Chakhokhbili. I can’t blame you if your first urge was to say Gesundheit when you read this.  Yes, sounds a lot like a sneeze, and for some people it is very hard to pronounce.  Khokhobi in Georgian means pheasant.  Traditionally this dish was made with pheasant, but chicken took its rightful place right next to pheasant because […]

Spring is almost, almost, almost here.  Folks all over the place are visiting their local gardening supply centers, deep discount stores piled up mulch and compost outside their doors, and weather is dig-in-the-dirt friendly more days than it’s not.  Don’t know about you, but I have already caught the gardening bug and got started on […]

How far do you think you can deviate from the original recipe and still be able to recognize it?  I mean, there are hardly any real people out there that have all ingredients on hand at all times.  We are bound to substitute here and there, even omit some stuff, but can we still call […]

Many vegetables happily serve as containers for tasty stuffing — peppers, squash, eggplants cut in half and scooped out will serve as boat-shape stuffing vessels… Some require a bit of work to be turned into containers, say, cabbage or brussels sprouts. But some of them just seem to be waiting to be used as containers, […]

I proclaim the soup season of 2013-14 officially open. Yeah, yeah, I know, we still have at least six more weeks of this hellish heat and humidity, but I can smell the fall already. There is just something in the way the air smells in the morning, the dew beads on the grass blades, the […]

Recently, I received a request for a meat-n-potato type dish for someone who doesn’t eat vegetables.  Not judging. I am sure they have their reasons.  Rather than fussing about it, I took it upon myself to go as fancy as I could with the meat-n-potato idea, as it sounded pretty challenging. My first thought was […]

I am going to say something utterly un-American right now.  But before you start rallying the outraged crowd  to go egg my car, just promise that you’ll finish this article first.  Here it goes: I don’t like burgers.  Whew… got that off my chest.