Writing about food since 2004.
Category
Stories and Rants
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My First CSA
So I have a friend named Rachel Sheridan who also happens to be a neighbor here, in Atwater Village, and recently she did an Instagram of a CSA box that had arrived at her doorstep. What’s a CSA box? CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and the idea is this: you pay a set fee,…
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Cutting Board Graduation
There comes a time in every home cook’s life when you bid farewell to a favorite cutting board and replace it with something better. My cutting board, for the past five years (or longer), has been a neon green rubber affair, one that I purchased at Williams Sonoma after getting knife lessons at the Union…
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East Coast vs. West Coast Porchetta
On a cold December day in New York, I took the 6 train down from the Upper East Side to the Astor Place stop with porchetta on my mind. No, not Sara Jenkins’ glorious Porchetta sandwich served at her sandwich spot so devoted to porchetta it’s called, well, Porchetta. This time I was headed to…
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When Good Restaurants Go Bad
The first sign was the asparagus. It’s December here in New York and on the breakfast menu at Untitled at the Whitney, a Danny Meyer restaurant which we frequent whenever we’re in the city, there’s an asparagus omelette. “Asparagus in December?” I asked and then Tweeted something about it, prompting a sarcastic response from the…
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Life with an Oven Window
Here’s a screenplay pitch (boy, I’m getting so L.A.): a young man lives for years without an oven window and then suddenly he moves into an apartment with an oven window. Are you sold yet? The oven window allows him to watch cakes as they cook so he doesn’t have to open the oven to…
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Let’s Talk Breaking Bad While Looking At Pictures of Food From The Oinkster
What you are looking at is a pastrami sandwich from The Oinkster in Eagle Rock. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for a while. I started a post about it on Friday, but kind of lost my motivation; then, this morning, I started to write one again but found myself reading Breaking Bad recaps…
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Real Live Jujubes (Not From A Movie Theater)
So at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, where I bought the ingredients to make my soul-stirring Summer’s End pasta, I spied an unusual sight–something I’d never seen before: a crate of Jujubes, identified as “Japanese Dates.” Jujubes are a real thing? A fruit? Not just a movie theater candy? I was intrigued. So I filled a…
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Cinnabon Story
Once upon a time (aka: this past weekend) I found myself in a mall, the Glendale Galleria, wandering around looking for patio furniture with Craig. Not that we have a patio, but we have a front porch at our new place and figured we’d get some cheap outdoor chairs and a table and sit out…
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Cro-Not
If you read my newsletter (and really, you should; subscribe here), you probably saw that this weekend we attended the L.A. Times Taste festival which was a terrific event–despite the heat–and had the coolest venue of any such festival I’ve ever been to, being hosted, as it was, at Paramount Studios. Here’s a picture so…
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These Grapes Are Crazy! Some Taste Like Cotton Candy, Some Look Like FINGERS
There’s no denying that L.A. is a strange place–juice bars everywhere, Scientology–but sometimes the strangeness manifests itself in grapes. This wasn’t something I knew about, but the other day I found myself at Gelson’s (my favorite supermarket here) and a man in the produce department said, “Would you like to try a grape?” Now my…
