Damon Lee Fowler

One of the loveliest dishes in all of French cooking and arguably the greatest of all summer salads is sliced boiled or steamed potatoes simply dressed with oil and vinegar and served at room temperature. Called "salade de pomme de terre à la Parisienne" or sometimes "pommes de terre à l'huile," it's lighter than its mayonnaise-dressed cousins, and is served both on its own or as one of the components of a composed salad.

But regardless of how it's dressed, the French secret to great potato salad is that before that dressing touches the cooked potatoes, Read More 

It's funny how our palates will sometimes latch onto something and stir a craving that often borders on obsession. This spring, what mine latched onto was the mild yet distinctive flavor and buttery texture of avocados. I've always liked them, but lately haven't been able to get enough of them—tossed in a salad, smashed into countless batches of guacamole, smeared on toast, sandwiched with bacon between slabs of sourdough bread, halved and used as a cup to hold scoops of chicken, ham, or tuna salad.

But while all of those things have their charms, arguably the most perfect mate for this unusual savory fruit is eggs, especially when the eggs have been poached. Though each is wonderful on its own, when they come together they're downright transcendent.

Far too many cooks are intimidated about poaching eggs, Read More 

My introduction to Savannah, where I spent four decades of my life, was a preservation internship in the summer of 1980. It was one of the hottest summers on record, and we met the heat with weekends on Tybee trying to catch a sea breeze, gallons of ice, chilled white wine and gin kept in the freezer, and windows that were perpetually frosted—on the outside. The heavy, damp air rang with a steady soundtrack of whirring air conditioner condensers and ceiling fans.

But of all the ways we dealt with the heat, the most memorable was Jean Soderlind's, who was my big-hearted landlady. I lived on the top floor of her grand Victorian house  Read More 

Early in April, a hacker got into my author's page on the popular social media platform Facebook, changed the profile and wallpaper pictures, and then changed the name to "We Added Suspended Issue See Why." After immediately resetting my password, I was able to block the person who hacked in (yup, they left fingerprints) and restored the pictures. Unhappily, I was stuck with that name for two months. Despite repeated attempts to report the hack and get help, Facebook not only never responded, its "help" tutorials were absolutely no help at all. Worst of all, it wouldn't allow me to change the name of the page back because the rule is that it can only be changed every sixty days—even if you weren't the one who changed it.

I'll still be using Facebook, but with the knowledge that a service that's offered as "free" rarely is: Usually it comes with a price of some kind. The price in that case is that it's all too easy for hackers to violate your space in that medium and it won't offer you any help when they do. Also, if you are "reported" for violating a community standard, even and especially when you haven't done any such thing, God help you.

But I digress (what else is new?):  Read More