Don’t Try This at Home

Even as long as I’ve been cooking, I’m still guilty on a regular basis of stupid kitchen injuries and snafus. I try to tell my children, when they cook with me, to learn from my mistakes. I show them the assortment of current cuts and burns on my hands as a cautionary tale. Perhaps they’ll learn the lessons of their father, or perhaps they’ll learn the hard way.

Don't let a shark bite off the tip of your nose!

Don’t let a tiny kitchen shark bite off the tip of your nose!

Here is a list of culinary “Don’t”s — dumb kitchen mistakes that I find myself repeating over and over. I share them with you in the hopes you might have more common sense than I and avoid them. Or at least get a laugh at my misfortune. More

The Fastest Chili in the West!

I was in a pinch! I had to go out and needed to feed my family. Desperately searching my nearly empty fridge (we were going on vacation), freezer and cupboards, I found a can of beans. Inspiration took over — I could make a quick chili!

Practically instant chili

Practically instant chili

Despite what the chili-heads and aficionados will try to tell you (and sell you), chili doesn’t have to be a complicated or obtuse affair. Indeed, some of the chili I’ve thrown together in a pinch with ground turkey and tomato paste, for example, have been better than the fancy versions with heirloom tomatoes and tri-tip that I’ve labored over across the course of days. More

Me and the Sea

I’ve always felt an affinity for the sea. Growing up near the shore, it was forever a part of my life. But it’s only been the last decade or so that I’ve begun to feel its pull in a more primal way, like gravity. I need the sea.

Dinner?

Dinner?

Fresh off a week of deep ocean connecting on the bluffs in Puerto Vallarta, we got invited to the bluffs in Malibu for a night with our friends Nadine and Andrew at the Steve McQueen beach house. Which was good, because I was already missing the sea. More

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