Get ready to embark on a journey of culinary exploration that will reveal the unsung hero of our taste experience, the trigeminal nerve. This often-overlooked fifth sense plays a profound role in our ...
If your garden is looking anything like ours is at this point in the season, the herbs are beginning to wane and you’re quickly realizing the time has come to clip your herbs for the last time, ...
How do you preserve a memory? Are yours sparked by pictures? Can you inhale a certain aroma and be taken back in time? Maybe there is a particular sound that uploads a hard drive in your mind? It is ...
I have frequently talked about “taste memories” in previous blog posts: How the taste or aroma of something brings back memories from long ago. They often take me to a place or event with loved ones ...
One of my very favorite classes to teach at The Chopping Block is our Flavor Dynamics class. In this class, we explore taste versus flavor. It is an in-depth look of all the five basic tastes: salty, ...
Aromatics from around the World: Mire Poix, Soffritto, Refogado, Holy Trinity
Growing up homesteading in Iowa in the 60’s and 70’s gave me tremendous exposure to fresh food. We didn’t really eat frozen or packaged food, in part because we couldn’t afford it but also because it ...
The first Crossroads Diner: At the Intersection of Hospitality & Community of 2020 takes a turn down memory lane, back to my high school days. A relatively unsupervised 3-month summer stay in ...
I remember the first time a house-made salad dressing rocked my world. It was the summer of 1988, and I was bussing tables at a swanky new bistro in town. I was 17, and just beginning what would ...
I have been growing a tremendous number of herbs in Michigan and experimenting with different preservation methods for them. It's been revelatory for me! Before I started drying my own herbs, I had ...
Open up your spice cabinet right now and take a good long look. How old are your dried herbs and spices? Have some followed you from one apartment to the next? Unless your jar of oregano has ...
