Category: travel

where my mouth has taken me…

travel: woo pig sooie… (2017)

~ In the decades since I last visited my neighboring state to the south, I have heard increasing praise for Arkansas’s upper-left corner.  Home to three Fortune 500 companies – Tyson Foods, J.B. Hunt (a trucking company), and, most notably, the Wal-Mart empire – NWA (the local shorthand for Northwest Arkansas) is the fastest growing area of […]

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travel: woo pig sooie… (2017)

~ In the decades since I last visited my neighboring state to the south, I have heard increasing praise for Arkansas’s upper-left corner.  Home to three Fortune 500 companies – Tyson Foods, J.B. Hunt (a trucking company), and, most notably, the Wal-Mart empire – NWA (the local shorthand for Northwest Arkansas) is the fastest growing area of […]

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favorites of 2016: the restaurant edition…

~ In the past, I’ve used this final, year-end blog post to marvel at just how well I’ve eaten in the preceding 12 months. Over the years, that emphasis has grown dull and unnecessary.  By now, those who read this blog know that, when it comes to eating, I’m getting along all right. Explaining my process for evaluating meals and dissecting […]

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favorites of 2016: the restaurant edition…

~ In the past, I’ve used this final, year-end blog post to marvel at just how well I’ve eaten in the preceding 12 months. Over the years, that emphasis has grown dull and unnecessary.  By now, those who read this blog know that, when it comes to eating, I’m getting along all right. Explaining my process for evaluating meals and dissecting […]

Continue

favorite desserts of 2016…

– What is happening in pastryland? In 2015, I described a slow-down and a top-off, as the energy and excitement that I first noticed propelling dessert-making into a new era half a decade ago began to level.  And as that unbridled sprint into the unknown, which had charted new and exciting territory, suddenly slowed, the language and form of pastry in this new era seemed to […]

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favorite desserts of 2016…

– What is happening in pastryland? In 2015, I described a slow-down and a top-off, as the energy and excitement that I first noticed propelling dessert-making into a new era half a decade ago began to level.  And as that unbridled sprint into the unknown, which had charted new and exciting territory, suddenly slowed, the language and form of pastry in this new era seemed to […]

Continue

favorite dishes of 2016…

~ In 2015, I yawned. So, in 2016 I did something about it. I took my foot off the culinary gas pedal, tuned out the lists and rankings, and returned to the basics. I’ve never been a conformist, but, more than previous years, I focused on eating where I had found joy before.  And, when […]

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favorite dishes of 2016…

~ In 2015, I yawned. So, in 2016 I did something about it. I took my foot off the culinary gas pedal, tuned out the lists and rankings, and returned to the basics. I’ve never been a conformist, but, more than previous years, I focused on eating where I had found joy before.  And, when […]

Continue

travel: hemispheres and horizons…

– The calendar has turned for the twelfth time on this blog, and once again, I find myself nearly immobilized by the daunting task of gathering the previous year in one post.  What has proven perennially to be one of my most challenging exercises, pausing to regroup, reflect, and record at year-end has turned out to be one of the most […]

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travel: hemispheres and horizons…

– The calendar has turned for the twelfth time on this blog, and once again, I find myself nearly immobilized by the daunting task of gathering the previous year in one post.  What has proven perennially to be one of my most challenging exercises, pausing to regroup, reflect, and record at year-end has turned out to be one of the most […]

Continue

travel: quiet corners…

~ My friend Mark was digging into a salad he had packed.  The late-autumn sun was dropping quickly toward the tree line, and with it, the temperature.  It began to rain, lightly. The two of us were sitting up in a blind barely large enough for one of us. Packed in like canned sardines, standing practically chest-to-chest, I was scouting […]

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travel: quiet corners…

~ My friend Mark was digging into a salad he had packed.  The late-autumn sun was dropping quickly toward the tree line, and with it, the temperature.  It began to rain, lightly. The two of us were sitting up in a blind barely large enough for one of us. Packed in like canned sardines, standing practically chest-to-chest, I was scouting […]

Continue

travel: københavn…

~ If you stitch together all of the days and weeks of my last eight trips to Copenhagen, the ledger will show that I’ve spent over two of the last 22 months in Denmark.  And I’ll be spending another week there on my upcoming trip to Europe, which will mark my twelfth trip to the Danish capital. Although […]

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travel: københavn…

~ If you stitch together all of the days and weeks of my last eight trips to Copenhagen, the ledger will show that I’ve spent over two of the last 22 months in Denmark.  And I’ll be spending another week there on my upcoming trip to Europe, which will mark my twelfth trip to the Danish capital. Although […]

Continue

travel: an agnatic shadow…

– Not surprisingly, the traffic leaving Paris was horrible, so we had fallen behind schedule. Despite that, I insisted that we stop at the Château Chambord on our dip southward to Anjou. It had been over two decades since I last saw it. Although we arrived too late to enter the castle grounds, we paused […]

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travel: an agnatic shadow…

– Not surprisingly, the traffic leaving Paris was horrible, so we had fallen behind schedule. Despite that, I insisted that we stop at the Château Chambord on our dip southward to Anjou. It had been over two decades since I last saw it. Although we arrived too late to enter the castle grounds, we paused […]

Continue

travel: so flirtable….

~ I’ve been playing tag with London all of my adult life: always flirting, but never letting myself get caught in what would surely be a financially devastating love affair. So, perhaps purposefully, I have always kept my visits to the city brief. My recent trip in January was no exception.

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travel: so flirtable….

~ I’ve been playing tag with London all of my adult life: always flirting, but never letting myself get caught in what would surely be a financially devastating love affair. So, perhaps purposefully, I have always kept my visits to the city brief. My recent trip in January was no exception.

Continue

best desserts of 2015…

– I started issuing a list of my favorite desserts in 2011 because I noticed something exciting happening in pastryland, and I wanted a record of it. At the time, many pastry chefs were branching out and exploring new territory, while others hunkered down to improve upon what was already there.  And in just a few, short years, together, they have widened the borders of […]

Continue

best desserts of 2015…

– I started issuing a list of my favorite desserts in 2011 because I noticed something exciting happening in pastryland, and I wanted a record of it. At the time, many pastry chefs were branching out and exploring new territory, while others hunkered down to improve upon what was already there.  And in just a few, short years, together, they have widened the borders of […]

Continue