For more than 20 years now, I have been visiting the United States once or twice a year, to visit my mother-in-law, Edith, in Pittsburgh, or friends on both the east and west coasts and in between. It is always a culinary adventure, whether I’m with one of San Francisco’s well-known women chefs or in a small café ‘down east’ in Maine, famous for its blueberry pie. And whilst I love dining in the latest fashionable places, trying imaginative and exquisite dishes, I also love shopping and cooking American-style.