Culinary

 

Pizza, what can I say, it's in my DNA. Really. My grandfather opened the first pizzeria in Canton, Ohio. Not that I was alive when the family owned it, but it was a weekly homemade meal in my childhood household. While I am no pizza expert, I continue to enjoy making it at home minus the overhead tossing. 

Born in Canton, Ohio and raised in Orlando, Florida by an Italian-Irish family where every meal was an event, Teresa knew at an early age that her career would eventually take a culinary path. Spending most of her childhood years in the kitchen with her mother, Patricia, she learned the art of cooking family meals. She was also influenced by her paternal grandmother, Sophie, who was an amazing baker and home cook.

 

As the year reaches its final hours we have stopped to consider the year in review. We put our minds together and have complied a bit of a scatter-shot list of the trends that have caught our eye.

To aid in this endeavor I have enlisted the help of author and BevX contributor Stacey Ballis, as well as one of our culinary go-to experts, Teresa Lombardi Terrell. Here are our some of the topics that stuck to the wall – so to speak…

I’ve been in a very thoughtful place of late.  The loss of both John Hughes, the passionate chronicler of my adolescence, and Michael Jackson who I loved right up until he lost his ever loving mind and whose music defined my entire childhood, put me in a fog of nostalgia.  I see odd vestiges of my youth everywhere, and it isn’t always pretty.  Neon is making a weird fashion comeback, as are shoulder pads, and I really hope it is short lived.  Remakes of 90210 and Melrose Place are on the

The weather is finally turning, and with the coming of the sun everyone’s minds begin to turn away from the heavy warming foods of Winter, to the lighter fare that Spring heralds. And for many of us, just the slightest intimation of sunshine makes us dream of getting out the grill and preparing ourselves for the coming barbecues. This is no less true for chefs, who get inspired by the changing produce at the markets and menus everywhere get innovative and exciting.

For the Scots, Robert Burns is a national treasure and their greatest poet. Sadly, much of the world is vaguely familiar with his name at best while most know one of his works, Auld Lang Syne (clue, think New Year’s Eve). Much of his work was composed in the Scots Lowland dialect (a dialect of Gaelic) and even his more “international” works were written in English that included many typical Scots words.

Some seek incomparable pieces of art, or rare historical treasures, or perhaps something abstract like the meaning of life. I applaud these lofty pursuits but often I get engrossed with pursuing the simpler things; although if you can tell me where all of my single socks have got off to I will pay you almost anything. Often, simple pursuits don’t live up to their name, simple. One such simple quest is the search for great fish & chips in America.