This spring, we planted a two-acre garden to supply our restaurants with fresh, organic produce. We’ve had some wins and a few losses in the garden, so far. Almost 3/4 of an acre, in a second plot a few hundred yards away from the main garden, was planted in corn and cucumbers. They didn’t make [...]

I am dieting again. Well, actually, I’m not dieting; I’m just eating clean for a while— very clean. Low fat, high protein, good carbs, no sugar, no starch, five meals a day, 2,500 calories, yada, yada, yada. Welcome to my world. Every time I have ever dieted, I reach a stage— usually three weeks in— [...]

I grew up in a woman’s world. Males tended to die young in my family. My father died when I was six-year’s old, my paternal grandfather, five years before that. For most of our childhood, my brother and I were the “men” of the family. My mother was a fanatic about manners. She was a [...]

For the fifth year in a row Mississippi has been named the fattest state in America. I guess there’s something to be said for consistency. While researching this development, I wound up at www.health.com where Sarah Klein wrote a piece entitled “The 50 Fattiest Foods in the States” where she selected regional high-fat content favorites [...]

DESTIN— The kids are at camp so the wife and I headed to the beach. In another life, this was my playground. I lived down here during two brief stints of my misspent youth in the 1980s. I worked in restaurants and lived the life of a single guy in a beach town. During the [...]

Being a food writer is a pretty sweet gig if you can get it. I fell backwards into food writing over a decade ago. My early stuff was bad, really bad; some might take the stance that the new writing is not all that great either. Nevertheless, it’s where my passion lies— or is it [...]

Over the course of my 30 years in the restaurant business, I have seen many trends come and go. In the early 1980s, I remember reading a trade magazine article about how computers were going to play a major role in the restaurant business. At the time, I was working as a server in a [...]

I planted an organic two-acre garden a few months ago to raise fresh fruits and vegetables for our restaurants. Several weeks after the plants began sprouting, I started looking for beehives. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure why I needed a beehive beside the fact that bees pollinate plants, and I had heard a few old-timers at [...]

My daughter turned 13 on Memorial Day. On their birthdays, my wife and I let each of the kids choose their three meals for the day. My daughter, the most devout carnivore in our house, wanted steak and biscuits for breakfast. Steak and biscuits has long been one of the favorite special-occasion breakfasts in our [...]