The world is changing. Indeed, the election proves that the world has already changed.

The world of eating is changing, too, and profoundly for the better. By now the locavore movement is well established as a culinary ambition, one with expanding political and ecological implications. All across town farmer’s markets pop up in unexpected places – schoolyards, church grounds, and forgotten plazas.

Sitting at your desk dreaming of new flavors, how do you get connected? In the bad old days you found these events by word of mouth, by knowing someone in the know.

Now, just in time, Edible Manhattan is out. A new food magazine that began in Ojai, California, Edible finally cracked the big city. Valuable as a shopping and dining source, it is equally inspiring as bedroom reading. The inaugural issue features excellent articles on New York City tap water and on Manhattan beekeepers, two topics of keen interest to Mr. Henry who has always hated people who carry bottled water and who has always harbored a secret longing to keep bees on the terrace.

In the new issue Regina Schrambling writes about Duncan Hines – an actual person – who in 1959 published the Zagat’s of its day. Who knew? Mr. Henry always thought Duncan Hines was like Aunt Jemima, Betty Crocker, or Mrs. Butterworth – an ersatz icon of ersatz cuisine.

Armed with Edible Manhattan and an eco-friendly cloth shopping sack, Mr. Henry feels prepared to venture out from his little village on the Upper West Side, a village more populous than Wyoming, mind you, but a village nonetheless. The great metropolitan expanse lies before him.

Courageously he will take a southbound train for Union Square to hunt wild mizuna, parsnips, and spring lamb.

At The Bent Spoon in Princeton, New Jersey, they serve Earl Grey ice cream, an ethereal afternoon treat. They also serve apricot ice cream with thyme, equally ethereal, as well as chocolate ice cream with orange, mint or rosemary.

Mr. Henry understands the pairing of apricot and thyme, an exotic blend redolent of ancient Andalusia. At Nadia’s table he once ate rabbit stewed with prunes and thyme, a dish he would gladly reproduce at home if rabbits weren’t so cute, so fluffy, and so popular with younger eaters in the household.

Thyme is a sensual aromatic, less strident than rosemary. In the ancient world thyme was burned as incense. Rosemary is pushy, not as insistent as cardamom or clove, perhaps, but pushy nonetheless. Dried rosemary can easily overpower a tomato sauce or pot roast.

When Mrs. Henry ties fresh rosemary stems to a loin of pork, the oven fills with a delicious rosemary smoke that transports you to Provence. Rosemary goes well in sautéed mushrooms with bacon, garlic, and shallots, in meat stock, and in savory sauces using dry white wine or vermouth. Lamb absolutely demands it.

But rosemary with chocolate??

Despite serious misgivings Mr. Henry placed faith in the kitchen wizards at The Bent Spoon. Yesterday he braved a cupful of chocolate ice cream with rosemary, a pairing that seemed to defy imagination. Two distinct flavors from two distinctly different flavor groups came together into a heavenly post-prandial delight, an aromatic combination that simultaneously cleansed and perfused the palate. The experience was worth an hour on the New Jersey Turnpike.

After 30 years of shacking up, Jeff and Gail got married.

In Hanalei Bay, on Kaua’i, Hawaii, in the lee of Bali Ha’i they spent six weeks snorkeling and snuggling. It was indeed their own special island.

Each morning before the sun’s rays reached the blue sea floor they trundled down to the market to buy a tranche of  ahi or kampachi caught that very morning. After a morning in the water they prepared a lunch of sashimi (dipped in soy sauce and freshly grated wasabi) with slices of avocado, papaya, star fruit, or mango (the Haden variety, with pulp that is not stringy).

Richly dark greens like collard or rainbow chard filled the markets. Oddly enough, however, because the climate is so temperate, tomatoes do not ripen to full flavor there.

On Kaua’i they make a pungent and tangy feta-style goat cheese that pairs well with fresh cilantro and crunchy crackers.

But what was the potion impelling them to bind the ties of wedlock? What was their passion fruit?

It was the rum smoothie.

