I have always loved books and movies in which food is a metaphor for our fragile and powerful human emotions. The more I get to know F., the more my life imitates art. F. and I spent the summer sighing over fresh corn, cucumber, and watermelon. We shared an obsession with the mingling of boston [...]
Some dishes are indeed better than the sum of their parts, but pesto is another story. Why pulverize such divine ingredients and drown them in raw garlic and oil? The end product is less, rather than more, at least to my palate (call it a perverse palate if you must). That’s why I make my [...]
Multi-tasking is the bane of modern existence, fracturing the awareness that meaningful, productive experiences require. Yet I feel pressured to lie at job interviews and say that I madly adore multi-tasking. Yes, Mr. Interviewer, multi-tasking is a rush that makes me feel ALIVE ALIVE ALIVE. Drooling, he gives me the job. Then I secretly indulge [...]
Eliminating the bad “quick and easy” cookbooks is easy. Thumb through one, and if it mentions canned soup as an ingredient, drop the book like a hot potato. While I have my kitchen shortcuts that I take (I confess to using canned salmon and canned pumpkin), I draw the line at saucing my dishes in [...]
Okay, Polenta is good. But I’ve been fortunate to discover that it is only one incarnation of this type of dish. For example I learned of Panisse in the book “Artisinal Cooking.” Panisse is similar to Polenta, but is made with chickpea flour rather than cornmeal, and cut into thin rounds before frying in olive [...]
I crave beauty, sensuality, and variety. Other than music and my dreams, food is the most accessible form of these things that I can conceive. I can’t travel to beautiful locales nearly as often as I like, and my attempt at creating a glorious flower garden failed miserably, but what I can do is choose [...]
