Almost every year, as I scour the real and electronic byways for holiday gifts for family and friends, a little voice starts nagging me inside, urging me to buy something for myself until, like Miranda Richardson’s Elizabeth I in Black Adder, it...

From the time of the Persian emperor, Darius the Great in 500 BCE, the Afghan people have, at least from time to time, been engaged in resistance against foreign powers bent on conquering them. Even when outsider tyrants succeeded in bringing down one...

Biologists do things differently – sometimes very differently – from most people.  Case in point is that most of the “nuts” that we cook with are actually fruits.  To a biologist, a nut is defined as a one-seeded fruit with a hard, ripened...

In addition to my day job, my duties as a wife and mother and holiday preparations, I’ve been busy writing the text for the second volume of The Silk Road Gourmet.  The volume covers what I call the “fusion” cuisines of Central Asia, the...

A number of readers have commented to me that they are having a hard time finding The Silk Road Gourmet in their countries.  This spurred me to do some research to find sources for people to buy the book.  What I’ve found is part of a new text widget...