Gail’s Honeymoon Smoothie

dark rum
young ginger, grated
pineapple
guava
mango
splash of orange soda
dollop of lychee-flavored yogurt
coconut water (crack the nut with a hammer)
ice

Drink before dinner. Watch the stars come out.

Having lived happily ever after, having spent a honeymoon in paradise, and having gotten married, in that order, pretty soon now, yes, any minute Jeffrey is going to propose to Gail (or will it be vice versa?). Accordingly, the next logical step in their backward romance will be that unforgettable first blush of mutual infatuation. Who could not be envious?

Many years ago when Mr. Henry first approached a stove with motive and intent, he did not have the confidence he has today. Sweat collected on his furrowed young brow. From the start, however, he felt rookie confidence in tackling the grilled cheese sandwich.

There was the bread, of course, and the cheese, as well as a bit of butter in the pan. Through arduous trial and error young Mr. Henry honed his technique. Unguided and alone he discovered that to achieve even browning one must depress the sandwich lightly so that runny cheese not ooze embarrassingly out the sides. This required finesse with the spatula, a delicate up-and-down, chip-and-putt touch like Greg Norman’s, a touch you are born with, not a touch you can learn.

More important, he found from the beginning that cooking suited his innate talents. He likes to be in control of his own destiny, and he likes to eat. From his success with the grilled cheese sandwich, he strode on ahead to new challenges.

In short order, as it were, he became master of the scrambled egg, too. (Or so he supposed. Now he knows better. Truly velvety scrambled eggs must be cooked slowly over mild heat. After the eggs begin to clump you add a touch of milk or cream to retard the process.)

When faced with more complicated fabrications like soups or stews, however, he wilted. For help he stole peeks at Fannie Farmer or Joy of Cooking, furtive scans in the corner lest a big sister discover him in feminine occupations thereby obtaining premium ammunition for teasing.

In the Henry household, real men did not cook. Mother Henry herself only cooked under duress. Genuine slow cooking – gravies, stews, cakes – was conducted uniquely by women in household employ who closely monitored and roundly discouraged children in their kitchen. That is, cooks shooed kids out the back door.

While the skill of cooking held commercial value, the act itself was looked upon as drudgery. Since maids did not come on Sunday, traditional Sunday dinner slumbered in the freezer, R.I.P. And to think those little prison-issue aluminum trays once held genuine excitement. Ah, yesterday.

Now for Mr. Henry cooking has become a form of recreation and relaxation, a task that fully occupies the mind and the hand, a task concluding in a treat for the cook and his tablemates. Since he works more and more from home, and since he shops for food on foot, the burden of driving the car has transformed into something similar, too, a pleasure and a pastime.

In a completely unforeseen cultural development, TV cooking shows have become the teen-age rage. Once the daily grind of servants, cooking has entered the pantheon of applied arts.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Well, today taking the heat has become cool.

Who saw this coming? What does this seismic cultural event portend?

Today’s kitchen is the focal point of the house, its beating heart. Traveling salesman know that if you can get the client into her kitchen, you can close the deal. Someone who allows you into their kitchen has allowed you into their family.

Interior design today usually favors an open plan with no wall between kitchen and living area. The shift in America’s approach to cooking has changed not only living patterns but architecture, as well. Mom standing at the stove in a kitchen cubicle has become Dad standing at the stove in the center of the house.

This happy arrangement leaves Mom free to pursue her destiny – free to discipline the children and pay the mortgage.

Last week Aunt Bev came barreling out of the Mountain West to help nurse Mrs. Henry and do chores with her characteristic house-elf perseverance. Now the fridge is spotless inside and out. Thanks to her deft work with a toothpick, little crevices in the door panel no longer harbor black gunk. (Who knew?)

Aunt Bev would rather clean house from top to bottom, however, than cook dinner. She is fully capable of throwing dinner together. She does it quite regularly back home. But she does not enjoy it. For her, cooking will always be drudgery.

Her sister, Mrs. Henry, is exactly the opposite. She likes nothing more than to plunge her hands in flour up to the elbows. When renovating the kitchen she designed a long, unbroken stretch of countertop so that baking would never again create congestion.

