Blackbird Kitchen is a downtown Bozeman restaurant known for its wood-fired pizzas, house-made pastas and locally sourced ingredients. Located in a historic Main Street building, the restaurant features an open kitchen, exposed brick walls, and a lively atmosphere. The menu changes with the seasons but typically includes handmade pasta, creative pizzas, salads, small plates and an extensive wine selection. I ordered pickled carrots as a snack. These were super tasty, but I more so saved them to bring some acidic crunch to my entree becausr I knew I was going to order pasta. Kamut paccheri - pork sugo, fennel and ricotta salata. Truly there are few things I love more than homemade pasta and ricotta. The silky smooth pasta was a dream, and the cheese was shredded on top, rather than a dollop. But it came together beautifully with the rich pork. We also enjoyed splitting the oyster mushroom dish that had salsa macha, mole blanco and cilantro. Grade: A

Here's my latest column for the newspaper:

You can tell it’s mulberry season in Appalachia without ever seeing a single mulberry – at least not a whole one, that is.

Just look down. Purple-stained sidewalks. Purple-spattered driveways. Purple bird droppings on parked cars. Mulberries arrive like a seasonal inconvenience, rather than a treasured fruit.

But, they are ubiquitous. They grow along fence rows, beside old homesteads, near railroad tracks, in vacant lots and at the edges of fields slowly being reclaimed by kudzu.

Unlike blackberries and raspberries, which grow on thorny canes, mulberries grow on trees. The berries look a bit like stretched-out blackberries, ripening from green to red before turning a deep shade of purple.

Red mulberries are native to Appalachia and much of eastern North America, while white mulberries arrived through failed attempts to establish a silk industry in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Silkworms feed on mulberry leaves, and early agricultural ventures looked to create domestic silk production. The silk industry never materialized in Appalachia, but the mulberry trees remain — outlasting the plans that brought them here.

That resilience made mulberries a natural fit for Appalachian food: pies, cobblers, jams, syrups, wines and preserves. The flavor of a mulberry lies somewhere between a blackberry and grape, and the texture is softer than most other wild berries.

That softness makes them difficult to transport and nearly impossible to stack neatly into grocery store displays. They bruise easily, spoil quickly and rarely survive more than a few days after harvest.

Mulberries never became a major commercial crop in the region, so you’ll usually only see them in juice or jam form in supermarkets.

Because they don’t travel well, mulberries stay very local — like backyard tree, church parking lot, baseball field local.

And perhaps that’s the mulberry’s greatest strength after all. They are too fleeting, too fragile and too messy to become polished. They don’t stay put long enough to be standardized, improved or packaged into something else.

They remain stubbornly local, leaving their mark on birds, sidewalks and summer itself before disappearing again a few weeks later.

WEST VIRGINIA'S 3RD ANNUAL JUNETEENTH FARM-TO-TABLE DINNER FEATURING BLACK BUSINESSES, FARMERS AND CHEFS. It was a wonderful evening for the annual Juneteenth dinner with Chef Ke. Proud to have helped support this event for the past three years and looking forward to seeing it continue to grow. First Course
SMOKED BONE MARROW
crispy goat • house pickles • house focaccia bread Second Course
GRILLED JERK OCTOPUS SALAD
mixed greens • cherry tomatoes • olives • soft boiled egg • capers • house avocado lime ranch Third Course
GRILLED SALMON
djon djon rice • asparagus • pickliz Fourth Course
BRULEED PLANTAINS
vanilla bean ice cream • chin chin crumble

The Dining Room at Jenny Lake Lodge is a well-known restaurant in Grand Teton National Park. Located in the historic Jenny Lake Lodge, a rustic log property dating to the 1920s, it reflects the style of early national park tourism in the American West. The dining room's menu features Rocky Mountain trout, bison, elk and seasonal produce. I enjoyed the grilled flat iron tacos with grilled peppers, cremini mushrooms, caramelized onions and chipotle aioli. And a side of kettle chips with scallion creme. I actually liked these together so I could get a crunchy element with the taco. Dessert was cheesecake with huckleberry compote and mint chantilly. The compote made this feel even more indulgent than cheesecake already does. I didn't get the mint chantilly, but I waa happy even without it. Grade: B

Ernie’s Bakery and Deli is a longtime West Yellowstone institution, serving breakfast, lunch and baked goods just minutes from Yellowstone National Park’s west entrance. The restaurant is known for its hearty breakfasts, including omelets, breakfast sandwiches, biscuits and gravy, and pancakes. Fresh-baked breads, pastries and croissants are made in-house, while the lunch menu features deli sandwiches, soups and salads. A handful of French-inspired offerings, including crepes and croque monsieur, reflect the bakery’s roots. Royal Breakfast Sandwich - amoked salmon, cream cheese, dill, egg on a bagel. The runny egg spurted out the top of the bagel, so the texture left a lot to be desired. There was no lack of flavor though - especially dill. For dessert, I had a "Yellowstone Mudpot" treat, which features a sourdough pretzel covered in caramel and chocolate, and a "Haystack," which has toasted coconut and cocolate. Plus Mimi's caramel. The Mudpot delivered the perfect balance of sweet and salty. The Haystack combined toasted coconut and chocolate for a rich, chewy treat, while Mimi’s caramel was buttery, smooth and hard to stop eating. All three felt like fitting rewards after a day spent exploring Yellowstone. Grade: B