For many of us, it’s the high season for a true summer treat: salsa verde. I’d been eating this stuff in restaurants for years, but didn’t uncover its mysteries until I happened upon some tomatillos at the farmer’s market one day. As serendipity would have it, the next day I was talking with one of my daughter’s…
We’ve been waiting for a long time… watching and re-watching Aaron Franklin’s PBS TV episodes on YouTube, watching Tony Bourdain and other food celebrities enthuse on TV, re-reading our copy of Texas Monthly where he took top honors, and peeking in the margins of the images for secrets and trying to pick up nuances of his…
My first Weber kettle was purchased when my wife and I were living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so between holiday travels to visit family and several occasions when the kettle was encased in ice, I wasn’t able to try my hand at turkey-roasting until we moved to Virginia. Which had it’s own challenges…
He was a regular guy, with a regular guy name: Bruce. A mechanic, if I remember correctly, with hands weathered by years of working on HVAC equipment. We knew each other from church, but he was wary of church. He grew up there, and obviously liked a lot about it, but was somehow distant at…
I grew up in the Midwest, including college and grad school outside Chicago, and then had an opportunity to do my internship in the Bay Area of California. It was a grand adventure. My wife and I quit our jobs, piled most of our stuff in Gram and Gramp’s basement, stuffed our small car to…
It is a question that is not often asked explicitly, but usually implicitly with a quizzically poised eyebrow while I drone on about minutiae regarding outdoor cooking: “Why the obsession with grilling, Mike?” There are a million answers to that question, each one stacking up on top of the ones that came before it, just…
This Thanksgiving, my family and I decided to stretch out our feasting– we would join some friends at a church nearby on the big day, then gather with a smaller group on Friday for a quieter get-together. Which meant a lot of fun and friendship, but which also meant a chance for this die-hard Weber…
