Category Archives: Essays

I actually do know what good coffee tastes like. So, before I write about cheap coffee, I want to state that I am actually rather picky about the coffee I drink. In fact, when I owned a natural foods store about 30 miles south of Iowa City, Iowa, I carried and served coffee from CafeContinue reading “Drinkable Cheap Coffee”

There’s a sight that brings a smile to my face when I stand a short distance in front of my parent’s gravestone. I can look out and see all the old farmers I grew up working for who lived near us: Eddie and Virgene Uthof, Lloyd and Dorothy Kern, and Willard and Hulda Menz. It’sContinue reading “Star Dawn”

I once had occasion to shadow several cooks of Nepali heritage who had been refugees from Bhutan. I observed them cooking a meal, writing down every ingredient as it was prepped and every step as the dishes were made. I then turned my notes into a standard recipe format that others could follow. There wasContinue reading “MSG”

In the 1920’s and ’30’s, my grandparents farmed in Freedom Township, which is a rural area east of Emmetsburg, Iowa. According to family legend, when Charles Lindbergh flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927 and landed in Paris, my grandfather set his wind generator-powered radio in front of the speakerContinue reading “Mass Communications”

The favorite pie of my brothers and I came from this cookbook which my mom inherited from her mom who belonged to the women’s group that created it. After my mom passed away about 15 years ago, the cookbook was lost in a family tragedy – it went to my oldest brother. I decided toContinue reading “Freedom Township Cookbook, 1934”

I don’t know why this was the thing I wanted to save from the farm but it was. As all the things were being packed up or sold off or thrown away, this was the thing I wanted to remind me of the farm I grew up on. It’s not a very practical thing toContinue reading “The Cider Press”

I like being a home cook. People mean it as a compliment when they say, “You could sell this,” or, “You should enter a contest,” but I think, maybe, what’s behind that – unconsciously – is the notion that what you’re doing is not valid unless you are doing it to make money or toContinue reading “Cooking is Drudgery.”