Have you ever been invited to look through somebody else’s recipe collection? Maybe your grandparents’? Or your mom or dad’s, or your mother-in-laws’? At times like that, the wrinkled, stained and water-spotted ones always catch my eye, because those are…
With Christmas and New Year’s Eve festivities just around the corner, here are some recipes for party foods that are known to be devoured in no time. An empty dish versus food that sits around and gets cold is a…
Although most pomegranates are and have been cultivated throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and the Indian subcontinent for centuries, today the fruit can be found growing in California and Arizona. Besides being a wellspring of minerals, raw pomegranate seeds provide…
In my last post, I mentioned that I suffer from lactose intolerance. And when I write suffer, I mean suffer. Giving up ice cream has been one of the most difficult and challenging things I’ve ever had to do. But as…
It’s difficult to describe the rambutan…It helps to be familiar with the texture and flavor of Lychee fruit, and the strange, otherworldliness of sea urchins. According to Wikipedia, the rambutan (a name which refers to the tree and the fruit) is native to tropical regions…
I’ve been told that men tend to gain a lot of weight in their thirties. I keep hoping that will happen to me. I could stand to gain a pound or two. But all I’ve gotten so far is lactose intolerance, and…
Has it ever happened to you that two things enter your life at the same time, and forever after it’s nearly impossible to think of one without also thinking of the other? It happened to me about twelve years ago. It…
If I didn’t have other cookbooks to keep it pinned between, my Fanny Farmer cookbook would completely fall to pieces. It’s true. Just about every page within its sad, decrepit cover has become unglued. And the spine has given up entirely. On a few occasions I’ve…
Right about now the Mums begin rolling into Wolff’s and taking over the place like some kind of bizarre alien invasion. It seems like every day more cloudbursts of color are added to the expanding floral grid. Their arrival coincides with…
Some things take a long time to learn about oneself, while other things take none at all. After scaling, gutting, and prepping fish for a brief stint at a small Greek restaurant in Federal Hill, Baltimore, I had a pretty good idea of…
The single memory from my childhood of eating watermelon centers more upon the large, black, unpleasant, inedible seeds than it does the deliciously sweet and totally consumable flesh. It is a memory which speaks volumes about the kind of person I am. It’s no secret how I…
I’m fully allowed to taste the produce at Wolff’s Apple House. As their resident chef, it’s part of my job. Nevertheless, there is always a moment (right about the time I lift the fruit from the display) when it feels criminal. Like I’m getting away with something.…
Some heirloom tomato varieties hardly resemble tomatoes at all. That’s what one might think, anyway. The truth is that only in the last hundred years did tomatoes become so uniformly round, and red, and (Let’s admit it!) often flavorless. That’s all changed, of course.…
On any given day Wolff’s buyer, Lisa McWaters, is in the process of introducing a new product onto the shelves. The process can take anywhere from a day, to several weeks. There is usually a trial period where Wolff’s employees…
If you met me ten years ago and we struck up a conversation about favorite foods, I would have proudly admitted that I preferred sandwiches over all else. Especially grilled sandwiches. The same holds true today… I love grilled sandwiches. A grilled cheese sandwich was the first thing…
Whether whores first invented puttanesca is no concern of mine. The sauce is bright, flavorful, pungent, and goes with just about anything you can scrounge together. Including the ubiquitous green bean. Literally translated, alla puttanesca means “in the style of a prostitute.” It is…
The poisonous leaves of the rhubarb plant can cause a variety of symptoms including stomach pain, nausea, and breathing difficulty. The bright red stalk of the rhubarb plant, on the other hand, is totally edible and can cause delight, a…
For someone who grew up eating uniformly bleach-white supermarket eggs, all natural, free range eggs were a revelation. My wife used to run a farm, and it was there that I first encountered them. It was on that farm where I witnessed firsthand the obvious benefits of allowing…
At the risk of sounding totally counterculture, I would like to confess that I love tropical fruit. That is, I thoroughly enjoy consuming fruits that have been harvested in tropical regions, packaged, and shipped across the globe. I enjoy these…
It could have been the alcohol. But more likely it was just foolish pride… Having paid good money for my culinary education, I wasn’t about to let myself be upstaged by some amateur food enthusiast. Especially not in front of others.…
Meals that I made when I moved into my first apartment stay in my memory and remain my favorites. Frying up an omelet and adding anything I had on hand– caramelized onions, tomatoes, sometimes even corn or black beans– was…
In the winter, I make soup. When the winter as is long and relentless as it has been this year, I find comfort wherever I can. In many mugs of peppermint tea or cinnamon tea. In cozying up under a…
Never heard of Seckel Pears? Well, you’re not alone. The Seckel Pear is relatively unknown across the country, but it’s one of the Delaware Valley’s hidden treasures. It was developed here in the Southeastern Pennsylvania in the early 1800’s by a farmer named Mr.…
A few summers ago, I stood face to face with a few vegetables that scared me. I love to eat almost all veggies, but I have met a few I didn’t know how to prepare. As I looked at the…
Last week, my husband and I stopped into a local sandwich place for a bite to eat. I was hungry for salad, and selected this particular salad because the words “chick-pea” were in its name. When we settled down to…
I was probably about six the first time I can remember my mom baking her own pizza dough. After that, it became a family tradition: Friday nights were pizza nights, and her homemade dough, stretched to the corners of a…
I sat across from my cousin’s nine-year-old son this Thanksgiving. A big platter of cranberry sauce gleamed on the table between us. Greedily, we both stared at it. “Well, my friend,” I said. “Looks like there’s half for you and…
If you’ve visited wolfsapplehouse.com in the past, no doubt you’ve noticed our new look! On July 15, 2011 we launched our new website, which reflects the authentic beauty of our century old store, makes it easy to find quality information…
