Chef Paul Berglund picks through the selection of knives available in Jon Wipfli’s kitchen, hefts a couple of them, and settles on his weapon of choice. Holding it in his left hand, he trues up the root ends of a row of scallions, rocks the knife up toward its tip, and with a single smooth forward stroke, lops off the lineup of unkempt onion dreadlocks.
The beard is magnificent. Untended and unfashionable. The anti-hipster beard. It streams down from his jaw in uneven rust-colored rivulets, and spreads high up his cheeks and toward his ears in a way that is tempting to compare to a blush, if we weren’t talking about maybe the least blushful person in this zip code.
An American couple living in a remote fold of southern France longed to become part of the local community. Then they got a thrilling invitation to a winemaker’s blending session.
The 40th anniversary of "Simple French Food" reminds us to slow down and enjoy the meal. The confusion arises not from what you might expect in a French cookbook — complexity, unfamiliar terms, technical difficulty — but from the recipe’s merciless spareness and simplicity.
For this Romanian family from St. Paul, the weekend before Christmas is a holiday unto itself: "Pull on your gloves, boys. It's time to mix some sausage." According to family legend, Eva Lapadat arrived in New York by ship from Beba Veche, Romania, in 1937, with three dollars in the pocket of her housecoat.
Because you were my milk swiller, my wild singer of rhymes, because you gave them hell from swing sets and the tops of slides, because the pendulum of a knee-length diaper called into question no part of your bossy authority,
Through a University of Minnesota program, novice beekeepers receive training and education – and, not so incidentally, improve conditions for the health of bees nationwide.
If figs look like foreign interlopers in this dry place, dusty green olive trees, with their voluptuous fruit and dark tropical greenery, look right at home. Which, of course, they are. One proposed definition of the limits of the Mediterranean region is simply "where olives grow."
The zucchini of the French countryside transforms the plate of everyday families. This is a hot, dry region. By all rights, it shouldn't produce anything as sumptuously lush as grapes and figs.
Steve and Mary Jo Hoffman of St. Paul are living in a small village in the Languedoc region of southern France with their two children this fall. Steve will write a monthly letter about their experiences, illustrated with Mary Jo's photographs.