When she cooks, she leaves the kitchen a wreck. But each dish arrives perfectly hot and perfectly done at the same time. It’s a miracle of theatrical timing performed without rehearsal or stage fright.

Although Betsy hates to cook, she baked a pumpkin spice bread for Mrs. Henry’s convalescence that became the top treat of the week. If you hate to cook, it’s practical to have one whiz-bang recipe to prepare in a pinch.

When the temperature outside is in the middle 90’s, what should you fix for dinner? You want to make a dish that’s good for leftovers but you don’t want to fire the oven more than absolutely necessary.

Aunt Bev’s choice, her whiz-bang recipe, is the Bill Blass meat loaf. (Did you realize that High Wasp society considers the humble, old-fashioned meat loaf to be the ultimate in chic? At Connecticut country estate weekend parties it’s positively revered as a holy relic.)

Always a tinkerer with recipes, Mr. Henry added rolled oats in place of bread crumbs, added an extra egg, and left out the butter altogether except to grease the pan. To accompany he chose mashed potatoes, a green vegetable, and a pinot noir.

Back in the last century Mr. Henry had the great pleasure of making Bill Blass’s acquaintance. Even in a business negotiation which normally reveals the worst aspects of someone’s personality, Mr. Blass was an authentic gentleman – witty, charming and forthright.

Here is the recipe. In changing those few details, Mr. Henry hopes he has Bill’s blessing.

How hot was it last weekend? It was so hot that Mr. and Mrs. Henry had to trade favors to decide who went out to buy food. Ice cream melted during the walk home from the store. Black cherries which at the store were perfectly firm arrived home warm and soft. To make sure the bay scallops survived the blistering march up Broadway from Citarella, Mrs. Henry, ever the rugged survivor, packed blue ice in her grocery sac before setting out.

Firing up the oven was out of the question. Some sort of savory salad seemed wanting. Mrs. Henry fried diced bacon and saved a little fat in which she seared the scallops. She tossed white beans (bottled, Italian) with fresh baby spinach in a vinaigrette made with white balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and lemon. Topped with diced mango and bacon bits, the dinner salad was the perfect reprieve from the day’s punishing heat.

Made from sweet trebbiano grape juice, not from wine, white balsamic vinegar is fruity and distinctly less acidic than red vinegar. It won’t overwhelm a mild dish like scallops or potato salad. Its sweetness also obviates the need to add sugar.

Mr. Henry’s delicate constitution presents a different category of challenge. Although he likes the taste of raw garlic, onion, green pepper, and scallion, his stomach responds repeatedly with complaints. If he roasts or braises these thoroughly, he can eat them in small quantities. But what if you want the taste of raw onion?

Heaving only one or two sighs of exasperation, Mrs. Henry arrived at a neat solution for a potato salad eaten over the infernal weekend.

She finely diced a Vidalia onion and let it quickly pickle in salt with a liberal dose of her white balsamic vinegar.

When combined with hot potatoes the pickled onion wilted, yielding its sharpness without denying its flavor. Celery added crunch. Flat parsley added color. A dab of Dijon mustard, a splash of olive oil, and a tablespoon of sour cream generated a creamy potato salad that looked as if it were made with mayonnaise but tasted lighter and fresher.

As for the soft cherries, she threw them whole into a great pot, added a tablespoon of turbinado sugar and a half cup of sake(!). After bringing them to a boil, she let simmer for half an hour until the cherries were plumped and the sauce caramelized. Cooled they became a delectable dessert and breakfast treat all the more remarkable for their unexpected spiciness – a hint of cinnamon, a suggestion of prune, the possibility of sherry. No one guessed the presence of sake.

Next time Mr. Henry will try stewing fruit in white balsamic. It’s sure to work.

Mr. Henry is worried about his country.

It is not enough that we change our party, we must change our pastry, as well, specifically, our breakfast pastry. It’s a scandal.

New York magazine’s cover story this week reveals the frightful selections locals here choose first thing in the morning. Be forewarned. This is not for the faint of heart.

Each picture portrait with breakfast description is a snapshot pinpointing personality and temperament. 60 interviews, 60 lives in brief, most bound for wreck and ruin.

