The guests at the party hit the charcuterie hard, but the crudites not so much. When we sorted the debris after the folks had departed, we had a big bag of celery sticks too good to throw out. Annette went into research mode and came up with recipe for celery stew. I have great confidence in her culinary judgment, but celery stew? I shouldn't have worried.

Braised celery is a venerable dish, and essentially that’s what this was. Warm, soft, and flavorful, the celery was no longer a workout for the jaw and was actually closer to comfort food.

Slowly cooked with onion and tomato It made a delicious supper. The recipe Annette found on the web called for pancetta, but being out of that, she substituted bacon. She garnished it with a fried egg, the yolk of which ran down into the mixture like a sauce.

This method is a good use of a bunch of celery that is showing its age. What does it matter if you have a bunch of stalks that are a little limp? They’re only going to get limper when you slow cook them. You get a nice meal and clean out the vegetable drawer.

Now we’re on to the carrots.

Richmond was dining at the New World Tavern in downtown Plymouth when he learned of the existence of a new brewer in town, and a very talented one at that. He naturally knew who to call to set up an expedition for the coming Friday evening.

Independent Fermentations is a small operation (for now). Brewer Paul Nixon brews an eclectic assortment of seasonal ales in a barn by his home above the sea in Cedarville, near the Cape Cod Canal. 

IndieFerm (as it's known on Facebook) is a devoted locavore, low-footprint operation. Paul uses locally-grown hops (including his own Cascades and Nuggets, which you can see behind us in this photo) and malt from Valley Malt in Hadley, MA. 

A simple cooler for the summer, the Highball is just any spirit served in a tall glass with ice and soda. 

There are many types of highballs, including the venerable Gin and Tonic, the Moscow Mule, the Cuba Libre (and its degenerate cousin the Rum & Coke), all the various Collinses...the list goes on longer than the summer does. 

Made properly, this has only a jigger (an ounce-and-a-half) of liquor and the rest is ice and soda, so it's an easy way to relax on a lazy summer afternoon without getting drunk.

It's not illegal to add a touch of triple sec or other liqueur and a dash of bitters, and then you unlock a whole realm of classic cocktails repurposed as summer coolers!

I invented this for my sister at her request on the occasion of a big birthday. Like her, it is three parts Irish to one part Italian, with a little bitters to balance the natural sweetness...

Her friend Lesli called it a blonde Manhattan, and that's a pretty good description. It's a summer-weight cocktail made with Irish Whiskey and Carpano Bianca Vermouth (that's a bianco vermouth, not a dry or a sweet vermouth).

This easy and delicious Burgundy-style recipe is no trouble at all to prepare. The chestnuts can come from a jar, so it's just a matter of adding stock and wine and braising for a while.

The dish is a fine accompaniment for beef or some savory roast pork dishes, and it is a classic accompaniment for roast goose. 

Of course you could make this with fresh chestnuts, but the chestnuts in a jar work really well. You can get them at Whole Foods and sometimes at Trader Joe's and other high-end grocery stores. I get them at Ed Hyder's Mediterranean Marketplace in Worcester, or at Micucci's in Portland.

I was excited about the opening of Port Bistro when I learned it is the sister restaurant to Sintra in Braintree. The hospitality and the food were worth the trip, but now I have only to drive to Kingston where Jenkins has taken over the space that housed La Paloma at 14 Main Street near KFC and the Purple Building.

I was first impressed by the wine list, and when I remarked upon it, I was introduced to Melani St. Pierre, who put in great deal of work selecting wines for the restaurant and is proud of the result. Her title is Wine Director; she says sommelier is a masculine term. No matter your wine expertise or lack of same, your experience at Port Bistro will be enhanced if you place wine selection in her hands.

Served with a square of polenta, the long island duckling was tender, juicy, and unctuous without being greasy. The spiced orange glaze was a little sweet for my taste, but not so much as to spoil the total experience. To go with it, Ms St. Pierre recommended Bedell Merlot from North Fork, Long Island, NY.

