One sultry morning last week, I went to Chesapeake in search of a solution.
Instead, I found Brewster Walker sitting on a chair in his front yard. He had propped up two signs on a table near his mailbox in the shade of a magnolia.

Each March, when the forsythia goes yellow and the shadbush blooms, Ed Lazaron's instincts kick in.
He's joined by legions of local shad roe lovers who see the flowers as a signal to begin their migration to the seafood store in search of glistening sacs of brick-red roe.

Break out the pink salt and dial up the butcher. It's time for Charcutepalooza! Fresh bacon, pate and pork confit - the possibilities are endless in this yearlong, virtual cooking club that's bent on reviving one of the oldest culinary arts: charcuterie.

My first quinoa quandary was how to pronounce it.
KEEN-wah.
C'mon. Say it with me. KEEN-wah.
The second was what to do with this sacred staple of the ancient Incas.
The answer to that: pretty much everything.
Quinoa is an ethnic food headed into the mainstream, if the proliferation of recipes in the latest cookbooks are any indication.

Don't do it, the butcher warned. It’s too risky.

Still, somewhere along the way, I’d heard that dry-aging steaks at home is doable and delicious. And so I decided to enter the world of refrigerator thermometers, hygrometers, bacteria and beef as black as the cover of a Bible.

The other day, I walked across my blazing-hot deck and hacked the basil plants hard. They needed pruning, and I needed a bunch of the aromatic herb to make... ice cream.

Read the label. How many times have we been told that? But with Memorial Day barreling down upon me, making for a short work week and early deadlines, I committed to writing about souse before I read the label. I procured my first few slices at the Border Station in Moyock, N.C., a gas station-convenience store-souvenir shop that sits smack on the Virginia-North Carolina line.

Perhaps it was World War II. Or supply-and-demand shenanigans. More likely, it was food-splattered ceilings that caused the demise of the pressure cooker. At least that's what's dissuaded me from the dreaded pot. Until now. The pressure cooker was once quite popular. Its ability to render cheap cuts of meat tender in record time made it a favorite of post-Depression-era cooks.

Consider some of the world's most exotic foods. Perigord truffles from France. Moose milk cheese from Sweden. White caviar from Iran. One could arguably add to this list tundra swan from Virginia. The former delicacies can be bought - if your budget can handle $500 for a pound of cheese or $23,000 for a tin of caviar.

A few weeks ago, John "Perry" Jones called from Courtland. "If you want to take a picture of some pretty persimmons, better come now." His trees, he said, were bearing the best crop he'd seen since they were planted four years back.