A brief culinary history of my father: While growing up in Minnesota during the lean years of the Depression, my father was always hungry, a condition he blames not on a lack of food but on the cooking of my grandmother, who didn't believe in using more ingredients than necessary in the kitchen, or even seasonings, for that matter. Yes, she was English, but since her cooking was the only cooking he knew, my father had no idea where his insatiable food-lust came from. Then, one day, when he was about 15, his longings coalesced into a single desire: apple pie. He asked my grandmother to bake him one, but she handed him a cookbook and told... More >>>