Category

Friends & Family

  • “True Adolescents” is here!

    Many of you know that my partner, Craig Johnson (the guy you see in all of my posts), is a filmmaker. His first feature, TRUE ADOLESCENTS is finally here and I’m so excited that you, my loyal readers, will finally be able to see it. The movie stars Mark Duplass (who you may know as…

  • Zhenya’s Stinging Nettles

    Zhenya’s Stinging Nettles

    You may recall that a few weeks ago, I befriended Zhenya, The Feral Gardener, while buying a Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda at Katz’s Deli. On May 1st, Zhenya wrote me an e-mail: “I just picked a ton of very young stinging nettles and would be happy to give you at least half a ton….…

  • Kings of Pastry

    Kings of Pastry

    My hands flew to my face several times last night. It was 1:30 AM and I’d made a mistake. At midnight, exhausted after testing four recipes, I loaded up “Kings of Pastry” on AppleTV just to see if it was something I wanted to watch. To say that I was immediately hooked would be a…

  • An Oscar & A Milkshake

    An Oscar & A Milkshake

    It’s not every day that your friend wins an Oscar. But on Sunday night, our friend Luke (who went to film school with Craig) won an Oscar for his short film, “God of Love.” (You can watch it on iTunes here.) For anyone who watched the Oscars, you’ll remember his speech (New York Magazine called…

  • My Friends Do Talented Things

    This post is to inform you that my friends do talented things. For example, my friend Travis Sentell (who once wrote this guest post) has a book out called “In The Shadow of Freedom.” You should read it. My friend Ricky Marson produced a CD for our friend Merideth Clark who writes and sings her…

  • Lunch with Lidia Bastianich (and my dad)

    Lunch with Lidia Bastianich (and my dad)

    It’s my fault, really. My parents were in town and my mom asked me, early in the week, if I’d babysit my dad for lunch on Tuesday while she met some of her friends. I said, “Sure.” Then, the day before, I received a confirmation e-mail from Lidia Bastianich’s publicist reminding me of a lunch…

  • The First Meal

    The First Meal

    The first meal that you cook in a new apartment is very, very important. We all remember what happened last time, don’t we? I attempted to inaugurate our Park Slope apartment three years ago with Edna Lewis’s fried chicken (fried in butter and lard) and didn’t get the fat hot enough. The result? Gooey, gloppy,…

  • Dinner at Whole Foods

    Dinner at Whole Foods

    I met my grandparents for dinner last night at the Whole Foods in the Time Warner Center. My grandparents are here in the city for the next week, and choosing a place to eat can be a bit tricky. Once I took my grandmother to The City Bakery for lunch, and when she saw the…

  • Bespoke Chocolates

    Bespoke Chocolates

    Food people are my kind of people. That’s why so many of the people I’ve met since I started food blogging have become good friends: they’re generous, they’re insightful, they’re creative, they’re smart and they have good taste. So friendship was clearly in the stars when a longtime reader named Rachel Zoe Insler informed me…

  • The Culinary Cardiologist

    Rob Siegel is a cardiologist who joined a big group of us last week, before seeing “Star Trek,” for dinner at The Brooklyn Diner (not the best place for a meal, but a decent option near the Ziegfield Theater). There were so many of us, we were split into two groups, and, unfortunately, I wasn’t…