Vegetarian

  My good friend Sarah and I have been taking cooking classes at Sur La Table in Costa Mesa. (Sarah is the pretty lady in the middle holding what is left of a tray of  minced chicken lettuce cups). What fun! Our most recent class…

Elaine’s fettuccine alfredo. If it was good enough for Jackie Kennedy-Onassis, this fettuccine alfredo recipe is worth a try. (Kennedy-Onassis said it was “terrific, ” by the way.) As recipes go, this is a simple one. Like so many  gourmet dishes, the magic is in…

        Last night, a group of old friends and I got together at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts to see the Carole King musical Beautiful. It was a snap-your-fingers kind of show, one that made you laugh out loud and…

I love fall. I love the crisp cool edge that creeps into the mornings. I love the changing colors of the leaves on my Japanese Maple. I love the songs of autumn.  If you need a little fall “fix,” here is a great rendition of…

    I have a brunch coming up next week and I’ve been experimenting with breakfast stratas (Is that the correct plural for strata? My spell checker is being a little edgy about the “s”.) There are, I’m finding, a lot of mediocre strata recipes…

The vocabulary word for today is umami. Now don’t go getting all “low energy” on me. I really don’t want to see any of you putting your heads down on your desks and hyperventilating like this is just too hard.          …

Is there a support group for compulsive cookbook buyers? Hundreds of cookbooks share my office bookshelves with my collection of history and political science books from my thirty-two year teaching career and my growing collection of photography books. My history books are sacred possessions but I’m…

      There I was, like a jilted bride ditched at the altar, clutching a huge bouquet of leafy emerald green sweet basil and wondering what the heck to do next. Believe me, I had no plans for any major cooking projects using basil…

  Carrots improve your eyesight. Right? Therefore, if you are going to have a sweet, decadent dessert, you are somewhat forgiven for eating carrot cake. It’s a health food, for heaven’s sake! This line of argument works for me. If carrot desserts seem odd to…

There is a vendor at the farmers market I frequent who stands in front of his stand every week and sings “almost too yummy” about his produce in a scratchy tenor voice. On more than one occasion, I have heard the nearby vendors good-naturedly (and…