Category

books

  • Richard Kramer’s These Things Happen

    Richard Kramer’s These Things Happen

    The older I get, the more my taste has shifted from the realm of CLEVER to the realm of HEART. In my 20s, I devoured books like Pale Fire and A Confederacy of Dunces; in my 30s, I get more excited when a book moves me to tears than when it makes me chuckle knowingly.…

  • Delancey: A Memoir

    Delancey: A Memoir

    Last night, I went to meet a friend for a drink at Laurel Hardware, a restaurant in West Hollywood that has a killer cocktail called The Vig that combines tequila, pineapple, vanilla bean, and green chartreuse. As is my wont, I arrived fifteen minutes early and found myself standing in the entryway where the staff…

  • In The Night Kitchen

    In The Night Kitchen

    Right before Maurice Sendak died, he did a series of interviews (most notably with Stephen Colbert) that revealed him to be a lovable, slightly grouchy, artist of the highest caliber. I’d known his work, of course, from Where The Wild Things Are and, perhaps more obscurely, Really Rosie but I’m embarassed to say I knew…

  • Joe: The Coffee Book (Plus, an Interview with Jonathan Rubinstein)

    Joe: The Coffee Book (Plus, an Interview with Jonathan Rubinstein)

    I hate repeating myself on my blog, so if you’ve been reading for me a while, you know that Joe is my favorite coffee shop in New York. The location on Waverly is where I wrote my first book and most of my second; it’s where I’d meet friends to chat about projects or lives,…

  • Kim Severson’s “Spoon Fed”

    Kim Severson’s “Spoon Fed”

    The blender arrived in the middle of our conversation. Kim Severson, of The New York Times, was interviewing me for a story about crowdsourcing recipes (I didn’t have much to contribute but I was excited to chat with Kim for the first time) and in the middle of our lively chat, my doorbell rang.

  • The Best of 2009 (Or, The A.G.’s Gift-Buying Guide)

    Today’s the second day of Hanukkah and as much as I wish I could tell you that I’m frying latkes and spinning dreidels and unwrapping Hanukkah gelt in celebration, I’m actually sitting here next to a pile of cookbooks trying to figure what constitutes the Best of 2009. You see, many of my food blogging…

  • David’s Sweet Life

    David’s Sweet Life

    Several years ago, when I went to Paris, I rode the Metro from my teensy hotel in the 80th arrondissement, to meet a food blogger I admired but had never met, Mr. David Lebovitz. As I came up the stairs (or was it an escalator?) I beheld a vision: there, standing before me, was a…

  • On Molly Wizenberg’s “A Homemade Life”

    On Molly Wizenberg’s “A Homemade Life”

    “Write what scares you.” That’s the kind of directive you’ll get in college creative writing classes, interactive online workshops and, believe it or not, grad school. You’ll get it from the old pros and you’ll get it from frustrated young upstarts: “write what scares you.” David Lindsay Abaire is a prolific playwright with many hilarious…

  • On Craig Claiborne’s “A Feast Made For Laughter”

    On Craig Claiborne’s “A Feast Made For Laughter”

    How does a Craig Claiborne become a Craig Claiborne? The best part of Craig Claiborne’s autobiography, “A Feast Made for Laughter,” a long out-of-print book that I picked up at Bonnie Slotnick’s used cookbook store in the West Village, is that the man himself–a man whose impact on American gastronomy is undeniable, whose tenure at…

  • Spiced Eggplant Salad

    Spiced Eggplant Salad

    Every relationship has rules. For example, in some relationships the person who makes dinner doesn’t have to do the dishes. In others, the person who cleans the bathroom doesn’t have to take out the garbage. In my relationship with Craig, there’s one overriding rule that must be obeyed or everything will crumble to pieces. That…