Good Press

Sixty-five years ago, a volunteer fire department in the county where I live in West Virginia started holding a fundraising festival celebrating the area's agriculture -- a large part of which was the buckwheat that was harvested and milled into flour. Buckwheat is no longer the "insurance crop" farmers planted back then; a handful of farmers plant it now and a lot of the flour that is milled every fall for the festival starts out as buckwheat that's trucked in from a neighboring state. But a staple of the Preston County Buckwheat Festival remains: buckwheat cakes and fresh-ground whole-hog sausage dinners. Buckwheat cakes are pancakes (but don't call them that here -- the most my fellow Prestonians have ever let me get away with is "griddle cakes"). Buckwheat flour is flour but it's not from a grain; it's actually a fruit, from the rhubarb family. Doesn't taste like it though. At festival time there are lots of fund-raising dinners (plus peo...

There are simple, inexpensive ways to make every day elegant and special. Candles are a must in my house. Sometimes just doing something different makes the house or the evening feel special. Use the good dishes on a tablecloth with real napkins. Float the blossom of a flower, even fake, in a wineglass of water. Light a couple of inexpensive candles and you've got instant ambience without spending extra money. Same goes for the food if you choose out-of-the-ordinary recipes that can be made with pantry staples. Weather conditions on Valentine's Day this year were blizzardlike so it was good we hadn't planned to go out. Instead we ate my favorite dinner [right now anyway], spaghetti aglio-olio. And I know I mixed cultures but because I had some Manchego to use up, I made a starter of julienned Granny Smith apples and the Spanish sheep's milk cheese. Chunks of mild, nutty/salty, "crunchy" Manchego are great topped with membrillo aka quince paste, too. I've ...

I haven't been feeling well lately. I'm not sure what's wrong exactly -- could be the heat or could be I've just been pushing myself too hard. I find few foods appealing and stick with bland, starchy, "safe" foods and peppermint or ginger tea. I feel up to cooking about every three days. On Friday I went to Panera Bread to get a bagel for lunch. I chose Asiago, Cinnamon Crunch and Blueberry to take home and got myself an Everything. I knew it was risky, dried onion and poppy seeds, but after not wanting anything to eat for so long, I gave into this craving. I suffered no adverse effects, but that's not my point. I slowly bit into the bagel and chewed the small bites well before swallowing, not daring to eat fast and shock my system. I noticed something for the first time. There are flakes of kosher salt on Panera's Everything bagels. Sometimes I was conscious of my tooth crunching down on one but more often I felt a salty "pop" on my tongue...