Portside

Harris’s passion for cooking is well-documented; the cookbook titles tell about the contours and range of her interest in the culinary arts. She values the restorative powers of cooking as part of a community; and she understands food as identity.

A new book that claims to make the act of cooking fun when it sometimes seems like a chore is an exciting, though daunting, invitation to improvise.

I continue to seek healing in the kitchen, the way I recover from the churning news cycle of sickness and police violence.

Learning to cook Japanese food reminds me of uncomfortable links between the past and present—and renews my faith in small acts of resistance and heroism.

MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf is a hopeful message on how to survive during wartime when food supply lines were disrupted, fuel was scarce, and people stocked "blackout shelves" in case of a bombing.

Butterball's Turkey Hot Line was started in 1981 with 6 operators; today's operators number over 50 and answer 10,000 calls on Thanksgiving.

Of the twenty-three categories of James Beard Awards this year, (some of which were awarded to groups or entire restaurants), well over half were won by women or people of color.

Georgia Gilmore was a Montgomery cook, whose fried chicken sandwiches and other foods fed the African-American men and women planning the bus boycott; the money raised helped pay for the alternative transportation system during the 381-day bus boycott.