TASMANIA:  A Land Apart

TASMANIA: A Land Apart

  Barossa. McLaren Vale. Coonawarra, Margaret River. Most U.S. wine consumers are familiar with these names for they are the Australian wine regions which export abundantly overseas: those chesty Chardonnays and heady reds from Western Australia and the old-...

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Swiss Idyll

Swiss Idyll

    I recently went on a wine safari of Switzerland. This is the only way to define a voyage of discovery as filled with tantalizing tastes and sights as you might experience during a safari through the African veldt. Only here the exotic flora is rare grape...

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Presto Pasta

Presto Pasta

For a last-minute entertainment emergency, you might have use for this fast yet fancy pasta. It will take you no more than 15 minutes to put this together! You can use any short-cut pasta but I like campanelle, or “little bells.” Other favorites are gemelli (twins),...

Ginger Pumpkin Bread

Ginger Pumpkin Bread

Here's another take on a seasonal favorite. This is more of a bread than a cake; the slices want to be buttered! This recipe calls for butter instead of oil and is delicately ginger flavored. I always add more ginger, or grate in a touch of fresh. Nuts add vital...

Lucky New Year’s Foods

Lucky New Year’s Foods

New Year’s Eve is Saint Sylvester’s Night. If an east wind is blowing, it promises a calamitous next twelve months. Roman-born Pope Sylvester I was pope from January 31, 314 to his death on December 31,,335. He is buried in Rome’s Catacombs of Priscilla. During his...

Victual* Bits

Victual* Bits

Here are some tips, tricks, and shortcuts that I have come across or invented in the course of my foodie journey, ones that I think readers may enjoy. While I make every effort to give credit where it is due, many of these ideas may have become so much a part of my...

Napa and San Francisco on a Budget

Napa and San Francisco on a Budget

While every state now has a winery, when one hears the term “wine country,” I’d bet the farm that California is the first thought that comes to mind. Each of California’s wine regions has its charms, and you really can’t go wrong in visiting any of them.  ...

Why Stay at a Bed and Breakfast?

Why Stay at a Bed and Breakfast?

Hotels of all shapes, sizes, and price ranges exist all over the world and you can have privacy, room service, an amazing array of amenities, and the convenience of never having to clean the room yourself. Restaurants, shops, tours, transportation are all available...

That Sinking Feeling

That Sinking Feeling

In which our Far-Flung Correspondent heads for Venice for the world’s greatest muscle-powered nautical event: the Vogalonga.   Four decades ago in a galaxy far, far away—that is to say, Venice, which is, yes, in Italy, but no, not of this world—Toni Rosa Salva...

Simply Seggiano

Simply Seggiano

The little red Fiat took the curves and inclines in 360 degrees of glorious countryside and tiny villages on the Cassia from Firenze.  Spring showed its presence in wildflowers, mustard, shocks of wisteria, roses, supernatural  green quilted fields, and hints of...

The Janiculum: Rome’s Eighth Hill

The Janiculum: Rome’s Eighth Hill

The refrain of the Morcheeba, a British trip hop Band, tells us repeatedly in the most famous hit of their 2000 album, “Fragments of Freedom,” “Don’t you know that Rome wasn’t built in a day.”  Indeed so, Rome, a layer-cake of history built on seven hills, is...

Duluth — An Uncommon Vacation

Duluth — An Uncommon Vacation

Our suite at South Pier Inn, with a warming fire and a jetted tub, commanded a 270-degree view encompassing the blue water of Superior Bay and the Aerial Lift Bridge at the entrance to Lake Superior. In the morning the surface of the bay was a glistening white slab of...

Delicious NOLA

Delicious NOLA

The city beckoned as the 737 landed mid-afternoon at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.  We craved NOLA’s offerings and anticipated people and places prepared to satisfy. Four days and three nights later, ten highlights are too delicious to keep to...