The best of this year’s cookbook crop all seem to follow that theme, proffering foods that sustain family and friends or just one very special loved one—serving up dishes that make hearts glad. Each has its own recipes for a ...

Thanksgiving is early this year—Nov. 22—and so am I for once, with my annual list of some small measures and fine details that make dining locally such a delight.

Think of it as a momentary lapse, artistic appreciation run amok—but just for a few seconds.

Sometimes I don’t have to consider every angle, know every detail. In fact, I have a whole list of recent incidents and oddities that I have been able to let go.

I’ve never seen Lee Clayton Roper, or her mother Sally Clayton, now deceased, but I have this very clear image of the two of them, perhaps holding Sidecars, politely wrangling over the toasted clam rolls, in an airy, marble-countered Denver ...

Hear I go again, another food crush. Other people can describe their attraction to different foods as a preference, or a love affair, maybe, or a craving.

Here are this year’s best cookbooks, the ones with fine essays, sweet anecdotes, and step-by-step instructions included. That way, you can make your own memories.

Food memories help me anchor, then catalog, time shared, joys and drudgery, humor and complacency. And so it was memories of carrot cake, California onion dip, dry red wine, and seedless watermelon kabobs that assailed me these past three days, ...

Why not just eat fried okra from (drum roll please) a local dining establishment? They have the rituals down, and the trained staff, and the commercial grade oil, and are already making it for all sorts of other diners, so ...

Palavah Hut is a cheery little place, with folk-painted signs and brick walls. They serve takeout only Thursday-Saturday—homestyle specials replete with stews and rice and greens, like Taro root with tilapia in olive oil with fresh herbs and vegetables, and ...

Health benefits with your buzz are a strong temptation to pick a product made far away for an exception to the local food scene, and I can readily envision substituting VeeV for the vodka in my favorite vodka-marinara recipe.

What is a fantasy food? One you can’t have, or at least not right now, for reasons involving geography, the separation of the lands of the living and the dead, or the stubborn resistance of this world of ours to ...

Once a month for the past two years, Joe Bryant sets up at a spot below the I-40 bridge near the Knoxville Area Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army, and serves barbecue to what Joe estimates is 400-700 people. It’s ...

I do read books, plenty of them. My preferred are Fearless teen-lit paperbacks, graphic novels by Brad Meltzer, and mysteries by Brit Elizabeth George. Oh, and community cookbooks.

Food, good food, is the unification measure this country needs. When you’re swapping recipes or have biscuits in your mouth, who has time for harsh diatribes or mean-spirited political attacks?