Beware of the vegetables! In times past, people considered some vegetables unhealthy, evil tasting, and even downright dangerous!
Poisonous Potatoes Today, billions of potatoes are consumed every day. But until Spanish explorers brought them to Europe from South America in the 1530s, few people had ever heard of them. As a result, cooks didn't know what to do with the tubers, and usually cooked the...

More hot air.
IF THE empty rhetoric that has assaulted the nation in the past three months could be bottled, happy balloonists might have gained a free ride or two. My prescription for getting away from the oratorical hot air is to blow your worries away in a hot-air balloon. As a...

Van Eyck et les rivieres.
Jacques Darras. Brussels. Le Cri. 1996 (released 1997). 438 pages. 160 FF. ISBN 2-87106-171-8. Rivers and wars. Peace and the love for one's native Picardie. A pacifist poem by the Swiss Jean-Paul de Dadelsen. Jan van Eyck's painting The Adoration of the Lamb. Travels up and down the Flanders...

In search of the perfect Pinot Noir discover Yamhill County.
Not far from Portland, some of the best burgundies in the world are produced. New restaurants and inns make wine touring even more fun Driving southwest out of Portland on State 99W you start seeing winery signs just after you cross the Yamhill County line: Rex Hill,...

Sailing the Seine.
A NEW way to travel French rivers is by river boats that carry a hundred or more passengers. The French Cruise Line, anxious to move in on the burgeoning barge-hotel business, designed and built two river boats three or four years ago, the M/S Arlene, which cruises the Rhone...

THE CISTERCIAN EVOLUTION. THE INVENTION OF A RELIGIOUS ORDER IN TWELFTH-CENTURY EUROPE.
THE CISTERCIAN EVOLUTION. THE INVENTION OF A RELIGIOUS ORDER IN TWELFTH-CENTURY EUROPE. By Constance Hoffman Berman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2000. Pp. xxiv + 382. $59.95. In this important study Berman challenges the traditional understanding of the growth of the Cistercian order in 12th-century France, namely, that...

More underwater finds of Roman medical equipment.
In 1988 an account was published in this journal of the discovery of a surgeon's instrument kit (instrumentarium) in the wreck of a Roman merchantman of c. AD 200 near Syracuse, Sicily (Gibbins 1988; 1989; 1991; Gibbins & Parker 1986). As well as a possible wooden bandaging-stick, the kit comprised...

Les Surprises de l'amour: version 1757-1758.
Jean-Philippe Rameau's Le Surprises de l'amour marks the first volume published in the composer's new Opera omnia, announced by the general editor Sylvie Bouissou as the first publication to present the musical works of Rameau, the greatest French theorist and dramatic composer of the eighteenth century, in their entirety. The...

Nous sommes montgolfieristes.
The SNAPPY silver flight bags with the sturdy navy straps arrive, prosaically, via UPS. Stamped on their sides is "Buddy Bombard's Great Balloon Adventure." Now it's concrete. Two weeks from today, my sister Jane will be celebrating her sixtieth birthday in the balmy skies of the Chateau country in...

French bistro dinner ... it's simple, unpretentious, generous.
At its best, French bistro cuisine is simple, unpretentious food well prepared and generously proportioned. This cooking also tends to highlight a region's local ingredients, as you'll in this uncomplicated supper we encountered in Burgundy. You can easily manage this meal at home. A crisp oven-browned cake of sliced potatoes...