For me, being at a new food festival or farmer’s market is like letting a coon hound loose to find his prey. I am both giddy with anticipation and totally focused on results, the quintessential hunter and gatherer. After all, for most of us, this is the closest thing to our ancestral primal landscape where our animal brains and instincts are fully activated. And it’s just plain fun.

My husband, Buck, who has been my companion for over fifty years of adventure, used the phrase “foodar", as in radar for food, during our recent trip to San Francisco. It seems that I have it. Early on he learned always to follow me in a buffet line to see what I put on my plate. Recently, say the last 15 years or so, he even lets me wander aimlessly in bustling cities, Italian countrysides or drive randomly off an interstate, to locate something that meets at least minimal culinary requirements. More often than not, we hit the jackpot.

Being the guardian of a helpless stranger who enters your life with his or her own agenda, idiosyncrasies, and personality requires a great flexibility and power of observation. For as soon as we parents adjust to the stage of development that our child has just mastered, we awaken the next day to find yet another set of behaviors to understand or cope with or shape or most importantly, just appreciate. And through all these changes our child’s particular culinary likes and dislikes might be quite different from our own. Patience, my fellow parents.

This is how the Polar Vortex played out at our house. Of course, food was a main character. On Friday, Buck and I took our first, long anticipated trip to the Asian Market in Durham. We stocked up on some great soy sauce, hot sauce, sesame oil and some bean thread and tapioca noodles. I couldn’t resist the big beautiful bag of baby bok choy and the pristine enoki mushrooms. As usual, the culinary wheels began to whirl and stayed busy for a few days while I thought about my new pantry ingredients.

When I was first starting in the catering business in Atlanta, GA, I was asked to cater a luncheon honoring Angelo Donghia, an internationally recognized interior designer.

The brownies became famous almost as soon as the doors of Proof of the Pudding opened in 1979….

Greetings from Martha's Vineyard! My friend and foodie compadre, Susie Middleton persuaded me to share my recipe for bouillabaisse in an article for the local Vineyard Gazette. It was a fun day of shopping, cooking and styling the food and reminded me of old times when I was in the business of making and selling food. What is especially lovely about this day was the fun of just cooking for friends and family and sharing a recipe that will be enjoyed by many more. As you can see from the photo of me with Betsy Larsen, one of my favorite humans, that there is fun to be had in the hunt for great ingredients and what it inspires.

Unfortunately, I have already been told by some of my local friends, having seen the article, that they will likely never invite me for dinner. I am devising a 4 step program to help them get over their trepidation... some of which requires bringing half the food myself. :)

Bon Appetit.