Category

Friends & Family

  • French Pizza and Mint Chip Ice Cream

    French Pizza and Mint Chip Ice Cream

    I’m not normally quid pro quo when it comes to food, but when you make something as delicious as David Lebovitz’s mint chip ice cream, someone’s gotta give you something pretty good for dinner before you offer them a whole container. Good thing I’m friends with Harry and Cris. Cris is from Bordeaux (that’s in…

  • When A Frenchman Cooks You Dinner

    When A Frenchman Cooks You Dinner

    For a while, our friend Cris has wanted to cook us dinner. The fact that we didn’t make it happen immediately won’t seem like a big deal until I tell you that Cris is French. Yes, we had the opportunity to have dinner cooked for us by a French person and we didn’t take him…

  • We Got Married (The Wedding Post)

    We Got Married (The Wedding Post)

    I was never a wedding person. Growing up, I’d watch the wedding scene in The Sound of Music and fantasize about writing a great musical someday. The idea of walking down an aisle held very little appeal for me (even if there’d be nuns singing a slowed-down version of “How Do You Solve A Problem…

  • My Thanksgiving Plate 2014

    My Thanksgiving Plate 2014

    Maybe this is a weird thing to be proud of, but I didn’t write any lead-up to Thanksgiving post this year and it felt really nice. So much of the writing about Thanksgiving is unnecessary: seriously, anything you need to know about turkey or cranberry sauce or stuffing has already been written. The fact that…

  • Happy Birthday, Grandma

    Happy Birthday, Grandma

    Today’s my grandma Ronnie’s 85th birthday. And though she doesn’t have a computer, my grandfather gets my blog on his Kindle; so hopefully he’ll read this to her tomorrow morning when she wakes up. For most of my life, my grandmother has been a major presence. Legend goes that just as I started speaking, she…

  • Richard Kramer’s These Things Happen

    Richard Kramer’s These Things Happen

    The older I get, the more my taste has shifted from the realm of CLEVER to the realm of HEART. In my 20s, I devoured books like Pale Fire and A Confederacy of Dunces; in my 30s, I get more excited when a book moves me to tears than when it makes me chuckle knowingly.…

  • Scenes From The Skeleton Twins Premiere

    Scenes From The Skeleton Twins Premiere

    Well, it happened, and you guys made it happen. The Skeleton Twins “won” the weekend according to IndieWire; it was the #1 film in 12 out of the 15 theaters where it played. Now it’s expanding to more cities–Seattle, Minneapolis, Dallas, Boston, San Diego, Palo Alto and San Jose next week–and will continue to grow…

  • Go See The Skeleton Twins!

    Go See The Skeleton Twins!

    Friends, Romans, Countrymen: the time is now! If you live in New York, L.A., D.C., San Francisco, Chicago, I need you to do me a favor right now: open a new window in your browser, go to one of those movie ticket sites–Fandango, for example–and load up The Skeleton Twins and then get your tickets…

  • How To Eat Crow (Or: Kristin Puts Me In My Place About Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts and Pizza at Home)

    How To Eat Crow (Or: Kristin Puts Me In My Place About Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts and Pizza at Home)

    When someone has a target on your head, it can be a scary thing. But ever since I wrote that article “Ten Things You Should Never Serve At A Dinner Party,” Craig’s sister Kristin has been out to get me. She first made herself known in the comments: “Dear Amateur Gourmet,Allow me to introduce you…

  • A Summer Feast for Todd and Jim

    A Summer Feast for Todd and Jim

    So remember that time that Jim Parsons and his partner Todd Spiewak made my rainbow cookie cake for Jesse Tyler Ferguson and his partner Justin Mikita? Well, since then, Jim and I have been e-mailing and trying to figure out a time for him and Todd to come over for dinner. We finally picked a…