Bagna
It wasn’t what you typically expect at a birthday party for a 5-year-old. Sure there were hot dogs on the grill for the kids, but there was also an absolutely scrumptious spread of food aimed at the parents in attendance. Among the morsels prepared in advance by Diane, a marvelous cook (and the mother of […]
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Rocciata
From time to time, I bump into a memory kind of violently. For a while I am stunned not knowing what has hit me and from where. This rough awakening sometimes occurs with food memories, a possible side effect of my writing about edible things. When it happens, I try to make the memory come […]
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Forging Dinner
The islands of Erba Verde, reached by secular humanists fleeing the late 15th century Venetian tyrant-priest Girolamo Savonarola, remained a lost, mythical place for centuries. Tales of this magical land, whose name could mean "green grass" or "green herb," fascinated the Portuguese and Spanish, but did not distract them from their obsessive pursuit of gold. […]
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Groceries for a Small Planet
It was all part of someone’s insidious plan, and I fell for it. As I wheeled my cart through the door of the supermarket, I saw the display of carefully arranged peaches, looking, well, just peachy — and in February. Knowing full well that peaches are a summer fruit, which meant these came from halfway […]
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Dinner with George and Martha
Recent quarter-page displays in local newspapers have advertised The Martha Washington Cookbook, by mail, $24. The headline says "Old Cookbook Reveals Amazing Detail’s of Washington’s Dining Habits." There is such a relic, but it is not a cookbook. Several annotated editions have been published since the original manuscript was given to the Pennsylvania Historical Society […]
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Decadence in Red
Story and Spirito di contraddizione was one of the epithets my mother would use in reference to me. I tend to do the opposite of what I am told. I refuse to buy red things and chocolates on Valentine’s Day, but this year I spent the days leading to the celebration of the patron saint […]