I had to go to Phoenix, Arizona for a conference, so I added a day at the beginning and Lorna joined me for a weekend of exploring the Grand Canyon State. We had a lot of fun exploring, but I have to say it's hard to be a locavore superstar in the desert.

The Grand Canyon was our priority. Richmond and Annette, old hands at exploring the desert southwest, had told us that sunrise is spectacular, so that was the start of our plan. The only way to see the sunrise is to sleep in the park, so we stayed at the Yavapai West Lodge motel and it was fine.

To make the sunrise at the Yaki Point lookout (highly recommended) we had to be up by 4:15 so we could get to the shuttle buses at the visitor center in time to get to the point. Fortunately jet lag was our friend...Arizona does not observe daylight savings time, so the three-hour difference made 4:15 seem like 7:15 to us! 

Sunrise at the Grand Canyon is not simply about seeing the sun come up. The canyon is all below grade, so it starts the day shrouded in shadow. As the sun rises, shafts of light illuminate the walls and formations inside the canyon. Shadows shift, revealing and obscuring different colored formations, starting at the highest strata and descending by degrees until the whole canyon is ablaze with sunlight. It's an unforgettable experience!

We had an excuse for another of our famous potluck lunches at Actifio, so we did it!

This menu was vast, as usual. I think we had 36 contributions, almost all of them home-made or made in the office (we have a pretty good kitchen!) 

I don't have all the recipes, but I have a lot of them:

Fiddleheads are an exceptionally simple and exceptionally seasonal dish, great for a spring brunch.

After steaming them and chilling them, you can do all sorts of things with them. They are decorative, but they have enough flavor to be the vegetable accompaniment to a significant spring meal (maybe with Shad Roe?). 

I just got the latest New Yorker and read The End of Food by Lizzie Widdicombe.  It tells of the invention by a Californian named Rob Rhinehart of Soylent, a food substitute. Like most of his friends, Rhinehart had been living on McDonald's dollar meals and five-dollar pizzas from Little Caesars. He and his friends thought eating food was expensive and an interruption of their work.

He is quoted as saying, "You need amino acids and lipids, not milk itself. You need carbohydrates, not bread." He said fruits and vegetables provide essential vitamins and minerals, but they're mostly water. He decided that nutrients - the things you need from food - could be reduced to a powder which could be dissolved in water and drunk. For him the problem was solved. He claims that for the past year and a half he's been living almost exclusively on Soylent. Widdicombe reports that he looks healthy.

Robert Cox is a robust man who looks more like a lumberjack than a scholar, but his wit, assortment of degrees, and ornamented prose belie first impressions. His recent lecture at Pilgrim Hall was full of information and humor, and its topic was chowder. Having heard it, I bought , which he co-authored with Jacob Walker.

Both my grandmothers made chowder. They used salt pork, milk, potatoes, fish or clams, and served it with crackers. They seasoned it with pepper and sometimes floated a pat of butter on top. My mother made it the same way, and I’d come in wet and cold from sledding and tuck into a steaming bowl that spoke to me of family and home. Like all New Englanders, I thought this chowder had been passed down from time immemorial, and I couldn’t imagine eating it any other way.

As I grew to manhood, I learned the world is not as innocent as my mother’s kitchen. In Rhode Island they leave out the milk, and in New York they add tomatoes! But these were traveler’s tales from beyond the outskirts of civilization.

Now my eyes are opened. The History of Chowder is packed with information that takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the past. The authors write: “This most comfortable of comfort foods carries a subtle aftertaste of international conflict, of conquest and enslavement, of the blood and tears that made Europe imperial and shaped the modern world.”

This dish is simple to prepare and delicious!

It takes longer to preheat the oven than it does to cut and prepare the onions for roasting - it really is simple.

These can be served hot or cold, and they are fine served cocktail-party style with toothpicks and small plates. The flavor is rich but complementary to many savories.

