For someone for whom Italian restaurants are a bucket list destination (I’d rather eat at Sonny’s than prowl the ruins of Machu Picchu), the opening of a new Italian eatery nearby is akin to a Van Gogh immersion exhibit coming to town.    One could make a case that my love for Italian food […]

No matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid cooking. Here are some great ways to make your time in the kitchen a little more fun.

   The good news was that Carol’s grandson’s soccer game was near our favorite San Clemente Italian restaurant. The bad news was that the game ended at the regular dinner hour. On a Sunday. As we drove past the restaurant, the entrance looked like a Best Buy just before opening on Black Friday. We drove […]

Photo credit: Roberta Deutschman    Carol’s second grandchild celebrated his 13th birthday this past weekend. He is half-Jewish and half-Catholic, which means he feels twice as guilty all the time. It also means he likes to eat. And so it came to pass, that for his celebration of achieving manhood, he would get in touch […]

   I’ve written earlier that having grown up in the Deep South, the first rule of cooking is, if you don’t know what it is, fry it. In the bayou country of Louisiana, where my family comes from, that maxim is a little more refined: if it moves, fry it.    Thus it was, I […]

   Back when I believed in reincarnation, I announced to anyone who’d listen that I wanted to come back as an Italian. “A tile and grout man, I really don’t care, as long as I have an Italian grandmother.” In other words, I wanted to reincarnate for the food. That’s why when I saw that […]

  Carol got me a pasta maker for Christmas. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not at all like giving your wife a vacuum cleaner or a clothes washer. I wanted one. During the year, I had expressed an interest in making homemade pasta for the fun of it. I had also expressed an […]

As I continue to age, I’m losing more and more hair. That’s only natural, and I have no problem with it. What I’m having increasing problems with is that the hair that I have left is becoming more and more annoying and irritating..

Carol insisted I put the phrase “making homemade bread” in the first sentence of this blog, if I intended to keep the title as it is.. For New Orleanians, making bread is more of a quest than a kitchen hobby. The famous “french bread” of the New Orleans po-boy sandwich is as critical to Crescent City cuisine as Slap Yo Mamma crawfish boil. I

;The other day after returning from a jog, Carol observed, “You know, Reid, you sweat a lot, but you don’t stink.” The alarm bells sounded immediately. Loss of smell can signal the onset of coronavirus. But later that day she noted, “I think they’re cooking fish next door.”