Today is my first Mother’s Day, but since my two-month-old didn’t make me breakfast in bed, I baked myself some scones and thought back on the showers that my friends threw me when he was just a baby bump. A shower, I found, is kind of like a wedding: You’re the star. Or rather, your […]

When you’re in no condition to cook and a food-centric holiday comes around, it’s great to have friends who do. (Big ups to Dan, designer of this blog, who picked us up when we locked ourselves out of our apartment without even our car keys.) We went to Matias and Jenny’s baby-friendly pad for a […]

Thanksgiving in Napa with friends — what could be better? And it was great, even the gray and slightly chilly weather, which justified snuggling up indoors with great movies like “Rear Window.” But after a couple of days of cooking and gluttony, I had a food hangover that prevented me from even thinking about food, […]

This recipe from L.A.’s Rustic Canyon restaurant caught my eye. Requested by an L.A. Times reader, it’s not part of the paper’s Thanksgiving coverage… and yet, how perfect? Few foods say Thanksgiving like cranberries, and corn is quintessentially American. Unlike the typical holiday desserts, this austere alternative is sweetened just enough to highlight the natural […]

I don’t want to dwell on my awful afternoon tea at Clementine, which had required a reservation with credit card number. Let me just sum up: slightly stale sandwiches, underbaked scones, and I think even the clotted cream was a bit off. I was shocked, since this place is consistently so good — it’s my […]

There’s nothing as festive as holiday food — nevermind whether it’s actually your holiday to celebrate. Food is for everyone! So when Wes told me he was having coworkers over for dinner on Tuesday, and I looked at the calendar and saw it was Rosh Hashanah, I started outlining a menu for the Jewish holiday.
These […]

Some people have apple pie — for me, peach cobbler is the ultimate comfort dessert. When I was a kid, my parents would send me off to Kansas City for a week every summer to spend time with my Aunt Tommie and Uncle Slick, where I played kickball with the neighborhood kids, caught fireflies in […]

I totally forgot to post about this, but a while back I bought some sea beans from Far West Fungi’s little storefront at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. I’ve been fascinated by these things ever since I discovered them at Fairway in Manhattan (go Harlem!). These weird little sprigs of vegetables are crisp like […]

What do you do after, in an attempt to schedule a trip home to see the parents after having moved to a new town, in between friends’ weddings in the old town and an upcoming holiday you’d like to spend with your spouse, you accidentally buy a ticket departing on said spouse’s birthday?
Chocolate ganache may […]

The British have a strange tendency to give their food the most unappealing names. Maybe they just don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. But really — bubble and squeak? Spotted dick? At least one person has theorized that the bad reputation of British cuisine comes from the names, not the food itself.
Yet after the […]