When we’re on tour we always love preparing our food outside. This summer we enjoyed some outdoor California cooking as we camped in the Paso Robles and Mammoth Lakes areas. But seriously, it’s all about the produce. Once you get to the Central Valley past Sacramento you can find good ingredients at any store, and…
Concerts Last week we were in Northern California and Oregon playing concerts in the Cascades. We started off the week with our third performance at the Burning Tango Festival playing Saturday night right before the evening Milonga. Many thanks to all of the enthusiastic dancers. After the festival, we drove north to Oregon for a set…
We just finished a week of desert mountain gigs at museums and libraries out in the Chihuahua, Sonora and Mojave deserts. Performing in Flagstaff, AZ, Ridgecrest, CA and the Las Vegas library system, the audiences at all of these places were really warm and the attendance good. One man in the main library theater in…
Andrew and I spent Christmas and New Year’s in a rustic cabin in the Quetico, an Ontario provincial park that sits just above Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. Combined, the two parks have thousands of kilometers of wilderness lakes that people canoe, mostly in the summer. Our goals for the trip were to find solitude, relax, write music…
Here it is, the Dreaming to Live Tour Eats. Lots of picnic tables on this tour. The most memorable foods? The greens and the berries. Not to mention the local bread and artisan cheese. Northwest Oregon Pinot Noir and Salad Flashy trout lettuce from Oregon City Mexico tomatoes Local radishes Dressing: olive oil, lemon, salt, and…
Like most musicians, Andrew and I have many “jobs” and wear many “hats:” performers, composers, instrumentalists, teachers, promoters, editors, administrators, writers, mangers, designers, not to mention being our own maids and cooks! Here are two homespun powerhouse recipes that got us through a busy year of teaching and performing. Rabbit Chili We bought a whole…
We were lucky enough to have a day off on the solstice this year in Southern California. We spent the day hiking to Cerro Alto with views of the coast and the hills of Paso Robles, visiting one of the best wineries in the world, Tablas Creek and getting fresh swordfish right off the dock…
Shopping and eating California is always a revelation. Yesterday we made a quick stop at the Sacramento Food Co-op, which happened to be right off the highway on our commute from Venice in Southern California to the Burning Tango Festival in Northern California. The food here has a much higher quality of flavor and a…
Our two weeks stay in Chile this last May was definitely framed by eating. We had a spectacular time just being tourists in the grocery store. We shopped almost everyday at the local Jumbo in central Santiago and made feasts for our friends when they came home from work. The most typical ingredient? Avocados! I…
Last weekend we played for a May Day/Anniversary celebration at People’s Cider Company here in Grand Rapids. We have shopped at Fulton Street Farmers Market for the past couple of years for our weekly Saturday morning groceries, and along with getting our vegetables, cheese, and meat we have filled up our empty jug with the greatest…
Here is another recipe from the Viewpoints tour. We had the pleasure of eating homemade bialys made by our tango dancer friend, teacher and host Stephen Bauer in Ojai, CA last summer. Stephen is also known for his “Tango Chef” workshops which teach people about how to make “kinetic concoctions for tastier tango.” His is a…
We enjoyed some great winery picnics in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho last summer. Visiting wineries give us the opportunity to see the land and geography of a place, as well as the agriculture. They are almost always in beautiful setting as well and we continue to choose to drive out of the way to…
Wow, wow, wow. Here is an impromptu sea bass recipe we made using local California fish, veggies, and fruit from the central coast. The culmination of local shops, veggies and spices we’ve been carrying around from the Southwest mixed with treats given to us as gifts from hosts made this possible. Thanks to Stephen and Deb…
It was a beautiful afternoon in west Michigan to hunt for some ramps out in the woods, so Andrew and I went out to gather this wild forest delight that has a delicate flavor somewhere between a green onion and a leek. Here is the nice little recipe that we came up with for…
Potatoes with octopus and lemon. Steamed white and purple potatoes from Visser Farms. Add chopped octopus and calamari poached two hours on low in olive oil. Topped with lemon, basil, and parprika. We just completed 17 CD release concerts since August and while we performed and traveled nearly every weekend this fall, we certainly made up…
What better way to be greeted after a sleet-laden drive to Detroit at night then by this wonderful, simple, flavorful, warming soup? Thanks to Shelly Rouse-Freitag for hosting us and for taking all day to simmer this Hungarian recipe of gulaschsuppe. It certainly charged our batteries for the next day’s concert at the Southeast Michigan Flute Festival! Gulaschsuppe…
The best parts of touring are really the food and the people. Our stop in Austin last summer was no exception. Besides playing two nights in a row for milongas, we stayed with an amazing couple Denis and Dena, who love to cook three gourmet meals a day!! It was such an inspiration to me,…
We finished our final morning of camping after three days at Enchanted Rock State Park outside of Fredericksburg, Texas and were down to a lovely assortment of local ingredients: a bottle of Becker Vineyards hill country Zinfandel, a quart of okra, a shallot and some spaghetti. It was an unlikely combination that we never would…
It is time for a roadside pasta recipe and it’s super simple. Andy made this in less than 20 minutes at a roadside stop a few miles away from where our gig was in Taos, NM. We got the spices from Fernandez Chili Co, an amazing local business in Alamosa, CO that has the best…
What better thing to do in this crazy winter than try my hand at some sourdough? Here is the story: Last fall I used the wild yeast off of our grapes to start my own sourdough. I mixed 125 ml flour and 125 ml water in a sterilized bowl and covered it loosely with…
