Magic descends on Renoโs Idlewild Park, especially on summer nights. Itโs lit by the diverse vendors at Food Truck Fridays, and on other nights, the park may host the Reno Night Market or Western Lights Festival. Daytime brings farmersโ markets and the Earth Day celebration. Itโs a festive place to gather, eat, drink, and be merry.
East Fourth Street, one of Renoโs most historic thoroughfares, defies definition. Itโs a section of the old Lincoln Highway, once studded with adorable motor courts. The area once overloaded the senses with clanging streetcars, ironworks, and the stench of rendering plants.
The Prospectorsโ Club in Reno has served many purposes since its founding in 1947 โ a menโs-only private club, a bastion for the townโs movers and shakers, a group adjusting to modern times when it began admitting women.
Iโm not sure that Iโd classify myself as a Francophile, but I did study French, explored France from the Marais to Arles, and maintain I make as good a French onion soup as anyone. French restaurants have been popular here over the years.
For many people, summer means ice cream, barbecues, beer, and corn on the cob โ all excellent seasonal treats. For me, summer always will conjure ripening melons, the flesh almost cloyingly sweet, with juices running down my arm.
The bag of vintage cookbooks sat on my office shelf for a year. Pat Ferraro Klos, local historian, author, and longtime friend, gave it to me. She was cleaning out her own shelves and thought the contents might be useful to me in my ongoing search for local food history.
Uncovering local food-growing efforts during World War II. Our country under stress. A clear danger. Efforts, on a personal and national level, to deal with the emergency. Do these phrases remind you of the recent Covid-19 pandemic? As a food historian, I go back further, to the 1940s and the crisis of World War II….
On a culinary-inspired trip to New Orleans, I first encountered the powerful and historic drink called the Sazerac, at the aptly named Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel. The memory lingered, and I discovered, to my surprise, that Nevada had numerous connections to this cocktail โ or, at least, to its name, which appeared in almost a dozen saloons in Northern Nevadaโs early days.
If you need a reason to renew your love of Nevadaโs beauty, I suggest taking the winding route up Geiger Grade toward Virginia City. The colors of the hills, the roaming wild horses, and the views across the valley are awe-inspiring.
You may have heard the term โadaptive reuse,โ which is lingo for rehabbing a structure for a new purpose. Itโs recycling on a grand scale, and perhaps no other location in the Reno-Tahoe area exemplifies the idea better than the original Minden Flour Milling Co. site.