Henry’s Humdingers – A Honey of a Product

Oh man, I found a new local product to love. Well, it’s new to me anyway: Henry’s Humdingers of Deming, which I sampled for the first time yesterday. Am I late to this particular party or do I have the added pleasure of introducing you to this great stuff? Young entrepreneur Henry Miller launched his […]

Wednesdays in Fairhaven: another farmer’s market is open

It’s June, which means we have a second opportunity every week to shop the Bellingham Farmer’s Market. Smaller than the Saturday event, but with its own charming character that fits the Village Green, it houses 25 vendors with much to offer. For example, Spring Frog Farm showcased the first of its outdoor-pick strawberries. I hadn’t […]

Organic, local strawberries: here at last

Actually, we gobbled up our first organic strawberries a couple of weeks ago, thanks to Spring Frog Farm. Crops in bulk clearly are not ripe yet, but for the last three Saturdays Gretchen’s crew has been sharing the first of the season at the farmers’ market. There’s been enough for several shoppers to hand-select a […]

Generations at the stove

I bump into my mom a lot in the kitchen. Not literally; she lives in Texas. But every time I pull out one of her old recipes, with her handwritten scroll still visible through decades of food stains on crinkled paper, I feel her standing right beside me. Recently, when talking my younger son through […]

Blessed in the ‘Ham

At the farmer’s market yesterday, in line at the Grace Harbor Farms stand, a guy next to me remarked, ‘You people don’t know how good you have it here.’ He didn’t just mean because we can enjoy GHF’s honey yogurt anytime we want (although that is a good thing.) He was taking in the whole […]

TED in bulk!

We love TED talks in our family. So, I was delighted to discover last weekend that Netflix recently bundled years of these TED conference speeches, from the first in 1984 through this year, according to theme. (If you’re not familiar with TED, shake hands with it here: http://www.ted.com/ There are more than 1,110 TED talks […]

Eggs for breakfast, lunch. . . and dinner?

Sure! Because it’s only in French that one egg is “un oeuf.”  (Tee hee – get it?)  Once in a while, when pressed for time and feeling a longing that only bacon can tame, someone in our house suggests breakfast for dinner. And what better companion to bacon than the humble, but oh-so-versatile, egg? We […]

The Family Home Meal: Fresh and local, even on a weeknight

The United States Personal Chef Association coined this slogan to explain what its members do: i.e., provide “great tasting food and the precious gift of time, with a convenient and affordable solution to the age-old question, “What’s for dinner?”  True, as a personal chef, I cook for busy people so they can regularly enjoy tasty, […]

Now arriving: Asparagus

Asparagus is surely among my favorite vegetables. There’s something regal about those stalks, the way they stand tall and at attention. There’s something admirable about the way the shoots push their way through the soil, determined, stretching toward the light. There’s something special about it as a harbinger of spring, and precious, given its limited […]

Monday musings

Upon moving to the Pacific Northwest almost 24 years ago, I heard all the regional cliches about the weather. I embraced them as part of my new life in this beautiful part of the world, first in Seattle and, with another move nine years later, in Bellingham. One popular riddle worried me, though. Friends and […]