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[Last month, Celebrity cruises invited me on board their new ship, the Solstice, for a two-day cruise to experience its food and wine program. Normally, I delete most P.R. e-mails and invitations but something about this one caught my eye: it was leaving from Seattle. Craig’s parents live in Bellingham, one hour north of Seattle.…

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Several years ago (in 2008, to be exact), I covered Vegas Uncork’d, Bon Appetit’s Las Vegas food festival, for the Food Network. That was a whirlwind of a trip; I interviewed so many chefs and attended so many meals, it felt like I ran a marathon. The nice people there invited me back many times…

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One meal. ONE MEAL. That’s all I really had time for when I went to Birmingham, Alabama this past weekend for Food Blog South. I got in late Friday night, spoke Saturday morning, had time for lunch (my ONE MEAL) then had the keynote, book-signing and after party to attend that night before flying back…

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The idea of room service held little appeal for me until I was on a book tour for longer than expected (stranded in Austin for a bit by the hurricane) and suddenly I couldn’t fathom another dinner out with human beings. I enjoy human beings…but on a book tour you meet so many of them…

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If we hadn’t gone to The French Laundry and we’d just gone to Napa we still would’ve had a most memorable trip. The place is just obnoxiously beautiful. If you could bottle beauty and sell it, you could do a lot worse than to bottle Napa: with its lush hills and crisp, clear blue skies…

Just to bring some closure to the whole New Orleans experience, an experience that we loved, I thought I’d do a tie-it-up-with-a-bow wrap-up post for you to bookmark for your next trip there. To review: you must visit Cafe du Monde and Commander’s Palace (as all the guidebooks will tell you). Off the beaten path,…

We were walking to dinner in a large group when the parade began to pass. I’d heard of jazz funerals, where the friends and family of the recently deceased march through the streets with music and dancing, a celebration of life in the face of death. This wasn’t that. This was a wedding parade; with…

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Food Blogs Featured in This Post: Midtown Lunch / Midtown Lunch L.A. Mattatouille Mattbites Foodwoolf What’s Gaby Cooking In Praise of Sardines Give Me Some Food Chez Pim 101Cookbooks

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I am doing something now called convalescing which, in dictionary terms, means I’m recovering from an illness: specifically, the flu, which hit me like a ton of bricks Monday morning and kept me in bed, motionless, for 48 some-odd hours. Now I’m starting to get the twinkle back in my eye and I’m glad that’s…