(photo: some of Dr. K.’s homemade duck prosciutto sliced thin and eaten with bread and Prosecco)   I’m a big believer in chasing happiness in life and not the 30 minute kind that’s associated with a new car, electronic device, or a bigger house (sorry all you hedge fund managers and Goldman employees).  Happiness, after all (and there’s empirical evidence for this) is derived […]

(photo: homemade yogurt courtesy of bfeedme.com) History of Yogurt Historical fun facts about food provide great joy for me; I can’t explain the phenomena but I enjoy the epistemological randomness that, for example, yogurt prior to the mid and late 19th century was used primary as a cleaning agent (that’s right, including as a body wash and shampoo)!  In the early […]

(photo: Typical Italian breakfast, brioche with gelato.  Image courtesy of THE MUESLI LOVER) Italians Love Coffee and Sweets for Breakfast! News break: if you’re Italian, you can have cookies for breakfast.  Seriously, cake is a traditional breakfast food in Italy and so are other sweets including cookies, brioche, pastries, croissants,etc.  Coffee is consumed as well and it’s usually a quick espresso […]

I’m a big fan of the AeroPress single cup coffee maker, but one minor drawback of their simple system is that there are quite a few parts to assemble and clean (the inexpensive AeroPress still, however, brews a great cup of coffee).  Recently, I was given a nifty single cup coffee maker (by way of Dr. K, a dedicated Scordo.com […]

Our good friend Dr. K has passed along his homemade chèvre (goat milk) cheese recipe and I’m excited to be able to share it with our loyal Scordo.com readers.   Goat cheese is made in Calabria, of course, and it’s some of the best produced cheese on the planet.  In Aspromonte, close to our family’s village in Pellegrina, you’ll find Caprino […]

Ricotta Recipe My first memory of ricotta wasn’t pleasant.  I remember thinking that the cheese was tasteless and had a consistency of something akin to white mud rather than some wonderful food concoction.  Fast forward about 20 years and I’m in love with ricotta (and the associated ricotta recipe) and value its subtle flavor profile and creamy texture (not to […]

Chemex Coffee Maker I was flipping through the latest issue of the New Yorker and an article by Malcom Gladwell caught my eye, as it usually does whenever I see his name in the table of contents.  Gladwell writes clearly and as deeply as a popularizer of big ideas can so I look forward to his articles (you’ll never get all the […]