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Hi. I would also like to welcome you to Food for Thought. I am starting my 19th year in the biology department, but this is my 1st year teaching in the college seminar program. This is both exciting and a bit scary. It is exciting because I find the topic fascinating, and because of the course structure / format. I am a bit nervous about teaching the course because it is so different from other types of teaching I have done at the college. I have not felt this nervous about teaching a course since my first year! But I am not sure that that is a bad thing!

When I was a kid, my favorite food was lasagna. My grandmother, who was Italian, often made lasagna for our family Sunday dinners. I use to think her lasagna was great, until I moved away from home and started cooking. My wife, Madge (BMC ’81), and I love to cook, and we have developed into pretty good cooks. She loves to find new recipes and I love working together preparing the dishes. Once I started cooking, I quickly realized that my grandmother was not a good cook. Her food was bland. Maybe that is why I liked it as a kid? My grandmother’s food was bland because she did not use a lot of spices, especially garlic. Why wouldn’t my grandmother, a child of Italian immigrants, use garlic? I think it has a lot to due with her parents trying to assimilate into America.