I served these at a wine tasting event at the Old Colony Club. They went well with a good Cabernet Sauvignon and a good Merlot.

This tasty treat with an unappetizing moniker is a variation on the old Bronx cocktail, with added bitters... I guess that's where the name comes from!

Try this with a citrusy gin like Plymouth Gin, or else with one of the softer New England-made  American Gins like Barr Hill Gin, Karner Blue Gin, or Wire Works Gin 

This homey lunchpail classic is really a nice cookie when prepared with good ingredients, and it's a nice change of pace and a welcome addition to many cookie-platters.

The texture is light and crumbly, never tough, and the toasty-peanut flavor is wonderful when they are fresh. In my opinion, this cookie does not store well, but if you make them with good ingredients that should seldom be a problem! 

The distinctive look could be trademarked.

 It was March after a long winter, and the relentless gray showed no sign of yielding to spring. Richmond got it in his head that I just had to try his favorite restaurant in Fall River. I think it was a case of cabin fever, but I was ready for an adventure, so I took a day off from work and we set out across Carver's frozen cranberry bogs to Fall River.

Fall River is best known for Battleship Cove, and the cuisine of the US Navy is deservedly unsung.

But there is a strong Portuguese population in Fall River, too, and there are foodie delights for the intrepid explorer. Some of them are hard to come by in places that lack a Portuguese community. That was our quarry.

Our first stop was Chaves Market, at 49 Columbia Street. It's a big market, but they have no website or Facebook page that I could find.

Since I'm a frugal Yankee, my gym is Shaw's Supermarket.

I've gotten to know the staff so I have the same camaraderie I'd get in a gym I had to pay for. I go early when the aisles are free of shoppers, and I walk briskly seven times around, which I estimate to be a mile. It's just as good as a treadmill. When I've finished the seventh lap, I get a cart and go around again.

Being there early, I find bargains. There's a spot at the end of the meat counter where they put the stuff that didn't sell, and the other day I found two veal chops that had been discounted deeply.  They started at $7.00 each, but this isn't Whole Foods, and they languished. They were marked down to $5.00 - still no takers.  Now they had manager's special stickers deducting $3:00 from the lowest marked price so the $7.00 chops were $2.00 each.  How could I resist?

Happy Day! Annette saw something on TV that told her tequila is good for you. Personally, I never pay attention to the nutritional and other health segments of the morning news, but ‘tis an ill wind….

I am ordinarily the family bartender, but I was off this morning purchasing bagels and the Sunday New York Times. When I returned Annette had gotten out the cocktail shaker and mixed up Mexican Madrases. Here’s a recipe. I don’t know if it’s the one she used or if she followed the one she found, but it looks like a good start.

• 3 ounces cranberry juice
• ½ ounce orange juice
• 1 ounce gold tequila
• 1 dash lime juice

Shake with ice, strain, and serve with a half orange slice.

I’m not sure how much health benefit you get from one tiny ounce of tequila, but the recipe may be modified according to your conscience, your body’s need for nutritious agave, and your taste. The mere presence of breakfast cocktails improved our mood on this cold and cloudy March day. We clinked glasses, munched our bagels, and went off to our newspaper in good spirits.

When you’re two years old, a long winter has taken up a sizable percentage of your time on the planet; and my two-year-old grandson was ecstatic about the coming of spring. On the phone to Annette, he exclaimed, “Nannie, the grass is here! Indeed it is, and it was time for us to break out of hibernation and go to Mattapoisett for sauerkraut.

I’d asked The Foodie Pilgrim if he was going to be near the famous Morse’s Sauerkraut, but the grass has not yet emerged in Waldoboro, Maine, and the Pilgrim had no immediate plans to venture that far up Route 1. Still his knowledge of the food resources of New England is encyclopedic, and he told me I could score creditable sauerkraut at How on Earth in Mattapoisett.

