Spices may be the main attraction at The Spice & Tea Exchange in Ashland, featured in this week’s A la Carte. But the business’ secondary component — tea — has its culinary uses and can lend an unexpected note to familiar dishes. That’s the case in this tea-infused noodle soup created for The Washington Post. [...]
Even the most seasoned cooks have a skeleton in the spice cabinet: the jar of desiccated herbs or powdered, now tasteless, remains of some seed or bark or root. I’ve fallen victim many times to the overzealous overpurchasing of such esoteric spices as juniper berries, reminiscent of potpourri or cleaning products, and poppy seeds, which [...]
“Progressive dining” is the term organizers use to plug a food-and-wine event that kicks off this weekend’s Pear Blossom Festival. In my mind, “food crawl” better describes the Smudge Pot Stroll, a ramble around downtown to taste dishes “peared” (pun absolutely intended) with beverages. A previous post to this blog explains the Smudge Pot Stroll, [...]
Followers of my social-media posts likely saw photos from a family birthday this past weekend. It was my son’s very first such celebration. And as to be expected, his milestone met with much more fanfare than my 35th birthday about a week prior. My gifts, at least, are still waiting to be enjoyed, namely a [...]
For all the panning in gourmet circles of kale as a passé ingredient, the coarse, leafy green has staying power in the locavore movement. Among the few pieces of truly fresh, in-season, local produce in March, kale was featured for precisely that reason in Ashland and Central Point school cafeterias under a pilot project with [...]
The warm salad mentioned in this blog’s previous post did, in fact, materialize over the weekend. And true to form, it incorporated ingredients I had on hand instead of those dictated in a recipe. The kale in my garden isn’t quite big enough to pick for salads, but the asparagus is popping up all over [...]
Spring, with greenery sprouting across the landscape, is the time for salads. But the chill in the air calls for more warmth and sustenance than raw vegetables provide. This time of year, I dress heavy-duty salads, containing meat and other proteins, with warm dressings often whisked up in a pan of bacon drippings. This technique [...]
For years, I hoped that I was helping people learn to cook by selecting recipes for publication in the newspaper’s weekly food section. This week, I took a more hands-on approach by volunteering to give cooking demonstrations at ACCESS food pantries. The recipes chosen by ACCESS’ food education program coordinators are simple with basic ingredients [...]
The spring garden yields little in the way of immediately edible rewards. In my family’s case, it’s usually rhubarb, spring onions and a few herbs plucky enough to weather winter. For the first time in several years, however, my mother-in-law persisted against my indifference and planted broccoli, which is sprouting up from myriad stems to [...]
Superfoods mentioned in this week’s A la Carte story are just a few examples in a veritable pharmacopeia of ingredients, according to naturopathic physician Lissa McNiel. Highlighting just a few in an upcoming class for Ashland Food Co-op, McNiel noted several others while chatting about the menu. Black rice was among those mentioned for its [...]