A Food and (Once & Future) Travel Blog
I know, I know, it’s been a while since I last posted waaaaaay back in March. Sorry, things all of sudden became very busy with our sausage business. It was right about then Cheryl and I were applying to local farmers markets for the summer. As delicious as they are, the sausages don’t sell themselves! Continue reading “I’m ba-ack! Smoked Boudin and Polenta to Celebrate a Good Summer”
Wayyyy back in January I made some gnocchi Parisienne for Cheryl’s birthday dinner. Well one of them. It was much more decadent than this dish since there were copious amounts of black truffles shaved on them. Cheryl remarked that it would be ok if I made gnocchi Parisienne more often. I was flipping through Michael White’s Classico e Moderno trying to figure out what to make for Sunday dinner a couple of weeks ago and saw a recipe for gnocchi with walnut and gorgozola cream sauce. I wasn’t in the mood to do the whole potato thing and I also didn’t want to use pre-made, so, remembering Cheryl’s words I decided it would be a good time to make the gnocchi Parisienne again. And she says I don’t listen!Continue reading “Gnocchi Parisienne with Walnut & Gorgonzola Sauce”
Happy Groundhog Day! Much like the wily marmot monax I’ve been hibernating a little bit. It’s all good though, more on that later. One of the things on my to-do list this week was to send in my passport for renewal. I can’t believe it’s been 10 years already.Continue reading “A Passport Tells A Lot of Stories…”
Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s. We finished off 2016 in Edinburgh, Scotland spending Christmas with Cheryl’s sister Shelly and her husband Ross. On the way back we stopped off to see my family in the beautiful Mid-Hudson Valley of New York which is where we rang in 2017. As a bonus, I got to cook New Year’s Eve dinner with my mom which I really enjoyed doing.Continue reading “Happy New Year! Cooking with Mom – Chicken Provencal”
I promise this is the last post related to our trip. On our first night in Avignon, we dined at L’Agape, a restaurant recommended by our Airbnb host. Awesome dinner. One dish which really caught our attention was their cauliflower soup. Now you’re saying to yourself ‘had to be an amazing cauliflower soup’ and it was (especially for Cheryl to like it!), but the thing which stuck with us was the chewy grain in the soup.Continue reading “Cauliflower Soup with Petit épeautre”
I didn’t want to put this in last week’s post because, let’s be honest here, black winter truffle deserve their own post. When we were planning our Thanksgiving week trip to Avignon I remembered one of the people/places I follow on Twitter is Les Pastras, a farm in Provence. But not just any farm. One with truffles. And truffle hunts. Once we booked our place to stay I sent a request regarding joining a truffle hunt if they had any scheduled. They did!Continue reading “Truffle Hunting in Provence”
I promised you some photos from our trip to Avignon in Provence and here they are! Too short a trip as always but that’s ok, because it just means we’ll have to go back. Over the past few years we’ve discovered traveling internationally over the Thanksgiving holiday/early December can be quite reasonable and enjoyable. Yeah, the weather may be a little drizzly and damp depending where you go (in Europe at least), but since it’s the off-season you don’t have to fight the crowds of tourists. And you save a little money too since you’re not paying high-season prices. Continue reading “Avignon – Thanksgiving Week Abroad”
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! That’s right, we’re abroad in Avignon, France for the week and will be settling in for our own Thanksgiving dinner (duck breast) as soon as I make it. Much smaller affair than if we were back home and it was very easy to do all of the shopping this morning. Warmer than Chicago too. Some very fun posts coming in the next weeks. Cheers!
It’s the week before Thanksgiving and as luck would have it, we’re getting ready to head out of town. Yup, we’re going to be on vacation for Thanksgiving which means I won’t be getting my favorite sausage stuffing this year. Well at least not ON Thanksgiving. Trust me it’s getting made. Anyway, I had some apples I needed to use up before leaving tomorrow so I looked in my mom’s recipe books. Sure enough there was something called Autumn Delight which looked relatively simple and quick.Continue reading “Autumn Delight!”
Tuesday was election day and since neither of us were very enthusiastic about watching the returns I thought the least we could do for ourselves was to have a nice dinner. Unfortunately, I started too late and didn’t braise the beef long enough. Not quite as tender as it should have been. So I did what all enterprising cooks do: turned the leftovers into a soup du jour!Continue reading “Beef and Farro Soup”
The Roaming GastroGnome 