
On Saturday morning, I woke up with a throbbing headache, totally dehydrated and desperate for coffee. That’s always the sign of a successful Friday night (ours involved seeing “Blue Jasmine” so you know it was wild). A few hours later, feeling better, I was craving some greasy food to accompany my viewing of “It’s Complicated”…

The weirdest thing: we moved to Atwater Village, right next to Glendale, only a few weeks ago. When our New York Times weekend subscription kicked in, I eagerly opened the magazine, as I always do, checking out the food column before attempting (and failing at) the puzzle. To my total amazement, Mark Bittman’s column celebrated…

You’re not going to believe me, but I’m telling you the truth: the dinner you see above? It’s cheap and easy. Don’t balk! I kid you not. Last Monday, I made this dinner for less than $20 and it was one of the best things that I’ve made in a long time. I didn’t even…

Breakfast may be my favorite meal to cook because there’s nothing fussy or formal about it. You just wake up, roll out of bed, head to the kitchen, put the coffee on, see what you’ve got in the fridge and the pantry and get going. Most of the time, I improvise with what I have…

Along with my chickpea curry disaster, I’d made some white rice in my rice cooker that looked like it was going to go to waste. I could have made rice pudding but Craig hates rice pudding so I put the leftover rice in the refrigerator and forgot about it.

We all mistakes in the kitchen, even those of us who’ve been cooking ten years or longer. My mistakes are all documented here on the blog: The Pound Cake That Threw Up. The Fried Chicken That Wasn’t Crispy. The Blueberry Disaster. In all of these cases, the food was salvageable. The pound cake went back…

On Thursday night, we were supposed to go to dinner with Craig’s former boss and the boss’s wife. A work dinner, so to speak. “7:30 at Pizzeria Mozza,” said Craig, earlier in the day. Then, as 7:30 rolled around, Craig pulled me aside. “I told a white lie,” he said. “We’re not going out with…