Our beloved Food Editor’s new book is garnering rave reviews!  A sketch from the publisher:

“There is writing about food and then there is food writing which reflects life's joys and travails, people, places, and moments in time. Peggy Wolff’s new literary collection of memoirs and personal essays Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie offers up just that from the heartland of this country. 

With its corn by the acre, beef on the hoof, Quaker Oats, and Kraft Mac n’ Cheese, the Midwest eats pretty well and feeds the nation on the side. But there’s more to the midwestern kitchen and palate than...

They sold me a dream. A spotless kitchen, big dough-rolling tables, commercial Kitchen-aid stand mixers, pots of 360-degree bubbling oil, silicone spatulas and all manner of baking tools that we did not have to wash. In my real world, the one back home, scrubbing and tidying up really get in the way of getting things done.

Donut boot camp was like competing in an Iron Chef with yourself. Dirty all the pots and bowls, drop an egg from time to time, ramp up the speed of the mixer to get that “ribbony” dough, do culinary battle with the other donut-meisters crowding the bubbling pots. Get dizzy over...

From my view knee deep in the river, real food looked like this: A swift current charged down Utah's Weber, and beyond the stream bright yellow alfalfa, and beyond that a reservoir holding sun-stunned water from the immense snowmelt two seasons ago. It was a blue-ribbon stream, three thousand brown trout per river mile. A teasing impression of plenty.

The drizzly rain made for murky-looking water but what was windowpane clear were the peaks of the Wasatch, a Rocky Mountain sub-range. As well, the flashy noises from magpies doing that magpie thing, wock, wock wock-a-wock, wock, pjur, weer, weer, lending Western authenticity to the...