Category Archives: FAVORITE RECIPES/FAMOUS PEOPLE

BUTTER LETTUCE SALAD AND HOLLYWOOD FARMERS MARKET

The salad was freshness itself. Crispy and sweetly tender butter lettuce leaves wearing a light dressing that glistened like dew. I sampled the salad as a first course at a Sunday night dinner prepared by Scott Manlin (influencer, restaurateur, and my nephew). Scott credited the salad’s perfection to the Hollywood Farmers Market, where he shops […]

Third Wheel Brewing and Brewmaster Abbey Spencer

Abbey Spencer produces a wide-range of stunning beers as brewmaster at Third Wheel Brewing. Among them is a Goomah Stout used to make a deep, rich, chocolate and stout brownie–recipe included.

Beef Stew Recipe/Food Writer Daniel Neman

He’s a food writer for sure, but he’s also a movie-loving, food comic with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that has a bit of a bite. Just think of this sentence that Daniel Neman wrote on January 8, 2014, introducing himself as the new food writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Can’t help it, can’t […]

CRANBERRY SALAD FROM BARBARA GIBBS OSTMANN

Barbara Gibbs Ostmann and I have been friends for so long that I don’t remember how we met. I think it was when she first became food editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sometime in the mid 1970s. She interviewed me about my cooking school for kids and then subsequently hired me to freelance, not […]

SCALLOPS, LIMONCELLO, FABRIZIA

It was the worst of times, it was the best of times. Here was Covid, giving the world lemons and the Mastroianni brothers turning lemons into lemon aid—the kind of aid that helps the soul feel pampered and privileged. We’re talking heavenly booze and divine baked goods. But let me backtrack. Inspired by a family trip […]

MOLLY WELLMANN, JAPP’S, HEMINGWAY DAIQUIRI

What a spark! What a charmer! What pizzazz!  Molly Wellmann is bar none the most spirited woman I know. And it’s not just because this Cincinnati local won the Nightclub and Bar Media award for Best Bartender/Owner in the Nation and that Bon Appetit magazine says her bar is the best in Cincinnati or that […]

CAFE NOVA SPANAKOPITA

KATERINA SHESHI Cafe Nova St. Louis, Missouri Born and raised in communist Albania, Katerina Sheshi knows about oppression and hard work. She learned to cook from her mother and expanded her skills during her formative years by working in restaurants watching the “good cookers” who ran them. Katerina became such a proficient cook that the […]

YALANCHI SARMA by NANCY MEHAGIAN

Nancy Mehagian filled her life with an abundance of travel, sex, drugs and food. For a peek at her passion-filled, delicious life and a copy of her favorite recipe for Yalanchi Sarma (chilled Stuffed Grape leaves), read on:

BEN POREMBA and OLIO’S EGG SALAD RECIPE

Ben Poremba is a most unusual man–chef, restauranteur, entrepreneur, world traveler..well the list goes on. Sweet Leisure interview him and secured a recipe for one of his favorite dishes, Egg Salad as served at Ben’s Olio restaurant.

RUNAMOK MAPLE TIRAMISU

Laura Sorkin is a farmer, a writer, a recipe developer, a cookbook author, a wife, a mother of  two teenagers and the co-founder/owner (with husband Eric) of Runamok Maple, a company producing a variety of artisan syrups that are setting the standard not only for pure maple syrup, but also those creatively enlivened with flavor. […]