“The Herbal Kitchen: 50 Easy-to-Find Herbs and Over 250 Recipes to Bring Lasting Health to You and Your Family” by Kami McBride (Conari Press, $18.95) will be most helpful to people who are already knowledgeable about herbs or perhaps grow their own. Let’s face it, the average person isn’t going to have oatstraw-calendula tea lying […]

For a lot of people, sitting in front of a line of three shots of tequila might conjure some flashbacks involving a pinch of salt, a lemon wedge and a pounding headache. But the shots that come in a flight of tequila at Zapoteca, a new Mexican restaurant and tequileria in Portland, are meant to be sipped and savored like a fine single malt Scotch, not downed in one gulp by a drunken college student.

Sergio Ramos, managing partner and resident tequila expert at the restaurant, stops customers in their tracks before they shoot back their tequila and explains to them how they should be drinking it.

“I think the tequila industry is doing a really good job of focusing on quality versus quantity,” Ramos said, “and they’re putting a really good product out there now.”

Single-person households are the fastest-growing census category in the United States, even though clueless politicians and cookbook publishers continue to ignore us. But not Joe Yonan, the food editor for the Washington Post who writes an award-winning food column called “Cooking for One.” In his new book “Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One” […]

If you like food shows on television, odds are you’ve watched “Top Chef,” “Iron Chef” or “Master Chef” and wondered what it would be like to be one of the people tasting the dishes that the contestants create under the watchful eyes of judges like Tom Colicchio and Gordon Ramsay.

Well, here’s your chance . . .