View from the North 40: So how foodie are you willing to go?

One of the benefits of the modern foodie fascination for people like me is that we can just keep throwing ingredients together with abandon, but now we can attach professional-sounding terms to it and all of a sudden our haphazard cooking process is legit.

When you make chicken something out of whatever you found in the fridge, it’s more eater-friendly to say the meal is “based on a traditional dish from the Oaxaca region of Mexico,” rather than “It’s kind of Mexican ... ish. Maybe.”

“I haven’t killed you with my cooking, yet,” was my actual motto.

FYI, “based on” is a useful phrase that adds...