FOOD

I started this week's episode with a whine/rant about judging cooking competitions. But all Nancy Leson had to do was say "Archie McPhee" and "cooking contest" in the same sentence and I was sold.

One thing the summer's unconscionably hot weather seems to have been good for is my pepper crop. I've got eight pots going, with poblanos, beaver dam (I just liked the name) fireballs, pepperoncini, cayanetta, and cubanelle and Italian sweet for pepper and scrambled egg or sausage subs. I'm also growing two shisito plants, similar to the popular Spanish tapas pepper, the Padrón. I've seen both at farmer's markets lately and they share a characteristic that makes eating them a suspenseful

When the mercury rockets past 85 degrees, even I forgo pot roast — which is why I turned to Nancy Leson for some of her favorite hot-weather recipes. Vietnamese salad rolls are one of Nancy's hot weather go-tos. "For me, it's a whole dinner in itself and so easy to make," she said. "I buy a soft lettuce like a bibb, fresh herbs – cilantro, basil, mint. I slice up cucumbers lengthwise and make little bowls full of chopped jalapeno, peanuts" And here's her secret ingredient: chopped up lime. To

Julia Child introduced Americans to quiche Lorraine in her groundbreaking public TV show "The French Chef" in 1963. Shortly after that, Bruce Feirstein mocked masculine stereotypes and created an enduring catch phrase with his book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche."

When Nancy Leson told me about the time her young son Nate opened a little stand in front of their house selling vegetables from their backyard, I asked, "So as the tenant sharecropper on your land, did he hand over half the money he made?" He did not.

Wrong-way handles, and high-altitude deep fat drops are just a few of the kitchen safety topics Nancy "Band-aids are a girl's best friend" Leson and I took up on this week's Food for Thought. All that and more -- plus a genius method for threading meat onto kebab skewers.

Africa was never on my bucket list, but after traveling with family and friends to Kenya and Tanzania this month, I hope it’s on yours. There are a million reasons why, and I told Stein only a handful of them (food related, of course!) this week on Food for Thought. So, what was I doing there? For years, our friends Emily and Aaron, a young Seattle couple who’ve lived, worked and traveled extensively on the continent, have been carrying on about how they’d love to introduce us to their favorite

The first recipe I tried from "Churrasco: Grilling the Brazilian Way" by chef Evandro Caregnato had nothing to do with grilling. It was Moqueca De Peixe com Coco (moh-KE-kah de pay-SHEE com Ko-ko); a seafood stew with coconut milk, peppers and onions. How good was it?

Since last week's Food for Thought was all about salt it seemed only right this week to ask Nancy Leson “Where is the love for plain old black pepper?” With all the exotic heat available today, black pepper doesn’t get the respect it should. As Nancy points out, “Black pepper is the world’s most traded spice. Who among us doesn’t have black pepper in the house?” True dat. And we’re fortunate that it's so affordable today because once the stuff was rare and expensive enough to be called “black

Nancy Leson loves the taste of Maldon sea salt. I claim that what she loves is the texture. She says "Some salts taste saltier than others." I maintain that all salt tastes about the same, "It's all sodium chloride," differing only in mouth feel.