Did you know that mangoes are the world's favorite fruit? Here, just in time for warmer weather, fresh mango is paired with cooked chicken and a touch of curry for a delicious – but still light – chicken salad. ~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~ This recipe is so quick and easy that I'm adding it to a special collection of easy summer recipes published every summer since 2009. Watch for new "summer easy" recipes all summer long! With a free e-mail subscription , you'll never miss a one! COMPLIMENTS! "... this was delicious! ... Soo delicious and satisfying!" ~ Lynessa Eating Locally vs Tasting the World. Last fall, a shopper was woman-handling the peaches at a nearby grocery, squeezing one then another for ripeness. "The produce here is terrible," she complained loudly to no one in particular. I attempted to explain, “It's past-season for peaches." She stared my way as if I were daft and answered w

A traditional spinach salad with bacon, hard-cooked eggs, mushrooms. Such a classic and ever so satisfying. Plus bonus: a great way to use leftover Easter eggs. ~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~ Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
 a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
 the ends of the maple's branches and everything
 is poised before the start of a new world,
 which is really the same world
 just moving forward from bud
 to flower to blossom to fruit
 to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots 
 await the next signal - from "April Prayer" by poet Stuart Kestenbaum via Writer's Almanac Finally, Spring! Spring eased into Missouri some time in the past weeks, overnight, it must have been, since on no one day was its arrival a certainty. In the local paper, the letters to the editor take on this new season’s controversy, whether chickens, especially the crowing roosters, make good neighbors. More families, it seems, are put

A new cooking lesson, how to make homemade chicken stock. Lots of tips and techniques, my own and Michael Ruhlman's, from his new book "Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking". ~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~ "Cook" Books vs "Recipe" Books: Which One Suits You? My kitchen bookshelves sag under cookbooks, the basement is home to two decades of food magazines. Author Michael Ruhlman wants us to call these not "cook" books but "recipe" books. Recipe books, he says, teach us to follow recipes; cook books teach us to cook . But acceptance is a virtue and me, I accept that I’m a recipe cook. Turning the pages of cookbooks and magazines, I experience the thrill of the hunt, the possibility of discovery: be still, my heart! Still, deep within, I long to be released from the shackles of recipes. In the cooking of my mind, I stand before a well-stocked pantry and a just-filled refrigerator, grab a few th