Mind you, there is occasional testimony of oatmeal or fresh fruit. Quite a few sit down to a lumberjack breakfast of every high caloric ingestible known to man – eggs, bacon, grits (with cheese!), biscuits (with gravy!), and so on – not a regime designed for longevity unless you eat little else for the remainder of the day, but a regime that does sustain and nourish. Two men ate a pure breakfast of four hard-boiled eggs, one of whom followed that with two more eggs. What could be simpler?

The overwhelming majority eat sweets. Ick. Nothing good from sucrose comes.

How can we expect to lead the world on a breakfast of pop tarts and Venti? With these beginnings, by 11:00 a.m. even the soberest citizens are ready to dispense collateral damage willy-nilly.

The scariest of all must be the doughnut. Reason itself withers against a fried onslaught of fat and sugar.

Mr. Henry imagines guards at Guantanamo devouring jelly doughnuts and their sticky boxes, too. Wooh wooh wooh. Arggggggghhh! Off they go to force-feed the detainees.

The article revealed many mysteries. Two African-Americans ate turkey bacon. What could be the attraction? Is this a Black Muslim modification of the old-fashioned American standard?

Several people confessed to drinking alcohol in the morning, the very definition of alcohol dependence. Even alcohol, however, beats a breakfast of Coca-Cola.

Older people seem to have a better grasp of the importance of an appropriate breakfast. They don’t take their digestive functions for granted. The oldest man ate the breakfast best suited to gastro-intestinal happiness – an orange, cottage cheese and fig jam on wheat crackers, with English breakfast tea. This is more than a wise breakfast, it’s a tasty one. This man is clear-minded and well-balanced. Mr. Henry wants to vote for him.

Today Mr. Henry himself began with a small glass of fresh orange juice. While the coffee was steeping he ate half a banana and a large slice of red papaya. Because his noble hound Pepper does not permit a second cup of coffee before walkies, Mr. Henry’s oatmeal with raisins had to wait until after. (He adds a pinch of brown sugar and a splash of cream.)

After a second cup of coffee (french press) with whole milk, he is fully fed and fully caffeinated. Should he feel peckish at elevens, the best remedy will be an early lunch.

Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food entreats us to not eat anything our grandmothers wouldn’t recognize as food. But just what did Mr. Henry’s grandmothers eat?

Was your grandmother exotic, bohemian, or fresh off the boat? Or, like Ensign Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, was she “as corny as Kansas in August, as normal as blueberry pie?” (Did she look like Kelli O’Hara, too?)

Sadly, Mr. Henry has no recipes from either of his grandmothers. Grandmother Eunice used to say: “If you don’t learn how to cook, you won’t have to.” Armored with this impregnable Irish logic, she lived a life blissfully unperturbed by dishpans. (But she danced a terrific Charleston.)

German Grandmother Mae baked a marvelous potatoes au gratin. She was admired for roasts, puddings, and especially for wilted lettuce salad made with a warm vinaigrette of red wine vinegar and bacon bits.

At Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, in a notable departure from Mother Henry’s rules, Mae served the children a small glass of white grape juice spiked with white wine. Giggle fits arrived soon after. Cautioned to steer clear of the Meissen figurine, children were excused from the table so they could play on the carpet and wrinkle their Sunday clothes.

In her spirited blog, Casey Ellis tells of finding her grandmother’s recipe book written sometime before 1918. It is a captivating story of how a woman’s personality survives through her kitchen notebook, a moving testament to the way identity and food are inextricably bound.

Regarding his preference for the dessert spoon, Bronwyn derides Mr. Henry for renouncing the humble teaspoon. Don’t fret, Bronwyn. The Henry household is not wanting for spoons.

Grandmother Mae’s wedding silver service presents a remarkable picture of the 19th century table. In addition to two sets of 12 teaspoons, there are 12 cream soup, bouillon, dessert, iced tea, and coffee spoons. Just for show, there are 12 gilt silver demi-tasse spoons, too.

Dear readers, please don’t tell Mr. Henry’s siblings that he snagged the silver service. At the ancestral Henry manor, silver candlesticks remain up for grabs.

