Stephanie says

After loading up grocery shopping at Eugene’s Grocery Outlet, I had to search for pantry space.   Everything is overflowing, from the freezers to the dry goods storage.   Maybe it’s subconscious preparation for a weather emergency or the Cascadian Fault Line quaking us the big one.   Even with that in mind, it’s absurd to keep buying food, because everything in the freezers would require cooking or rot.   But that store had so many new organic products I just couldn’t resist. I hereby vow not to buy anything else until I’ve cooked up what’s here.   The exception being some hypothetical missing ingredient desperately needed for a recipe on the menu and in the works. In an inspired moment I came up with a totally new recipe:   Chicken, gnocchi, and marinated artichokes.   I typed those ingredients into a search engine, and guess what?   It was not an original thought.   Okay, new to me works.   I’ll name this after it come...

I so love this PBS show.   I get this warm, fuzzy feeling watching Chef Vivian Howard with general manager (and husband) Ben Knight make their North Carolina restaurant a success.  This show is a testament to the localvore movement but goes beyond local ingredients - creative cooking interspersed with a glimpse of family life with small children, and the occasional side-trip to Vivian’s league of Southern ladies who cook in the old ways.   They are earnest and charming and eager to share their knowledge.   Delightful.     And a source of inspiration to Vivian.   She goes back to the restaurant and tweaks the recipes into another level of delicious.  This is the third season and I so enjoy watching.   I don’t have occasion to cook much these days and I miss it. The daily grind of working in a restaurant is brutally hard labor, (okay, I’ve never worked in one, but can imagine.)  A wonderful spirit of creativity and camarade...