Tomato Basil Soup with Green Beans and Beet Pesto– Secrets of Skinny Cooking

Membership in a local CSA (community supported agriculture) presents a pleasant challenge—to eat fresh that which is in season. As a relatively new Louisiana gardener, I am on the steep and ascending edge of the learning curve. So far this year I’ve struck gold on Creole tomatoes, okra, limes and jalapeno peppers. They say eggplants […]

Tartine-Style Polenta Cornbread and Tomato Sauces

Mix it till it looks like quicksand, he’d say. Till it moves like a slow song sounds. Patricia Smith’s description of making cornbread with her father is perfect. Dough churning like a slow song sounds, smooth but with grit and fleck. I’ve made cornbread so many many ways. In waffles with chili, on a skillet […]

Sun Dried Tomato Soup

Red, without question, my favorite color. Last week in the operating room I arrived at a robust hypothesis as to why I have always been irrevocably drawn to red. I think, evolutionarily, it has something to do with blood. In surgery, no matter how hard I try, I cannot fully repress my physical alarm to […]