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One of my favorite things to make on a weeknight, these days, is a kitchen cupboard chickpea curry. It goes like this: I open my kitchen cupboard, pull out a can of chickpeas, a bag of rice, a tube of tomato paste, a can of coconut milk, and as many spices as I feel like…

If there’s one question I get asked all the time, whether in my blog comments or over Twitter, it’s: “How do you not weigh 500 pounds?” It’s usually in response to a post about a very decadent meal or a recipe that involves several sticks of butter (like Craig’s birthday cake). The question implies that…

Having a car is a game-changer. In New York, if we were itching to get away, there’d have to be a flight involved or something called ZipCar which involves showing up at a weird parking lot and getting into a strange car with a secret code beamed into your phone. Here in L.A., you pretty…

Imagine a restaurant that’s not really a restaurant but, rather, an event that will exist for only a limited period of time. What you’ve just imagined is a pop-up restaurant, a phenomenon that’s sweeping the food world and that’s been spearheaded, mostly, by L.A.’s Ludo and Krissy Lefebvre. I met them both back in July…

What’s a birthday dinner without birthday cake? There has to be cake. And after polling Craig on his preferred dinner option (the aforementioned birthday lasagna), I queried him about cake. His response: “Yellow cake with chocolate frosting, please.” That’s when a hyperlink appeared in my brain sending me to this cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

For Craig’s birthday this year, I didn’t take him to a fancy dinner as I’ve done in years past (see here, here and here). This year his birthday had two components: (1) a dinner at home with his favorite foods; and (2) a weekend trip to Palm Springs. You’ll hear about Palm Springs later this…

If you cook the same thing over and over and over again, eventually you get really good at it. That’s what happened with me and chicken: I’m really good at cooking it. And though there are many who find chicken boring, that’s usually because chicken, when stripped of its skin and bones, is, indeed, very…

Andrew Carmellini, in his new book American Flavor, shares a biscuit recipe that he calls “the world’s best biscuits.” This is a bold claim, even for a chef as revered as Carmellini, but in his defense, when he started serving biscuits (and fried chicken) at his pre-The Dutch Italian restaurant, Locanda Verde, the critics gushed.…

Two things are making me more of a restaurant adventurer here in L.A. than I was in New York: (1) nicer weather and (2) a car. In New York, on the bitterest, most miserable days of January, I would stick to a very specific loop that involved lunch at Hummus Place, coffee at Joe, and…

The meat section at my local Gelson’s is pretty spectacular: if you name a cut of meat, they probably have it. And on Friday night I was craving lamb and, studying the lamb options there, I saw a giant leg of lamb for $70 and a rack of lamb for $40. Those prices would seem…

For years, I struggled with both Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS), two conditions that severely affected…
For years, I struggled with both Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS), two conditions that severely affected…
For years, I struggled with both Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS), two conditions that severely affected…
For years, I struggled with both Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS), two conditions that severely affected…
For years, I struggled with both Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS), two conditions that severely affected…