Tom Harte

Just about every major holiday in America is associated with its own signature version of what Jonathan Barlett, author of The Cook's Dictionary and Culinary Reference, calls those "sugary confections that feed our sweet tooth, rot our teeth and lift our spirits." At Christmas it's the candy cane, on Valentine's Day it's the chocolate heart, for Easter it's Marshmallow Peeps and come Halloween it's candy corn.

I’m sure you are familiar with Gouda cheese, arguably Holland’s most famous, accounting for over fifty percent of the total production of cheese in that country and these days as ubiquitous, even in this country, as Kraft singles.

I too am familiar with the cheese and have been enjoying it all my life.  But recently I discovered, upon visiting the Dutch city from which the cheese gets its designation, that for all these years I have been mispronouncing its name.  The locals call it “how-da”, not “goo-da.”

Long before it began asking, “Got Milk?” the Dairy Association used to tout milk as “Mother Nature’s most nearly perfect food.”  The slogan always made sense to me, especially those days when after I got home from school my mother would fix me a tall glass of chocolate milk.  Without the chocolate, milk was only nearly perfect.  With it, it could not be improved.

I was moved recently to think back on those memories and wonder, is chocolate milk really be just for kids?

Recently the Ritz, the most famous hotel in the world, reopened its doors after a $450 million renovation.  Situated on Paris’ Place Vendôme, where dukes and princes used to live, the accommodation is no less palatial than any royal residence and those who are able to afford a room there (running as high as $25,000 a night) surely must feel like a king or a queen, which was the goal of the hotel’s founder, César Ritz.

"A handful of couscous is better than Mecca and all its dust." So says a famous Moroccan proverb about almsgiving.