Author: Patty

I like hot sauce, but not Southeast Asian hot. I like heat that makes my mouth slightly burn, where my eyes slightly water and my nose runs; but not the… [Continue Reading]

Spices have been a globally traded luxury product for thousands of years, grown by mainly poor people who rarely make livable wages. They are also hard to trace, which means… [Continue Reading]

In my area, the greater San Francisco Bay Area, there are loads of coffee joints. We have the gazillion Starbucks splattered all around, hundreds of Peet’s Coffee, and “only sold… [Continue Reading]

Chinese Oolong tea has a variety of flavors, depending on the plants’ location, climate, and processing decisions a tea master makes; and can range from light to full bodied, vegetal to… [Continue Reading]

Out of the blue, my spouse indicated that more veggies in our meals would be a good thing. I realized my spouse was actually saying “I want some good, home… [Continue Reading]

I try to make this each year for Gayle, in time for her big sister’s annual flight from the Bay Area back to the “home country” of Yonkers, New York…. [Continue Reading]

For this holiday dinner we hosted a young college person who stayed in the dorm over the holidays. She is vegan, and amazingly, making this feast was less wearing on… [Continue Reading]

I have written many posts on tea, but recently saw that over half of the USA consumes coffee on a regular basis. In fact, 63% of the population drinks coffee… [Continue Reading]

With holiday celebrations underway, especially since they coalesce around food, we all could use reminding about what our pets can and cannot eat. This definitely includes me, as I am… [Continue Reading]

In Nov 2023 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and various news organizations brought up the twin issues of blog writers’ truthfulness, and the lack of financial transparency of some health… [Continue Reading]

The Tea Association reported that in 2021 USA consumed almost 85B servings of tea (more than 3.9B gallons). About 84% of all USA consumed tea was black tea, 15% green… [Continue Reading]

Each year I try to make my Thanksgiving post about some aspect of that peculiarly American myth, the Thanksgiving story. Where the European Colonialists are called righteous Pilgrims, and the… [Continue Reading]

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded after WWII on November 1945, to contribute to global peace and security. One goal is global collaboration among nations, through… [Continue Reading]