Food, Photography and Bons Mots
Olive oil in a cake? Yuck. Don’t get me wrong. I love olive oil. I regularly drive to Los Alamitos’ Antica Olive Oil store to buy the best olive oils I can find. There, I enthusiastically swirl, sniff, sip and swallow the various offerings freshly poured…
I love bread pudding. It is my idea of a soothing comfort food–right up there alongside refried beans and candy corn. That said, I guess it’s pretty clear that carbs whisper sweet nothings in my ear when the pressure’s on in my life . While…
My friend Sarah recently went to lunch at the new Farmhouse Restaurant at Roger’s Gardens in Newport Beach. She came home raving about the food. The cauliflower steaks with chimichuri sauce particularly impressed her. I decided to see if I could recreate the dish…
Did you know that if all the strawberries produced in California in one year were laid berry to berry, they would go around the world 15 times? I didn’t think so. Did you know that ninety-four percent of households in the United States consume…
Today, April 3rd, is National Find a Rainbow Day. Woo-hoo! Let’s party! I’ll bring the hors d’oeuvres. National Find a Rainbow Day is a day to either follow your whimsy and go looking for a rainbow, or, failing that, to look for beauty and hope…
I often look to David Tanis’ food column for inspired food ideas. He was a lead chef for more than thirty years at Berkeley’s legendary Chez Panisse. That credential alone positions him in the pantheon of culinary immortals. Since leaving Chez Panisse in 2011, Tanis has written a…
Do the words five ingredients and gourmet dessert go together? Throw in the word fast and you have this gorgeous strawberry tart. Your guests will rave (in a good way). You may be unfamiliar with mascarpone cheese, the main ingredient in this tart. Mascarpone is a mild-flavored…
You know how, when you aren’t exactly sure you want to do something, you put it off—turning instead to “must do” projects like sorting the dog’s toys by size and color? This week I’ve been nagged by the feeling that I needed to make…
Joseph Campbell famously wrote: “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” Good advice but not always easy to do. The bliss I’ve been following at the moment happens to be a cake, and it is a wonderful cake…
Certain things in American life are understood. You don’t mess with Old Glory, for example, or Texas. You don’t cut off a phalanx of Hells Angels on PCH. You don’t open wrapped candy during a performance at The South Coast Repertory Theatre. You argue with…
