Sweet Tea and Coffee Spoons

You can almost hear the eye-rolling when another diner surveys the content of my plate. "Paleo?" he asks.  "No," I respond. I might as well follow through.  "Gluten-free." The diner now surveys me to see if he can discern what's wrong with me. Perhaps this will lead to a rather personal Q and A, through which this individual will deem that I, indeed, may continue to eat as I wish.  Perhaps this will lead to a dismissal of gluten-free as a fad.  Perhaps I'll be treated to an anecdote of another experimental person on the gluten-free path. It's tempting just to say I'm allergic to wheat as determined by an elaborate skin-prick test by a leading allergist. It's mostly true. But I don't go there. I'm one of those annoying folks who have some actual food allergies and other food sensitivities. I've found that it's best just to eat what I know is safe for me and to avoid what isn't.  It's that simple. ...

I’m not really sure when the shift to becoming a foodie occurred. My parents loved to brag about our road trip to Quebec and how their seven-year daughter survived for three weeks on little more than yet another variation of a grilled cheese sandwich. I also made it to Denver and back a few times, subsisting on much the same diet. Why grilled cheese? Onions. It’s simple: I abhor onions and had reached a gross-out point at which I could not bear the taste of one more unexpected onion entering my mouth. I’d been bombarded in the least likely places. At the beach, I cried over my salad when I realized some maniac had slipped raw onions into the Thousand Island dressing. I recoiled when hamburger after hamburger still bore witness to the remnants of chopped onions a line cook had scraped off my order. Few foods were safe: grilled cheese, seafood, raw veggies, dessert, and tea. Even French fries were suspect since they were fried alongside onion rings. It’s not that I’m a particular...

Inaugural Chicken Apple Soup There comes a time when your trusted appliances begin to fade, slipping in consistency and reliability – not even coming on at all when you’ve trusted them to do their job. That’s right. The crock pot let me down. Granted, it’s apparently not quite “mostly dead,” but has enough of a short sporadically to go on strike. So, I struck back. Yep. Bought a new one. Cuter. Smaller. And, thus far, it works reliably. So what to make for the inaugural pot? Chicken Apple Soup. Here’s the basic plan: Take ½ a cooked chicken, remove bone and skin, throw it in the pot with 4 cups of chicken broth and 4 cups of water. Finely chop 3 ribs of celery. Peel, core, and slice 3 apples. Slice 2 medium pieces of candied ginger. Add these and ½ teaspoon of salt (I used the pink), 2 teaspoons of fresh parsley and 2 of fresh cilantro. Add a few drops of lemon oil. Stir. Walk away. Check every now and then. Eat eventually. Why? This recipe reminds me of my grandmother’...

Just a Little Note about Sweet Tea Sweet tea, fondly regarded as the nectar of the South, pours seemingly endlessly over ice via hostesses and servers who fear an empty glass or thirsty guest. Whether garnished with lemon or mint, tea is a staple of life. We Southerners aren't really quite sure what to make of guests who ask for no ice. What's that about? After all, local burger joints and famed sandwich shops proudly proclaim "Sweet Tea over Crushed Ice" for their patrons. We've been known to determine a restaurant of choice for the deciding factor of crushed ice over cubed. Unsweet tea, known as "unsweetened" to the rest of the world, isn't completely an anomaly as some folks are always watching their sugar intake. Of course, it's understood that there are basically two acceptable reasons to request unsweet tea: weight loss or health issues such as diabetes. Those with taste preferences should expect to receive "the look" rese...