A few parting words. Thinking of Mr. Bilbo Baggins – I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. Actually, I like and appreciate all of you more than you know, I have maintained a modest but loyal readership over the years. Thank you to all who took time to read what I had to share here over the years. This is a story about my pathway to writing. I am opting to slide away from this path of 25 years which is a good run. My road to writing did not have a good map. My preschool, first grade and second grader teachers hated ..read more

Labor Day weekend led to a detour to Eddie’s Grill, an iconic spot at Geneva on the Lake for legendary hamburgers and hot dogs as well as a quick peak at Lake Erie. I do not know what Geneva on the Lake (GOTL) is like other times of the year, but Labor Day Weekend it seemed like the Ohio State Fair had been air dropped beside Lake Erie switching out carnival rides for motorcycle enthusiasts. I really enjoyed a cheeseburger at Eddie’s Grill – it was perfectly simple with a small bar area where you could add pickles, different types of relish and more. When we wrapped up our meal, I saw the si ..read more

Long time readers and anyone that has dined with know knows that breakfast is my fourth favorite meal with a rare few exceptions: Starliner Diner, Tommy’s Diner, Skillet and Egg (in Rehobeth Beach, DE). I have no ill will against breakfast as a meal. I’m not a morning person and I don’t find most breakfast foods exciting. I prefer to save my calories for lunch, second lunch and dinner. However, when I was contacted by First Watch about their new fall breakfast / brunch menu I was immediately all in. Fall is my favorite season. The colors and flavors of fall were well represented in the sample ..read more

Father’s Day gift giving is no small task. Typical and non-typical fathers are challenging to buy for, offering no hints or preferences about what they might want to have. I my case, I am very clear about my desires, I don’t want any presents and I don’t want a card unless it is homemade. What are sons and daughters and maybe mothers to do? For me, I want experiences and father/son time. A conflation of ideas, events and opportunities inspired me to create this post. This is my sixth rotation being on the father end of Father’s Day. I love being a Father, it is been the greatest gift of a lif ..read more

Hello my loyal three fans. You may have noticed my posts are few and far between. But have heart, you can still get a fix of my infrequent adventures with my Aficionadough monthly feature on Columbus Underground. The one year anniversary of my column is in May. If you have missed out, you can catch up on articles both old and new -> HERE. I’d like to say that I came up with the name. I gave Columbus Underground one stipulation when I came on board and that was I wanted the column to have a name. I submitted several possible names that I was not thrilled with to generate the brainstorming p ..read more

Hello Loyal CMH Gourmand Reader(s)! My book, Columbus Pizza: A Slice of History has been out in the world for 13 months.  I am happy to report that I have crossed the $1 per hour threshold for profits.  The book has garnered largely 5 star reviews on Amazon.  Reviewers in other venues are not as generous but still fair.  The toughest reviewers are on GoodReads which makes sense since that is a cadre of book nerds that frequently read books. None of the sites allow me to provide feedback to the reviews so I am using this Festivus blog as my venue to respond to reviews to dat ..read more

It was 6 pm on a Wednesday. I had just wrapped up a client meeting at the Downtown Newark Library and I was ready to hit the road west, back to Columbus. (By the way, the library is a beautiful building well suited to the task). A common theme in many support groups is H.A.L.T. = don’t make decisions when you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired. I was hungry. I am pretty much always angry (in an existential sort of way), I have not been lonely in this century but I was alone, which is a rarity and I was definitely tired. The rays of the sun relentlessly tried to blind me through my sunglasses ..read more

One score and 500 days ago a global pandemic brought froth a new plague to this nation.  It could have been an opportunity to unify to fight a common foe, but it quickly devolved into another offshoot of the culture wars.  So here we are today, few of us sadder, very few of us wiser and so many people gone before their time. I have had this post on the back burner all of 2021.  I was waiting for the right moment to drop this to my 43 fans.  Well, the criteria kept changing.  End of the pandemic….nope. The date Ohio hit herd immunity – negative. Griffin completing a w ..read more

Today is the day. Page view One Million happened on or about 10 AM EST this morning. It took just short of fifteen years to get here. My first post was August 28th, 2006. A few years ago, I checked the numbers and I thought I had a long shot of hitting 1 million by the fifteenth anniversary of CMH Gourmand if I could get my numbers to trend back up to their heyday. I knew with life, parenthood, etc., that would be a long shot so I stopped thinking about it. However Covid gave this blog a shot in readership as people who were very bored started reading more. So here we are two months ahead of a ..read more

I love cheese. I like to support local foods. I’m also proud of any award winning Ohio food. Putt all of these things together and you have, Pearl Valley Cheese. I first discovered the company by accident. In the 1990’s I spent many weekends roaming the back roads of Ohio looking for places to hike and bike. One day while enjoying the hilly roads of State Route 93, I spied a sign for Pearl Valley Cheese Company. I braked hard, back tracked and saw a small red building and a deserted parking lot. I figured it must be a manufacturing facility closed for the weekend but I drove on anyway and saw ..read more