Okra

The gumbo-making began last night: shrimp-peeling, oyster-defrosting. They would make the winter variety, without okra and with file powder, ground from sassafras leaves. The kind of gumbo that the Dugues have always cooked for Thanksgiving. The kind that keeps them warm inside. It's a lot colder in Greenbelt than in New Orleans, where - about a mile from the lakefront - there stands a one-story brick house that should be "as busy as Grand Central Station" about now, says Jocelyn Dugue, 74. Instead, the inside is silent and rotting, with the high-water mark up to the ceiling.

Food playCome and play with your food at a creative arts workshop Sunday at Smith and Hawken. Children ages 5 and up are encouraged (for once!) to engage in the messy play. An artist will demonstrate how playing with food can produce creative and aesthetic results, as the new book, "Play With Your Food," by Joost Elffers, reveals. The book will serve as a guide as the artist shapes fruits and vegetables into animals and other creatures through simple modifications. Children will observe as a pineapple becomes a turtle, a banana becomes an agile octopus, a pear becomes a bear, a lemon becomes a pig, okra becomes pesky bugs and grasshoppers, cherries become crawly ants, green onions' roots become hair and scallions become singers.

Growing up in a Virginia town settled by freed slaves, including her grandfather, Edna Lewis, a legendary champion of Southern cuisine, learned early that farming and food were synonymous with community. Lewis, who died last week at 89 in her Decatur, Ga., home, would employ the lessons of her childhood in a lifelong praise song for the art of refined country cooking. "The spirit of pride in community and of cooperation in the work of farming is what made Freetown a very wonderful place to grow up in," she wrote in The Taste of Country Cooking, considered a classic by America's top chefs.

I am game for almost any eating challenge, as long as it does not involve swallowing that hated slimy, stewed okra. So when I heard that eating okra was an optional part of the Maryland Buy Local Challenge, I was a willing player. The challenge was to eat at least one item from a Maryland farm every day for seven days in mid-July. The purpose of this statewide undertaking, which ended last week, was to familiarize Marylanders with the sources of locally produced fare. This idea of eating local foods is hot. The word "locavore," someone who eats locally produced ingredients, was named the 2007 word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

Among life's most sensual pleasures, the garden in summer -- scented with sweet melons, luscious tomatoes and mint -- has got to be in the Top 10. Rich in color, beauty and abundance, it's one of the rewards for the wave of planting in late spring and early summer.The list of herbs, fruits and vegetables that can be put in the ground now is tantalizing: sweet basil, marjoram, dill, melon, squash, tomato, pepper, cucumber, eggplant, okra, pumpkin, endive, sweet potato and Chinese cabbage (bok choy)

Fells Point had been without an Indian restaurant since Mehek closed about two years ago. In late March, Vinay Wahi, a partner in the Akbar restaurants, opened Darbar in the Aliceanna Street space where Talay Thai had been the most recent tenant. Before the Thai restaurant, there were an Italian restaurant and a Greek restaurant, and this restaurant space has always had its pluses and minuses. Always, people point out the odd location, which feels less in the neighborhood than on the way out of the neighborhood.

The story of African-American food is one of survival, evolution and love."During slavery, mama fed her young by giving up her own food," so food became a way to express affection in African-American families, says Jessica B. Harris, author of five cookbooks about African-influenced food, including her latest, "The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking" (Simon & Schuster, $24).Ms. Harris' new cookbook documents the history of African-American food and provides more than 200 authentic recipes gathered from the kitchens of African-Americans from "generations of church suppers, fish frys, barbecues, family reunions and Sunday school picnics" all over the country.

Welcome to improv dining. Chef Mac's and All that Blues , the new home for Maclonza Lee's Louisiana cuisine, is part restaurant and part supper club. The kitchen serves from an a la carte menu on Tuesday through Thursday nights, but on Friday and Saturday nights, the restaurant transforms into a live blues club, and patrons dine buffet-style. The $25 "all-inclusive" buffet features seafood on Friday and prime rib and barbecue on Saturday. The buffet nights have been doing turn-away business, I was told, and it looks like Baltimore, which for years has been starved for a community-based blues venue, may just have one. And then there's the occasional Thursday evening that Chef Mac's hosts a WEAA simulcast featuring live music performances, and the new Wednesday night karaoke promotion.

Ted Frankel and Bill Gilmore It would be difficult for even the smartest holiday decorations to compete with the artwork that fills every corner of Ted Frankel's North Calvert Street four-story brownstone. So he and his partner, Bill Gilmore, don't even try. "This house is so complicated and busy, there really wouldn't be any point," says Frankel, who owns Sideshow, the gift shop at the American Visionary Art Museum . "The guests. That's what we decorate with," he says.

Crab soup is like mother's milk to Marylanders, who are likely to begin any seafood feast with a cup of steaming tomatoes and vegetables that are host to chunks of gleaming crab meat. Cream of crab soup, with its thick base of cream and its hint of sherry, certainly has its devotees. But there is something common, and comforting, about the spicy vegetable soup, especially at harvest time. Overripe tomatoes, the last of the Maryland sweet corn, fresh beans and limas and our old friend Old Bay make this soup a winner - literally - at seafood festivals and cooking contests.