It was a pleasant trip. The snow had melted except in sheltered places and grimy piles in parking lots. Many of the ponds had open areas where water sparkled for the first time in months. A sharp wind was blowing in from Buzzard’s Bay when we pulled into the How on Earth parking area. Hurrying inside, we found a good selection of fine New England foodstuffs, and from the refrigerator case we picked up a jar of Real Pickles Organic Sauerkraut.

This is a main component of a New England-style St. Patrick's Day corned-beef-and-cabbage dinner, a New England Boiled Dinner, and the Plymouth Succotash, as well as Corned Beef Hash and some wonderful sandwiches.

This recipe is to cook and cool the beef to be used for hash or sandwiches.

You can start with corning the brisket yourself with the recipe in Salt Beef, where you will also find some interesting lore about this old favorite.

This is great sliced thin and served with almost any kind of cheese, especially farmhouse cheese and local ale!

I made this one with King Arthur Irish-style flour and NH buttermilk, but the supermarket stuff makes good bread too - this is an excellent recipe.

Here's a version of the New England and Canadian Maritimes classic, often served for breakfast with Baked Beans (but they're great with fried eggs, too!

You can buy fishcakes in a can. It's easier than making your own. But they're disgusting.

Some restaurants, especially clamshacks, sell fishcakes. In many cases they're no better than the canned ones. Sometimes they're 9-parts potato with a hint of fish essence.

These are not hard to make, and you get enough servings that it's worth your while. The mixture keeps in the fridge for some days so you can fry up a few fishcakes when you want them.

For a simpler, more historical version, see Yankee Fish Cakes. 

Annette requested a drink called an apricot smash, so I got on line and looked at recipes using vodka and rye, but selected one that called for bourbon. You were supposed to muddle a fresh apricot, but there are none in the supermarket at this time of year, so I got canned apricots instead.

For one drink I used four ounces of bourbon and two canned apricot halves, the juice of one lemon, and about a teaspoon of simple syrup. Recently I splurged on a nifty muddler from Crate and Barrel, but it didn't seem the thing for canned apricots, so I put the whisky, the lemon juice and the apricot halves in the blender and whizzed them up.  Then I strained the mixture into a shaker and added the syrup.

You can buy simple syrup at the liquor store, but it's easy to make.  You stir equal measures of sugar and water in a pan and boil it until the liquid becomes clear.  Put the syrup in a covered jar and store it in the refrigerator.  Don't make too much because it will become moldy after a while and have to be thrown away.  Always check the syrup for spots of mold before using.

Another New England classic, easy to make, with a wonderful old-time flavor!

This is good to make on a snowy winter evening when you've had just about enough of January or February and a little something special is in order, especially if it's not too complicated. 

Sometimes I sprinkle some sugar on top before baking it, or some chopped up crystallized ginger, but honestly it doesn't need any of that claptrap - this is a fine classic recipe for a winter's evening! 

Florida is a state I associate with traffic-clogged highways lined with fast food joints, body shops, psychic readers, and strip clubs. The locals call people like me Q-Tips.

Nevertheless, Annette and I were invited to a Florida wedding we couldn’t miss. As we started out for Logan Airport with boarding passes for a flight to Miami, the car thermometer read 6°above and soared to 9° by the time we arrived at the terminal. I can gripe about flat, scrubby landscape and the high-rise blighted beaches, but when you walk out of any Florida airport, including Miami International, you smell vegetation and warm soil. Coral Gables is an exception to my prejudiced view of the Sunshine State, and the Biltmore Miami Hotel, where our hosts had reserved a block of rooms has a lot of class. On the evening we arrived we went to dinner at the Plame d’Or restaurant in the hotel.

My memory reaches back to the day when waiters in French Restaurants were stiff and condescending. When you ordered, they’d repeat what you said, correcting your pronunciation. On at least one occasion I pronounced my selection properly, and a wannabe French snob got it wrong. Usually they managed to give me the feeling I’d somehow gotten in where I didn’t belong.