It is the year of change, indeed. Among Mr. Henry’s friends and relations long-established eating habits are giving way to new ones.

No meal is more culture-specific than breakfast. On your first trip to Japan, you won’t have trouble finding an acceptable lunch or dinner for anyone in the party. Breakfast is another story. Pickles, sashimi, raw quail egg on rice, tofu, miso soup, nori, daikon – none of these ever graced Mr. Henry’s grandmother’s table.

Mr. Henry’s German grandmother, who graduated from Iowa State University in 1912, rose early and started her day with a tablespoon of corn oil and a glass of hot water. She swore it prevented asthma, but Mr. Henry believes it contributed to regular evacuation, as well. She never missed her morning dose and she lived to be 97.

Mr. Henry’s Irish grandmother, the most beautiful girl in 1920’s New York, rose late and started with a strong cup of tea (and occasionally with a little hair of the dog, too). She departed this life at age 57.

Mother Henry is approaching her 77th birthday and charges around town like Hillary Clinton on energy drink. Recently she shared an unusual dietary secret. She starts her day with spinach. (Was that Popeye’s secret, too?)

While Father Henry squeezes the orange juice, Mother downs a few spoonfuls of cold spinach in between bites of hard-boiled egg. Later comes coffee and toast. She claims she needs to eat leafy greens every single day, and sometimes she gets so busy running around town that she doesn’t get an opportunity to sit down to a proper lunch. Dinner selections are variable and don’t always include leafy greens.

Over spring vacation Little Henry and posse shocked the grown-ups by starting their vacation morning with avocado on toast. (Mr. Henry blames the Food Network for these departures from normalcy.) Mr. Henry tried it too, but needed to add goat cheese and honey before it assumed the appearance of a morning repast.

Mrs. Henry has been making fruit smoothies with seaweed powder – morning green goop. She claims it will change your life. Consider yourself warned.

In a New York Times article “Disappearing Foods,” Kim Severson reviews the new book by Gary Paul Nabhan, Renewing America’s Food Traditions.

Accompanying the article is a marvelous interactive graphic illustrating areas of the United States organized by “gastronomic regions.”

With one finger on the touch pad Mr. Henry wandered interactively around the country. In “Gumbo Nation,” the Gulf Coast region, he read the words “clay field peas” and memories sprouted like magic beans.

Not since the middle 1960’s had Mr. Henry tasted these delicacies. Field peas look like pale green black-eyed peas or greener versions of white acre peas. Normally they are dried and used as fodder. When served fresh, however, boiled with ham hock as Mr. Henry remembers them, they taste creamy, mildly nutty, and divinely sweet. Mr. Henry’s favorite boyhood vegetable, one day about 45 years ago they simply disappeared from the market. Were these the disappearing “clay field peas?”

In “Crabcake Nation,” the southern Atlantic Coast, during Mr. Henry’s youth blue crabs ran thick and wild on Florida beaches.

For spring vacation this year Mr. Henry took the kids to Florida. Promising them a bonanza of blue crab, he bought six flashlights and six poles with crab nets. After dark the hunting party set off after its nocturnal, side-striding prey. They found not a single blue crab on the beach. Mr. Henry hung his bush hat in disgrace. Are blue crabs disappearing?

In “Chestnut Nation,” the Appalachians, Mr. Henry once stopped at a roadside farm stand high in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Spying mason jars of something mustard yellow in color, he read the label: “chou-chou.”

Thinking the name was derived from French, he asked, “Is this ‘shoo-shoo’ a pickled cabbage?”

“Naw,” said the tiny young woman. “That’s chow chow.”

“Hmmm,” said Mr. Henry. “Is it sweet?”

“Well,” she said pursing her thin lips, “It’s got right smart sugar in it.”

In Appalachian argot, “right smart” means “quite a bit.” The pickle, although a little too sweet, was crunchy and delightfully flavorful. Indeed, it was not cabbage but Jerusalem artichoke pickled in mustard. Was this Jack’s copperclad Jerusalem artichoke, one of America’s disappearing foods?