I was shocked to realize that Mrs. Florence McKenney’s Chicken Tetrazzini Casserole is the first recipe I’ve made for Old Line Plate from the 1980 “Magician in the Kitchen” cookbook. Produced by the Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland, the book was one of the early community cookbooks in my now-sizable collection. It has charming illustrations…
On a winter’s day in early 2015, I embarked on a project. On the meager two feet of counter space in my small kitchen, I laid out a bunch of celery, a bag of flour, a brick of fancy butter, milk, soup stock, and salt and pepper. I took a photo before proceeding to follow…
I first became aware of the work of Carrie Helms Tippen at the Baltimore Book Festival, where she was in conversation with Hannah Howard and Soleil Ho in 2018. That was my introduction to Tippen and Howard’s work, but now I count all three as people I admire. Tippen was discussing her book Inventing Authenticity:…
The Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC has an oddly long Wikipedia page. It’s almost as long as the page about the Watergate Complex. It mentions trysts of Presidents Kennedy and Clinton. Presidential inaugural balls. A Nazi plot to sabotage the US that ended in betrayal. J. Edgar Hoover eating the same lunch every day: “chicken…