Damon Lee Fowler

In my later years, the end of summer has become bittersweet. Not because I love it so much that I hate seeing it pass; actually, autumn is my favorite time of year and by the end of July I'm eager for it to come. What's bittersweet about summer's waning is that it makes me keenly aware that my own life's summer is waning—and a lot faster than I'd like.

I'm not, of course, alone in this. Recently an email newsletter landed in my in-box with a link to an article warning of twenty-five things we should NEVER eat once we pass our fiftieth birthday.

Yes, they said never. The lion's share of the list was processed food, which ought not to be the dominant part of anyone's diet. Predictably, the bad-boy contents of most of the foods and drinks on this list were Read More 

If we're paying attention, every venture into the kitchen is an opportunity for us to learn and improve.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked if I had a chilled cucumber soup recipe that I could share. It was funny that she would ask just then, because I'd been craving that very thing for several days. And as it happened, there was a recipe for it in my book Essentials of Southern Cooking. I sent it along to her, then toddled off to the store to buy the ingredients for a batch of my own.

But while I was making it, I found myself dissatisfied with that recipe as it was published.  Read More