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Outdoor California Cooking

Outdoor California Cooking

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…

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Concerts in the Cascades

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…

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Desert Mountain Gigs

Folias in the desert

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…

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Power Food for Musicians

Power food for musicians rabbit chili recipe

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…

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Sabores de Chile

Sabores de Chile

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…

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Tribute to People’s Cider Co

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…

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Bialys in Ojai

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…

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Ramp Risotto

   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…

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Working Hard Eating Well

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…

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Shelly’s Gulaschsuppe

Gourmet Hungarian Beef Soup Recipe

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…

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Texas Zinfandel Okra Pasta Breakfast

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…

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