Food

Travel: The Cure for the Common Life

Hope Chests and Silver Spoons: How girls' graduation gifts have changed

Don’t just hand Dad a beer with dinner this Father’s Day – serve him some suds in his food, too. While still not quite so familiar as cooking with wine, using beer in recipes has become increasingly commonplace as the craft-brewing culture continues to grow.

Everybody loves pizza. Shake things up a little with this hearty and endlessly versatile recipe for a polenta “crust.” Top it with your favorite pizza toppings or sauté your favorite seasonal vegetables and spoon them on top before baking.

My family has been weaning itself from red meat for years. We still love it, but the portions and frequency are less than they used to be. Still, when I started planning a Father’s Day menu for my husband and my dad, I thought it might be nice to bow to tradition by turning to the Batman and Robin of manly fare: steak and potatoes. Happily, there are many ways these days to have your steak and eat it, too. For this menu, I was able to lower the fat and calorie count not only of the steak and potatoes, but of the equally sinful sauce – béarnaise. And, as ever, the flavor stays large.

Travel: Tasting the Best of Apalachicola, Florida

Salad recipes that have fussy lists of ingredients generally irritate me. I don’t doubt that they are delicious, nor that assembling them just so with just the right blend of flavors and textures makes for a transformative salad experience. It’s simply that my life doesn’t allow for such fuss. To me, the very nature of a salad should be that it brings together whatever is fresh and delicious and marries it all with some oil and acid. Particulars beyond that don’t much matter.

Winemakers Michael White and Greg Lipsker of Barrister Winery in Spokane have been chosen to make the 2013 Legends blend wine for the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center. The center in Prosser, Wash. is named for the late Walter J. Clore and promotes Washington wines and food. Clore is known as the “father of the Washington wine” and began studying vinifera grapes and the potential for growing them in Washington soils in 1937.

If taking tea in a turn-of-the-last-century parlor or enjoying a French pastry on an elegant wraparound porch sounds like a nice respite from real life, there is now The Silver Spoon Tea House. Mother and daughter team Sylvia Erickson and Lara McHenry opened the new tea shop and patisserie on June 1 in a Queen Anne-style house built in 1903 at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Walnut Street. They offer loose leaf teas, French press coffee and pastries from Petit Chat Village Bakery (complete with the proper French pronunciation of the business) from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday in the front room and on the veranda. Reservation-only afternoon teas are served in the elegantly decorated rooms throughout the two-story house.

Travel: Five Tips for Staying Healthy While Traveling

Travel: Morning on St. George Island, Florida