Embarrassingly enough, I have long thought of Chinese New Year as the day when I head down to Chinatown, watch a dragon-festooned parade and then grab some Chinese food at whatever restaurant is the least crowded. That’s it. That’s as far as my cultural knowledge and experiences extend regarding China’s most important holiday. That is, until this year . . . On Sunday evening I’ll be joining friends for an authentic Chinese New Year’s Eve feast. To prep myself for the night’s festivities and also rid myself of this horrible ignorance, I’ve been delving into what Chinese folks historically do to ring in a new year. Traditionally people celebrated the end of the year with religious ceremonies and rituals. At temples they lit candles and incense and paid homage to their ancestors. At home they decorated their dining tables with red tablecloths and their windows and doors with red paper; red signifies happiness and good luck in Chinese culture. They also removed the past year’s kitchen god, offering honey and other sweets to him before …

At dinner last night with friends someone asked what my favorite thing to cook was. The group roared when I answered, quite sincerely, “Toast.” For years I’ve started my day with a crisp piece of whole grain toast slathered with organic Yum peanut butter and mixed berry preserves. It may be mindlessly easy but it’s also wholesome, filling, tasty and my lifelong comfort food. Sophia Loren may have pasta to thank for her physique but, me, I owe it all to toast. Toast has been around for centuries. Cooked over open fires, it was the perfect ancient antidote for stale bread. Want to mask the toughness and dryness of old bread? Just make it hot, golden and crunchy — make it toast. In the Middle Ages it played an important mealtime role, sopping up meat drippings, gravies, stews and the like. Bread would disintegrate in these liquids but toast held its shape and absorbed the rich mixtures. By the late Middle Ages cooks figured out that toast provided an edible surface on which foods could …

Rainy days and crisp, fall nights can only mean one thing — it’s time to break out the wassail!  Derived from the Norse phrase “ves heill” or “be in good health,” wassail can be a toast to good health, the alcoholic drink with which one is toasted, or the festive event where drinking and toasting occurs. In my household it’s all about the hot, mulled drink. Yet, for my English ancestors, it was all about the apples. During medieval times the English believed that if they toasted their animals and crops with drink, prosperity would be theirs in the upcoming year. Eventually this tradition focused specifically on apple production with British farmers dousing the roots of their oldest or most prolific apple tree with cider. Some went so far as to place cider-soaked bread in the tree limbs to ward off bad luck and encourage good crops. Others simply sang songs to the health of their trees. All imbibed in the warm, punch-like drink known as wassail. By the 17th century wassailing had moved beyond …