Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been listening to Mark Heard as I’ve gone about my business here in Durham. For those of you who don’t know of him, Mark was a wonderful songwriter, thinker, and singer who died way too young and left an enduring legacy of music (much of which is available…
Moving into our new home here on Iredell has been different than moves to Charlestown and Marshfield for any number of reasons, but one most significantly: we didn’t have to redo the house from top to bottom to get in it. The folks we bought it from did that for us. We have done some…
The assignment was simple: meet at the catering shop to pick up the food and then go to the site to cook dinner for eight people: Appetizers:curried crab cakes with cucumber yogurt dipping sauceendive leaves with roasted beets and bleu cheese Salad of pea shoots and mixed greens with dill, chives, and mint with a…
Eighteen April 21sts ago, Ginger and I were married in the First Baptist Church of Irondale, Alabama, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and a wedding party whose picture rivals the cover photograph of The King Family Christmas. We got engaged on August 12, 1989 at the Hard Rock Café in Dallas (when there…
Today is a significant day in the Brasher-Cunningham household, since it’s the day we invented the Brasher- Cunningham household eighteen years ago (more about that later). The importance of the day is enhanced because Dunkin’ Donuts opened its doors this morning at 5 a.m. — and we were the very first customers. I’ve got the…
april gave us springtime and the promiseof the flowers and the feeling that we bothshared and the love that we called ours butI can’t help but have my suspicions ‘causeI ain’t quite as dumb as I seem; tell me howcan you stand there with a broken heartashamed of playing the fool but isn’t thatthe way…
I’ve heard tell of those who rolled cigarsin Havana and how they would choose oneto read each day, the others making up hisshare of the quota so they could hear storiesthat took them beyond the little rooms wherethey rolled leaves for the pleasure of others. I live in a town built on the stories of…
I like to know what’s next as muchas possible, so when they call and say,“We need you to work a dinner Saturday,”I wish they would tell me the occasionand the menu, just so I have an idea ofhow to prepare myself to prepare the meal.I think differently for salmon than sirloin. Catering, for the most…
One could wish for a day that was carbonated,words rising effervescently, even effortlesslyto the top, bubbles of hope bursting on thesurface. Today is not that day; nor yesterday.I’m waiting for the plumber to come find theblock on our main drain, somewhere betweenhere and the street, underneath the growinggrass and the nascent hasta, undergroundwhere the words…
if it’s going to be freshthen it must be doneeveryday: today andtomorrow and the dayafter that. most of whatwe think of as life andcooking is preparation,or at least that’s whatwe call it. in fact, thechopping and peeling,the slicing, marinating –all of those things wethink of as “the gettingready” are really theshow: one long act oflove…