A Harte Appetite

I enjoy baking cookies. It gives me great satisfaction to see how my family and friends enjoy the results of my efforts. But the truth is I really do it for the dough.

Let’s face it. It’s hard enough to keep your hands out of the cookie jar, but what’s really difficult is keeping your fingers out of the mixing bowl. In fact, the practice of eating raw cookie dough has become so popular that many people buy packaged cookie dough from the grocery store with absolutely no intention of ever baking it.

Of all the culinary accidents in human history, which include the chocolate chip cookie and, if you believe Charles Lamb's account, roast pork -- surely fudge must rank among the most serendipitous.

No one knows for sure just who made the first pan of fudge, but most everybody agrees it was invented by mistake -- and it's uniquely American.

Perhaps you've seen the promo on the Weather Channel in which a meteorologist presents a lesson about tornadoes. He fills a blender container with yogurt and milk and blends it on progressively higher speeds. Finally, a student in the class blurts out, "So a tornado is mother nature's way of making a smoothie!" 

I don't know how apt the comparison is for meteorological purposes but one thing's for sure -- smoothies have become so popular, they're popping up as frequently as tornadoes in Kansas during May.

Every time I visit Athens I come away with a renewed appreciation for the contributions of the ancient Greeks to human civilization. No, I'm not talking about democracy, the theater or even the Olympics. I'm talking about feta cheese.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, the old adage says. That's good advice, but there's an assumption underlying it that ought to be challenged.

What's wrong with lemons? A life without them -- from the culinary perspective -- would be sour indeed.