FAVORITE THINGS — Food brings people together. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy cooking so much. On the weekends everyone in my family — like most American families these days — typically goes in different directions all day long, but if my mom or I cook dinner, for an hour or so we’re all together, at the same table, talking with one another.

This past weekend I made my new favorite food — falafels — a Middle Eastern food that is a deep-fried ball or patty made from ground chickpeas. It’s often eaten in a pita with lettuce. Satur- day evening we ate falafels together and talked about college, which my youngest brother, 17, will soon be entering and my other brother is two years into already.

They asked me all sorts of questions about it, and I did my best to answer, recalling a time that seems not too long ago. Mostly though, as much as I enjoyed the food myself, I enjoyed even more looking around the table and seeing how much everyone else liked it, too. Such is the power of food, and love.

I felt just the slightest twinge of jealousy reading through a cooking-related press release this week. It announced that on Feb. 2 more than 100 culinary arts students from Western New York high schools, including many from Orchard Park, will get to work beside some of the nation’s top chefs. (How cool, right?)

Through a partnership between the Culinary Institute of America, ProStart and the Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES, Orchard Park High School seniors Adam Waite, Gillian Praczkajilo, Heather Mejia and Molly McCarthy, in addition to juniors Andre Melson, Brianna Moore, Cory Culp and Matthew Fantuzzo, will get to cook with top chefs.

On the menu is Hungarian sauerkraut with tilapia, pan-fried mackerel with Caribbean rice and passion fruit mousse. Chefs Fritz Sonnenschmidt, Paul Jean Prosperi and Arnym Solomon will represent the Culinary Institute of America.

The E2CCB culinary arts program is a two-year career and technical education program introducing high school juniors and seniors to basic and advanced food preparation, cooking and baking as well as restaurant and banquet management. They do this while still earning their Regents diplomas.

WEATHER WHIPLASH — One day you’re sloshing through snow in your boots, and the next day it feels like spring. Everything’s melting. The robins are even out. I half expect wildflowers to poke up through the muddy ground, and yet it’s only

February, historically one of the coldest, snowiest months in the north. It’s been a strange winter in Buffalo. As unnatural as the weather feels, I cannot help but enjoy the ease with which I get to work in the morning. No scraping off the car. No crawling along on the Thruway. I’ll take it.

by DAVID F. SHERMAN
Managing Editor

GET YOUR FISH — The observance of Lent begins Feb. 22, and with it comes numerous fish fry dinners sponsored by churches and community groups. The Bee will publish a list of these Lenten fish dinners, which can be kept for reference in the weeks ahead, in the Feb. 15 and 16 editions. We will not publish fish fry announcements after that week.

The deadline to submit fish fry listings will be 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10. Paid advertisements for these events will be accepted at any time. For advertising information, call 204-4937.