• Rena Made Us Dinner

    Rena Made Us Dinner

    A belated thanks to Rena, Craig’s friend (and now my friend) from Seattle who stayed with us a few weeks ago and made us a delicious dinner of Otsu from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone. I made Heidi Swanson’s Otsu last May (click here) and really enjoyed my first Otsu experience. Deborah Madison’s otsu…

  • Whitefish Salad

    Whitefish Salad

    Bagels are my madeline; one bite and a lifetime’s worth of poppy seeds and bad breath spill forth. I’ve written much about bagels on the web–this tribute to Bagelworks in Boca Raton, a bagel love letter for Serious Eats–but I’ve written very little about a bagel topping that’s been a constant in my life and…

  • A Modest Proposal

    A Modest Proposal

    We approached The River Cafe with trepidation. “Shhhh,” I told Craig. “They could be outside.” “They won’t hear us,” he said. “You’re being ridiculous.” Was I? You see my parents arrived at The River Cafe at 8 pm with Michael, my brother, and his girlfriend Tali in the same car. The plan was that Michael…

  • Spicy Cauliflower Soup & Braised Lobster Mushrooms

    Spicy Cauliflower Soup & Braised Lobster Mushrooms

    How does dinner happen? It happens in many ways. We ask the person we’re with, “What are you in the mood for?” or we just pick up the phone and dial the Thai place down the street or the pizza place around the corner. Or, if we have the ingredients, we make a quick bowl…

  • Food Tastes Better When It Has a Good Story

    Food Tastes Better When It Has a Good Story

    We ask many things of our food. We ask that our food is clearly identifiable (anything strange and murky immediately turns us off); we ask that our food is reasonably healthy–even if that means laying a redemptive tomato on a greasy, heart-crushing 5-pound burger. We ask that our food is prepared in a clean kitchen,…

  • Bone Marrow at Blue Ribbon

    Bone Marrow at Blue Ribbon

    When people ask me, “How do you come up with stuff for your blog all the time?” I have a ready-made answer: “Camera.” “Camera?” “Yes,” I say. “I try to carry a camera everywhere I go” (sometimes at my own peril) “and then if I eat something notable or I stumble into somewhere notable I…

  • An Atlanta Lover’s Guide To Atlanta

    An Atlanta Lover’s Guide To Atlanta

    Dear Matthew, You are the director of my show

  • Zite with Onions, Sausage & Fennel

    Zite with Onions, Sausage & Fennel

    It’s a big heaping mess, but boy is it good. The recipe comes from “The Silver Spoon Cookbook,” a birthday gift from Matthew my show’s director and a book that’s called Italy’s version of “The Joy of Cooking.” This specific recipe comes from the special back section where Italian chefs offer up their own favorite…

  • The Night I Let Friends Cook For Me

    The Night I Let Friends Cook For Me

    Psychologically speaking, I’m a Jewish mother. I smother those I love with attention, worry, enthusiasm, judgment and, most of all, food. The food bit is a relatively recent development–I wasn’t smothering my high school friends with food–but now that I do cook and cook quite regularly, I have an almost compulsive need to feed others.…

  • Cassoulet in 10 Easy Steps

    Cassoulet in 10 Easy Steps

    When Anthony Bourdain cooks with Michael Ruhlman on the Cleveland episode of “No Reservations,” he layers meat and beans together in a giant drum, tops the whole thing off with breadcrumbs and produces a dish most of us aren’t used to seeing on Food TV (and I say that as someone who now works for…

Food Person Book Cover