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Sometimes in the morning when I’m checking my e-mail or reading the comments on the blog, I hear the sound of drinking over my shoulder. Strange, I think, and then I turn and see this: Lolita likes to drink the water on my nightstand from the night before. It’s like I’m her taster: “He drank…
You know how the early episodes of “The Simpsons” are all grainy and the characters are drawn all weird and the voices aren’t really set yet? Well think of last week’s podcast that way and this week’s like “Simpsons” Season 3. Because this podcast totally rocks. It’s a theme episode–that theme being “coffee”–and it includes…

I had a strange craving the other night, a craving based on a picture. The picture’s in my River Cafe cookbook and it’s a picture of boiled asparagus with anchovy spread and garnished with Parmesan shavings. It looked something like this: That’s a picture of my version, a version I made based on the very…

My first official meal when I returned to New York last week was brunch at Prune in the East Village. (The first unofficial meal was Chinese food I ordered, half-delirious, the Saturday night of my return. I had major jetlag.) I’d been hearing all about Prune from lots of brunch-happy people (and, also, dinner happy…
Last night I watched the season finale of the Fox kitchen reality show “Hell’s Kitchen,” the show that features a fiery nasty explosive Gordon Ramsay. Gordon was on good behavior last night which made the show much more watchable: I could barely sit through some of the other episodes I’d seen (he throws dishes at…
I’ve been back for a week now (it’s hard to believe, but true) and only now to we come to my final trip post–the last city we visited and arguably the most important: Rome. Unfortunately, the way our trip worked out we only had an afternoon and a night to experience Rome. Our boat pulled…

As you’ll read in the post beneath this, the Monaco post, my favorite dish from the entire trip was the simplest thing in the world: rigatoni in a cherry tomato sauce. This would prove slightly difficult to recreate since my tomatoes came from a supermarket bin and the tomatoes at Il Terrazzino (where we ate…

Our cruiseship stopped at about six or seven ports on our journey and at almost every one we pulled away at 5:30 or 6. There was one exception to that and that was Monaco. After Sardinia, our ship sailed to Monaco and “made history” as the largest ship ever docked there. Instead of the mandatory…

I like my title for this post but it isn’t entirely accurate: Sorrento isn’t really the bottom of the boot. It’s at the bottom region of the boot but above the toes and the calf area. Opposite side of the calf area. What’s that area called? Maybe I should’ve studied podiatry. Here’s a map: See,…
As promised, here is my attempt at an authentic Greek salad based on the two I ate while in Greece. I had some help because I bought a cookbook while there: “The Best Traditional Recipes of Greek Cooking.” There are two recipes for Greek salad in there but they’re both essentially the same. The only…