A Feast of Friends

Christmas is a lot of different things to different people — a celebration of the birth of Jesus for Christians and Catholics around the world, an orgy of consumerism for most Americans, a reason to eat Chinese food and go to the movies for Jews.

Der Weihnachten eve

Der Weihnachten eve

For me, like most holidays, it’s about food, family and friends. We had my wife’s family for dinner and presents Christmas eve, a tradition of theirs, celebrated this year at our house. I had enough to prepare for between Christmas dinner and our annual New Year’s Eve dinner, and might’ve done a stew or chili. But opted instead for a German dinner — homebaked rye bread, potato pancakes, house-fermented sauerkraut, spaetzle with roasted matsutake mushrooms and duck cracklings, duck confit, pan-grilled bratwurst and crispy duck breasts, paired nicely with a Swiss cheese fondue my sister-in-law, Laina, had made. More

Blogotism

It’s impossible to be objective when it comes to ourselves. Just in the way we can never know what other people see when they look at us, I sometimes wonder what other people must think of my blog.

Self-important-looking selfie

Self-important-looking selfie with painting

“Stand up straight, babe,” my wife will sometimes say to me.

I wonder if there’s a blog equivalent of not standing up straight. Are any of my sentences lazy? More

Gourmet

It was a lazyish Saturday afternoon, I was having a Sculpin IPA and preparing smoked ribeye sliders, Maui onion rings and a peach tart for my son’s intimate birthday celebration, when an email came in from my mother with the subject line, “gourmet”.

Gourmet July 1945

Finding no afternoon reading  inspiration in this book or that, she had dug up an old issue of Gourmet magazine. “By old,” she said, “I mean 1973.” She went on: More

Food for Your Ears

I recently released an album of my original songs.

“You should promote your album on your blog,” a friend said.

“But my blog is a food blog!” I protested.

My new album, available at CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon and wherever fine music is sold.

My new album, available at CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon and wherever fine music is sold.

I wish I could say it was nine songs about food. But it’s not. It’s nine songs about all those things that relate loosely to food — love and sex, the pursuit of happiness, pondering our own bellybuttons, etc. More

Of Life, Death and the Pursuit of Dinner

People often ask if we’re ever going to eat our pig, Henri. I explain that he’s a family pet, and no, we have no plans to eat him.

“Not even when he dies of natural causes?” my pal Dan asked.

“You mean like when an anvil falls on his head?” I replied.

Henri napping in the rosemary

Henri napping in the rosemary

I must admit, though … I did catch him napping in the rosemary one day, and thought to myself: “Now I could just build a quick mud oven around him, throw in some coals… and he’d never be the wiser.” More

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