Wabi-sabi cookery

Cooking is a constant history lesson

By Joan Menefee

Joan’s kitchen structures the whole of her life.

Thoreau and compost cookies

The sacred and the profane

By Joan Menefee

Joan Menefee meditates on her latest baked creation.

Do-over fever

Revisiting September’s efforts

By Joan Menefee

What an essay, grape jelly, and my house have in common.

Holiday buzz

Remembering the dance of the bakers

By Joan Menefee

Joan Menefee recalls many holiday seasons behind the counter.

Deer tales

Democracy, hunting, and giving thanks

By Joan Menefee

Is hunting the expression of a democratic impulse?

Playing with your food

Harvest time

By Joan Menefee

Joan can’t help herself this time of the year.

A gem at the table

Or, fennel and its discontents

By Joan Menefee

What is a food-writing workshop, anyway?

Refrigeration elation

Baby, it’s cold inside

By Joan Menefee

A call for National Refrigerator Week from an appreciative obsessive.

A fruit skeptic converts

Ambivalence to passion

By Joan Menefee

Now, she plans her summer weekends around fruit-picking.

Summer wing interlude

Or, interview with an eater

By Joan Menefee

Her friend Justin turns eating chicken wings into an art.

Shore lunch

A fantastic division of labor

By Joan Menefee

Nothing is better than lunch on the shoal of a creek after a morning spent fishing.

In search of an active kitchen

Cooking as liveliness

By Joan Menefee

Finding value in the work of cooking.

Sustenance in Madison

What do protesters eat?

By Joan Menefee

In a jam

Writing ‘The Airport Security Cookbook’

By Joan Menefee

Local preserves on a plane? Not so fast.

A riot of tools

Mining for meaning in the kitchen drawers

By Joan Menefee

What are you finding in those funny rectangular boxes?

A Wisconsin food find

Screen time

By Joan Menefee

All about “Wisconsin Foodie.”

To recipe, or not to recipe

And why I’ve failed more than once at cooking

By Joan Menefee

In which Joan delves deep to determine why she doesn’t use recipes.

Metaphysics, sausage, and me

Making venison sausage, part 2

By Joan Menefee

A late-night meat-centric blitz in Duluth.

Duluth is for sausage lovers

Making venison sausage

By Joan Menefee

The first in a three-part series on venison-sausage-making.

Tim Tams across the water

A story about cookies

By Joan Menefee

Economy and mobility: these are cookie virtues.