It was a fine way for five women to spend the Fourth of July, lolling around a backyard pool and pondering how many calories per hour lolling expends.

I 've been trying to get a monkey off my back for years. A baking monkey. The worst kind. Baking and I have a long, contentious history. There was the Moravian sugar cake that overflowed into the bottom of the oven and caught fire. The Christmas ang

Good cheese is almost a living thing. Its flavor and texture change with the climate and seasons in a reminder of the natural world.

Church potlucks couldn't be held without it. Holiday tables without it would have just bowls of naked green beans. I'm talking about that universal glue of casseroles everywhere, canned cream of mushroom soup.

A Bloody Mary was the first real mixed drink I ever consumed. I don't count my indulgences at college parties in the 1970s, which had a standard formula: soda plus large dose of alcohol. Those were things such as ginger ale and bourbon, cola and ru

If Foy Allen Edelman hadn't decided to make a 180-degree turn in her life, she would have never heard the collard poem.

For many years, my sole guiding tenet was not to be like my mother. It has taken until now, almost five decades into my life, to concede that she did exactly the same thing.

Ah, it's that glorious time of year. No, I don't mean that you finally finished the Thanksgiving leftovers and you can see the bottom of the refrigerator again. I mean that special time for lovers of sport, when football and basketball seasons meet

Is it a ride at the fair? A breed of hunting dog? Fishing tackle? What is sonker?

I 've heard a lot of questions asked at parties but never, until Labor Day weekend, this one: "Dean, is this the finest chinois you have?" The questioner, holding a pot of hot broth, didn't like the answer ("That's all I've got.") and began looking

M y grandmother worked in the kitchen alone, her canning and jelly-making stretching back to the days when women didn't do it for fun or for gourmet treats, but to have food during the winter.

Sugar is taken for granted even more than salt. When you spill salt, superstition dictates that you throw a bit over your shoulder for good luck. You spill sugar, you just whisk it into the trash. Sugary drinks and snacks are regarded today as demon

They look like big bugs on a plate, which is part of the fun for me, although others think they're critters from a Halloween movie.

The clay soil of my father's vegetable garden was tangerine-colored, as hard as roof tile during dry times and sloppy-sticky in wet ones.

Tonight, many movie fans -- plus wine fans and wine fan wannabes -- will be lifting glasses of Pinot Noir (no bleeping Merlot) and cheering for "Sideways" to take home an Academy Award.

At the start of a new year, many people at least think about change.

Most people do it this time of year: Look back at what we accomplished (or didn't) during the past 12 months, and gaze forward into those 365 new promising, mysterious days ahead.

For the last two years, Cycle North Carolina has been plagued by rain like Joseph Smith was plagued by locusts.