Damon Lee Fowler

15 October 2020: Orecchiette with Broccoli and Anchovies

One of the things that quarantining during the pandemic has done for some of us is to make us less careless while shopping for food and more conscious of using every scrap without wasting it. As grocery bills have soared in the last few months, straining budgets that were already being challenged, it's a sharp reminder that all food is precious and ought never to be taken for granted.

Still, with only two of us in the house, unless I've made a large batch of soup, stew, or something like country-style steak (which is usually better the second day anyway), our leftovers tend to be a dab of this and a dribble of that—barely enough for a single serving, let alone two. Read More 

So much contemporary food writing, my own included, focuses on the importance of freshness: Using the best ingredients that our budgets will allow; taking the time and care to select the freshest, choicest things that we can find; using care in the way we store and use them. It would be nice if our cooking could always be like that. But more often than not, our day-to-day cooking is (or should be) more about not wasting what we’ve already got on hand.

Far too many people on this planet—no further away than our own neighborhoods—are hungry. No, using up that food instead of throwing it out isn’t helping those hungry people. But to squander still edible food just because it’s not at its absolute peak is self-indulgent and irresponsible.  Read More 

One of the saddest things I ever hear as a cooking teacher is “I don’t cook much anymore, because it’s just me and it’s so hard to cook for one or, worse, it’s not worth the trouble. First, there is someone to cook for, the most important person in your life: you.

Secondly, it is not any more trouble to cook for one than for two, and it’s a heck of a lot less work than cooking for six.  Read More