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For her time machine ingenuity and her knack for kidnapping, Dallas has been given immunity by the Amateur Gourmet community. Which means that Survivor contestants: you have until tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 11 pm to e-mail me who you want voted off the island. Of course, because she is immune you can’t vote Dallas off…

And they’re off…or in. The posts, that is. All nine contenders for the title “Amateur Gourmet Survivor 2004” have submitted their entries via e-mail and I am about to post them here. The challenge was to cook a historical dish and our challengers met the challenge head-on. Your job, now, dear reader is to select…

Ate in a bordello tonight called “Strip House” with mom and dad. We were less than enthused with the service and dad thought his steak was tough (I liked mine). The highlight, though, for me was this heirloom tomato salad. Isn’t it beautiful? Tasted great too:And for those who’ve never eaten heirloom tomatoes, act quick…

Look, I’m not a restaurant critic. It takes a great deal out of me to write my pseudo-restaurant reviews. I’m pseudo-foodo. Not the real deal. I just like sharing either my (a) enthusiasm or (b) disappointment. So let me share my enthusiasm for our meal last night at Jean-Georges. It was wonderful. Put into context–with…

Amy Sedaris is many things: comedienne, David Letterman regular, David Sedaris sister, Jerry Blank (“Strangers with Candy”), “Wigfield” author, J. Lo co-star (see “Maid in Manhattan.”) She is also a cupcake purveyor.She purveys her cupcakes at Joe’s coffee shop in Greenwich Village where I went, the other day, to work on a play. I knew…

“She sits at the Ritz with her splits of mumsand starts to pine for a stein with her village chumsbut with her shlitz in her mits down in Fitzroy’s barshe thinks of the Ritz–ohIt’s so schitzo!”- Stephen Sondheim, “Uptown/Downtown” cut from “Follies”The uptown-downtown dynamic in New York is palpable. Never before have I considered myself…

I love manipulating my parents. Originally, we were going to dine uptown at Fresco’s for lunch. “Maybe we’ll see Katy Couric again,” said my dad eagerly. Since I knew celebrities were the draw, and since I was less than impressed on our last outing to Fresco’s I said: “You’ll see twice the celebrities at Spice…

I had my Tisch orientation yesterday and another function tonight and I loved every minute of it. This is going to be a phenomenal program. However, I must tell you that our instructors have made it very clear that the program is rigorous, that we must invest ourselves fully in our concentration, and that our…

I can be very tentative when it comes to spending money on lunch. I don’t shirk from an expensive sandwich if I’m confident I will enjoy it (see: ‘Wichcraft.) But I will shirk from an expensive salad bar that charges $10 a pound when I know that I have a tendency to load up my…

Did you know there’s a gigantic archive of Julia Child’s Master Class series on the PBS website? If I had watched these videos of Nancy Silverton making bread before I attempted her recipe for sourdough, life would have been so much easier. As it happens, I plan to be spending many an hour sifting through…