Author: Stephanie March

During my childhood, the whirl of the eating season that begins this month was usually ushered in with that most agreeable social function, the potluck supper. Friends gathering, sharing food of their own making–it is a humble community feast where everyone gives and takes and huddles against the encroaching cold. In the car, I always…

Remember Cook’s Choice? It was the most dreaded day on your school lunch calendar. The lucky ones brown-bagged it; the rest of us stood in line for a meal we knew had been planned by a Lunch Lady surveying the walk-in cooler and reading expiration dates. As we bravely offered up our trays for a…

The tradition of growing grapes is almost as old as the hills on which they’re planted. But when we picture those vine-covered hills, most of us would sooner conjure Tuscany, Bordeaux, or the windswept Carneros Valley of California than Hastings, Minnesota. Yet increasingly, places like Hastings, Putney, Vermont, and Long Island, New York, are being…

There are people who would rather die than give up chocolate, and there are those who can’t imagine a day without television. For me, a life without cheese is simply not worth living. How can you get through the day without a dense bit of manchego, a smear of Humboldt Fog, or a downy shaving…

How is it that so many of us draw no association between the salty, crunchy tidbits from Granny’s relish tray and fresh cucumbers that came from the earth? Is it possible to get so far away from a once-common practice that we no longer even recognize the result? Pickling used to be a seasonal activity…

How does one achieve a legacy? In the American landscape of opportunity, it seems almost a requirement that we leave something behind to influence succeeding generations—something that symbolizes our struggles, something that tells a story of character and risk and ambition. In nineteenth-century Hastings, that idyllic river town south of St. Paul, William Gates LeDuc…