Andrea Nguyen's family fled Vietnam in the early 1970s with little more than a tattered orange notebook full of family recipes that her mom rescued from their home. The notebook later became the inspiration for Nguyen's James Beard Award-nominated tour de force, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen–the first Vietnamese cookbook published in English. She followed with […]
This is why we pinch pennies all year long, spend our limited vacation time from work to visit family on the other side of the planet instead of go to Disney World, and travel from Denver to Dallas to Santiago to Mendoza and then drive three hours to Bowen; transit time: about 24 hours each way. […]
A couple of years ago, I posted a great recipe for Tarta Pascualina with roasted red peppers that was sent to me by a reader in Washington. Since this dish is popular in Argentina during this season, I'd share another variation of the recipe. Pascua is the Spanish word for Easter, so Tarta Pascualina literally means 'Eastertime Tart'. […]
In the small Patagonian villages of San Carlos de Bariloche and Villa la Angostura, gnomes abound. Yes, gnomes. Shops all over town sell carved garden-style gnomes of all sizes, engaged in all sorts of activities. They grace 'welcome' plaques, are fashioned into door-stoppers, or are figurines 'caught in the act' of everyday gnomish life. […]
Florencia, my mother-in-law, has roots in Kiev; in the era that her parents decided to emigrate to Argentina, the Ukraine experienced loads of political upheaval. Her family was culturally and linguistically Ukrainian, but borders in that era were in constant flux, and post-WWI, Kiev was invaded by and became part of, at one time or other, […]
