My high school friend Amy and I got back in touch recently (via this website, really) and among our many e-mail exchanges was a request by her:“How about an entry on cheap, easy, & portable [lunch] alternatives for all us corporate-readers stuck at our desks for lunch every day?”Ok, Amy, you’re on!I declare this Wednesday…

The following exchange occurred over dinner:Me: I’ve been eating pickles and jam all afternoon.Lauren: That’s so gross.Well not TOGETHER Lauren. It’s just that when I got home I said: “Ooooh pickles!” And I opened the garden pickles I made the other day and really enjoyed that zingy punch of vinegar, garlic, and Thyme via carrot,…

I enjoyed

Preservation is a cool word. Officially it means: “the process of keeping safe, unchanged or in existence.” I particularly like how cultures, in order to preserve themselves, had to preserve their food in the process. Like Jews with smoked fish or Southerners and their pickled pigs feet. It’s a cool example of great food evolving…

After the excitement of reading the Kessler piece last night, I prepared myself for a day of constant recognition and autograph signing.”Hey!” I imagined imaginary clusters of people yelling at me, “Aren’t you that giant nose from the AJC?! Will you make cupcakes out of MY breasts?”Instead, I arrived at my bar review class this…

Our Swan Pastry Contest winner–Anthony of Spiceblog–may have been our only entrant, but one can’t help but laugh and admire his work:If Tchaikovsky and Wolfgang Puck had a love child this would be it!So congratulations Anthony on a job well done. You’ve proven that no matter WHAT your body type, good legs will always win…

It’s finally here folks, a profile several months in the making. I owe John Kessler a great deal of gratitude for such a generous piece. I owe the photographer a buttered-knuckle sandwich for such a horrible picture:I look like a nose with glasses or, worse, Dobby from the Harry Potter movies.Anyway, apparently the AJC site…

Screw religion, I’ve got reality TV to teach me values. “Survivor” teaches me that only I matter and that toilet paper is a luxury many can’t afford. I’ve taken to palm fronds, now. “The Real World” teaches me that every house should have an Asian, an African-American and a homosexual. I have several, now, bound…

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, all because they played video games. I know because I was one of them: my mind was nurtured not on Luigi Pirandello but Luigi as in Mario and Luigi as in Super Mario Brothers 1, 2 and 3. Also, Legend of…