Part of my job everyday is to make soup. For our lunch buffet for the faculty at Duke we always have two soups (one of which is vegetarian) and the selection changes daily. On Fridays,, we always serve New England Clam Chowder, but the rest of the week is wide
When I walk into work everyday, I do so to the soundtrack of Spanish radio. And part of that soundtrack, which appears to be in heavy rotation, is this percussive-techno-yodeling thing that is infectious in that certain way only a percussive-techno-yodeling thing can be. Long after evening service has started
I heard a sermon on the wilderness this morning, as I’m sure many of you in churches that follow the Common Lectionary did as well. As Betty, one of our in care students preached, I began to hear a chorus in my mind that I learned as a child:
Some years ago, Ginger and I were in Paris and we attached ourselves to edge of a tour group walking through Notre Dame Cathedral, mostly because I wanted to pick up a few more pieces of useless facts and information to store in my brain. The guide was talking about
We run a two-person line in the kitchen at Duke, which means I have one other guy cooking with me at dinnertime. As the year has gone by and we have developed more of a customer base, the two of us stay quite busy; Wednesday night we served 104 dinners.
The word for the day is mirepoix . Relax. I don’t have forty-odd French cooking terms to bend into Lenten metaphors. But I do have two. Mirepoix is the French name for the “trinity” of ingredients that serve as the foundation for most soups: onions, carrots, and celery. In Cajun
I don't come by organization easily. I've never been one to know exactly where a particular piece of paper is, nor one who naturally finds a way to categorize life and collect things in an ordered fashion. I suppose I could compliment myself somehow by saying
I’m not sure when I first heard of Esperanto – high school, I think. Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof invented the language in the late nineteenth century to foster international harmony. Rather than pick one language for everyone to learn, which might leave the native speakers of that language with an
It’s been a long time since I was an English teacher, but I am still capable of correcting mistakes, being bothered more than most by ones we, as a society, have chosen to let slide. “First Annual . . . ,” for example; it can be the first, but it can’t be
Today is the day, baseball fans, when we hear the words we want to hear: "Pitchers and catchers, report." And if you want to know one of the reasons I'm a Red Sox fan, I give you Kevin Youkilis, who just signed a multi-year deal and
I have a growing shelf of books about the experience of being a chef, thanks to my friend Mia who is kind to send one at every birthday and Christmas, and sometimes in between. This Christmas’ offering was The Sharper the Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears
I spent yesterday sorting through the stacks of papers – bills, mailers, magazines, notes, bills accumulated on the dining room table; some required a decision of me; others needed nothing more than to be thrown away. I had to pay attention. I understand more why archaeologists have to dig through layers