Driving along a country road near a large shimmering reservoir, Daniel Butler suddenly slows down. He jumps out of the driver’s seat and whips out a special knife. In seconds he’s dug up a beautiful specimen, a four-inch cepe. He’s a mushroom forager, par excellence, and yesterday he took us […]
Wow. Wales is a place I never thought would be so wonderful, so pretty, so green and so…inviting! It’s not on most American’s radar, the place just doesn’t pop up on most traveler’s ‘places to go’ lists. But now that I’ve spent time driving the length of the place and […]
Shaun Krijnen was wearing rubber boots and rubber overalls when we met him. Still, he had that tossled look of a movie star millionaire, and even though was worried about how he looked in front of the visiting journalists, he struck quite a pose in that late afternoon light in […]
Ferran Adrià of elbulli, once known as the world’s most famous restaurant, uses a tiny flake of a certain salt to dab on his oysters. The Queen of England and her son William have been known to also use this special salt at events as important at May’s royal wedding. […]
After a flight made much more pleasant by a serendipitous upgrade to business class, which gave me a night’s sleep on a flat bed, I’ve spent the day here in Wales. I have given up trying to actually pronounce the names of the places I’ve seen. We are staying in […]
Tonight I’ll board a 777 and fly to Manchester England, where tomorrow morning I’ll join several other travel bloggers and begin a trip through Wales. I haven’t ever been there before and the focus of the journey is a culinary one. So we will meet chefs, taste many different foods […]
Los Angeles will celebrate on October 9 by shutting down ten miles or normally congested streets. Why? To turn all of this inner city space into a car-free, safe, family-friendly place for exploring the city from a new perspective and at a leisurely pace. No cars, just bikes, sneakers, stilts, […]
I wound my way up North Leverett road last night, my destination was Wendell Depot, where I met a new date at the Deja Brew Pub and Cafe. The small pub consists of a narrow bar area with booths and a more spacious back room. The bands set up in […]
Now that I’ve been officially single for five months, I have learned a bit about the ins and outs of a few popular dating sites. Below is some of what I learned. The first thing is, there are two main choices for those who are interested in finding dates online. […]
The first gravestones in New England were simple rectangles. Then in the 1720s, death’s head began to be featured on the tops of the stones. The figures would usually be graced with lines, as if they were ascending up into heaven. Forty years later, the motif du jour was winged […]
One of the first things I learned from my Texas-born host during my visit was that here in Texas, there are two sports that matter– Football, and spring football. The Dallas Cowboys are revered, and yet nobody expects anything less than a final Superbowl victory, every year. No second place, […]
Texas is bigger and badder than my creaky little old state of Massachusetts. Here are just some of the things that I found down here in Plano that I’ve never seen in the Bay State. Well, at least not in the Happy Valley. * Mega churches: We passed a gigantic […]