Category

Stories and Rants

  • Happy Eggs?

    Happy Eggs?

    Recently I’ve been on a Hulu Plus cooking show kick, binging on Lidia and Martha and the occasional Avec Eric with Eric Ripert. In fact, it was on one of Eric Ripert’s shows, where he cooks with Dan Barber (who’s now on Twitter, by the way), that I learned about pastured eggs. While touring Chef…

  • Pink Grapefruit Halves and Those Who Love Them

    Pink Grapefruit Halves and Those Who Love Them

    2013 is the year of pink grapefruit halves. I don’t mean that in a broad sense, like a trend prediction, I mean that in a personal sense. This year is a year in which I’ve already eaten my weight in pink grapefruit halves and it all started, appropriately enough, on New Year’s Eve day with…

  • The Day That I Baked 144 Red Velvet Cupcakes for Librarians in Anaheim

    The Day That I Baked 144 Red Velvet Cupcakes for Librarians in Anaheim

    When my cookbook publicist Molly mentioned, earlier this year, that I’d be speaking at the American Library Association conference in Anaheim in June, she casually mentioned that I should bring samples of a recipe from the cookbook. I said, “sure,” and forgot all about it. Then the conference crept up and it was time to…

  • My Very Own Herb Garden

    My Very Own Herb Garden

    Our neighbor Chloe is a godsend. Not only did she plant the Meyer lemon tree near our door, but when we go away on vacation, Chloe watches our cat, Lolita. If the list ended there, Chloe would still be a hero in my book. But then the other day, I received the following e-mail: “Hi…

  • Bringing Good Food Home

    Bringing Good Food Home

    If this post were a text message being sent to a modern-day teenager, the teenager’s response might be: “Obv.” That’s because this post basically says something that you already know: “Instead of cooking something good for dinner, you can buy something good and bring it home.” So why am I writing it? Because even though…

  • My Love Affair with Toast

    My Love Affair with Toast

    I’m about to make a scandalous admission, the sort of thing that usually requires a press conference and a disappointed looking wife standing next to you: I’ve been having a sordid affair… a sordid affair with toast. Now I know what you’re thinking. “Toast? TOAST? You’re having a sordid affair with toast? Couldn’t you have…

  • White Plates

    White Plates

    My favorite food blog, of late, is Canal House Cooks Lunch. It’s deceptively simple: every day, the women of The Canal House (that’d be famed cookbook photographer Christopher Hirsheimer and former Saveur test kitchen director Melissa Hamilton (who also happens to be Gabrielle Hamilton’s sister and a prominent figure in “Blood, Bones & Butter”)) take…

  • Drink Champagne On Your Birthday

    Drink Champagne On Your Birthday

    This is a post about drinking Champagne on your birthday. I think you should do it. Before this year, it never really occurred to me to drink Champagne on my birthday. My focus would be on food: where would I eat for lunch? Where would I eat for dinner? Because it was my birthday, could…

  • My First Persimmons

    My First Persimmons

    I am new to persimmons. I’d heard of them, Pim once gave me a delicious jam she’d made from them; but purchase them and eat them in the real world? I had not. And then, on a recent trip to the Hollywood farmer’s market, I saw piles of them everywhere.

  • That’s Not A Lime Tree

    That’s Not A Lime Tree

    You may recall, when we first moved into our L.A. apartment, that I described a courtyard with a lime tree in it. I’m embarrassed to say that even though I have many dishes in my repertoire that involve limes–oatmeal with ginger, coconut milk and lime; sea scallops with citrus risotto–I haven’t once plucked one off…