Thursday, 05 March 2026 20:21
Written by Madelaine Bullwinkel

MOROCCO: A CULINARY CROSSROADS

I fell in love with Morocco when I first visited in 2021, finding its rich history reflected in a delicious blend of savory, sweet and spicy flavors. Since antiquity, this cuisine evolved as Morocco became the crossroads connecting Berber, Arab, Andalusian and Jewish ingredients and dishes. I left wanting to learn more.

This itinerary traces the full arc of Moroccan history and identity in a single journey: the indigenous Berbers, Morocco's medieval past in Fez and Meknes, its African trading roots in Marrakech, and its Mediterranean connections in Rabat and Essaouira. At every stop, we will immerse ourselves in cooking, wine tastings and food markets. We will discover how a layered patchwork of ethnic cuisines mingled and enriched each other in the framework of daily life. Our travels will include all four royal cities and six of Morocco's nine UNESCO World Heritage sites.

We will dip our feet in the ocean, take a camel ride (optional), lounge in the desert and wander the Medina in Fez, a ninth century labyrinth. From antiquity to modern times, we'll discover Morocco's food, people and places. Come join us. It's going to be an unforgettable experience.

Space is limited. Visit Morocco: A Culinary Crossroads for details

Saturday, 27 December 2025 19:41
Written by Madelaine Bullwinkel

A fresh take on "Let them eat cake".

What was once considered Marie Antoinette’s clueless offer to “let them eat cake” is becoming a reality in Chicagoland thanks to a cranky 3-year-old's demand for chocolate cake. As she tells it, the child’s mother, Tianna Gawlak, is accustomed to untimely demands for cake from her family. On this occasion, as she was driving home from her appearance to sign a debut picture book, The Chocolate Cake Book, she had an idea.

Tianna realized she could satisfy her child’s craving by creating a one-serving cake vending machine. Her timing was prescient for this unlikely entrepreneurial undertaking. The year was 2020, and Covid restrictions would soon force small, local bakeries to close, creating a gap for self-serve machines to fill. Tianna used her training in healthcare delivery to contract with bakeries and search for a customized vending machine.

Sprinkles Cupcake had already proven the self-serve food concept in 2012 by installing an ATM kiosk in the side of their Beverly Hills bakery. Tianna’s new business, The Bakery Box, began selling fresh cakes and macarons from a refrigerated vending machine in 2021. The cakes sold well thanks to strategic marketing on social media, and Tianna mastered such start-up issues as how to box each cake individually and refill the machines daily.

The Bakery Box now has four Chicagoland locations from River North to the Chicago Premier Outlets in Aurora some forty miles west. What seemed like an unsustainable business model is continuing to be highly successful in a post-Covid world. Sprinkles Cupcakes now has thirty-eight outlets, many are freestanding, in malls, airports, on campuses and other high-traffic locations. ATM food service kiosks can also be found in The United Arab Emirates (Dubai/ Abu Dhabi), the United Kingdom, Australia, France and Canada.

WISHING YOU ALL THE CAKE YOU CRAVE IN THE NEW YEAR!

Saturday, 29 November 2025 18:05
Written by Madelaine Bullwinkel

ALL HAIL HONEYCRISP!

Gala is the most popular apple in the US

Honeycrisp has a growing number of challengers to its status as the world’s most popular apple. Cosmic Crisp, a youthful offspring, exemplifies the stakes involved in this contest. The University of Minnesota has spent $2.2 million dollars over two decades of research and testing and another twenty years to grow it to scale for the market. Other newbies include Sugar Bee, Sweet Tango and the French Kissabel whose red-tinted flesh is tart and succulent. Competition is fierce and the stakes are high when it comes to breeding the world’s most consumed fruit.

Given the science involved, it may come as a surprise to learn that Honeycrisp’s success is something of a fluke. A graduate student rescued it from a pile of discarded seedlings in 1988 at the University of Minnesota’s Agricultural Experiment Station. The Honeycrisp’s explosive juiciness could just as easily have been lost among thousands of its sibling seedlings.

The fact that flowering plants like humans have sexes means that each apple seed created by cross-pollination has a unique genetic identity. Apple breeders match apples that will produce a desired taste, texture, color, growing habit and storage life. Then they plant thousands of seeds from this match in search of one or two seedlings that will meet their expectations. Once chosen, the Honeycrisp seedling was grafted onto rootstock, making it a clone that was propagated at scale to sell commercially.

The Kissabel is French!

A full decade passed before the Honeycrisp became widely popular. Apple growers had found that its trees are fragile, slow to grow and susceptible to disease. Honeycrisps also ripen unevenly and do not hold well in storage. These factors and the size of the apples slowed their volume in the marketplace and made them expensive. It took almost 20 years of development and another 10 - 20 years in the marketplace for it to achieve its present status as bestselling ‘stud’ apple.

The Honeycrisp earned its breeders $16.5 million dollars in royalties before its patent ran out in 2008. It’s success broke the Red Delicious apple’s century-long hold on the market. Consumers had come to prefer an apple with tart flavor and juicy texture over the bland, mealy textured Red Delicious. Since 2010, the sequencing of the apple’s genome has given apple breeders information that continues to shorten the time it takes to develop a new apple for forty to thirty years.

Which apple do you prefer? Please feel free to write and tell me why. Send your comments to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. I will report on your response in a future post.