Whaddya Think, Doctor Fink?

  Wontons. Kreplach. Tortellini. Dumplings can be found in almost every country. According to CNN, a dumpling is “a pocket of dough filled with some form of savory or sweet stuffing.” That leaves a lot of room for cuisines, fillings, and spices. Legend says the first dumpling was created in China. It was a cold, harsh winter in the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). Zhang Zhongjing was a medical man who dabbled in pharmacology, medicine, and inventions. Zhang

The taco has a very humble beginning. Some believe it was around well before the sixteenth century Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico. According to Unocasa, “indigenous cultures viewed corn as the foundation of humanity or the seed of life.” They perfected the process of nixtamalizing – treating corn with lime and water, then drying, grounding, and producing flour. The nixtamalized corn was used for breads and tortillas. The infamous Montezuma was known to use corn tortillas to scoop out his food. Perhaps that made it easier

                         Birthdays are nature’s way of telling us to eat more cake – Edward Morykwas, author, photographer   It’s time to party! Is it your birthday? A family birthday? Kids? How about friends, pets, and celebrities? That adds up to a lot of celebrations and tasty birthday cakes. How much would you pay for the perfect birthday cake? Let’s find out. Birthday celebrations have been around for ages. According to How

Soup. It’s food for the soul. My legacy soup is rich, buttery red potato. You probably never heard of it. My family came from a small town in Austria-Hungry, beneath the Carpathian Mountains and near the Ukraine border. The soup was made by frying onions in sweet butter, adding diced potatoes, and paprika to turn it red. Water and tiny dough balls made it into  soup. True comfort food! My grandmother brought the recipe with her when she arrived in

So many choices. Peperoni or sausage? Red or white? Deep dish or thin crust? According to the popular saying: You can’t buy happiness. But you can buy pizza, and that’s kind of the same thing. There’s truth in numbers. Pizza is one of the most popular foods on the planet, leading to the question: where did it begin? The answer is in how you define pizza. Is it fast food, gourmet dining, or flat bread with toppings? Consider the facts.

We play with food, laugh about food, and analyze every bite. Food is part of life – it’s been around as long as we have. As a result, there are a lot of funny stories about the precious and hopefully tasty morsels that we consume. Below are just a few true stories . . .  Spaghetti Trees It was April 1, 1957 (April Fool’s Day). Everyone knew that money didn’t grow on trees . . . but spaghetti?  BBC (British

Spaghetti with meatballs? Pad Thai? Mac ‘n cheese? Pasta/ noodles are loved around the world. There are 600 different shapes and thirteen hundred different names for a food that fits into almost every cuisine. Go to Japan and they call it ramen. How about spätzle in Germany, patitsio in Greece, and toasted p’titim in Israel? The world spends over twenty three billion dollars a year on a food that’s been around almost as long as humans. The leader in pasta

    Times are changing. The forks (and spoons) are getting nervous. With inflation, food shortages, droughts, and floods, our culinary future is endangered – like tigers and polar bears. According to Hoffmann, Koplinka-Loehr, and Eiseman in their new book, Our Changing Menu, climate change is messing with our menu. Big time. Imagine life without a gooey hot fudge sundae. Face the day without a tangy Starbuck’s latte. Eat barbecue without flame broiled burgers, ketchup, and salty fries. Let’s look at

  Winter. When I was a kid that meant bundling up against the bitter cold and piling into the car. Mom and Dad took us to the original Nathan’s in Brooklyn – long before most people knew the name. We bought huge servings of French Fries, smothered in salt, ketchup, and mustard, loving the steamy crunch. Little did we know that our delicious fries weren’t French but the magic of Nathan Handwerker. Handwerker couldn’t imagine that Nathan’s Famous would grow

  Food says a lot about you. Are you a chocolate or vanilla person? Coffee or tea? Pizza or wonton soup? What’s in a last meal? How many “last” meals did you have before going on a diet or eating at a friend’s house (who is a terrible cook)? What about the last meal of summer or the holidays?  Last meals are fun to think about (just one more scoop of ice cream or another slice of pizza). Let’s take a