01 Oct 2013
by scolgin
in Humor, On the Road, Recipes
Tags: Casa Tres Coronitas, chiles relleno, food, huevos rancheros, humor, Jalisco, Mexican cooking, Mexico, mosquitos, Puerto Vallarta
Down here, south of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where there are iguanas on the rooftops and butterflies in the house, where flowers and rubber trees grow from rock walls and rain gutters and cobblestone streets, where that chirping call you hear from the trees at night is not birds but geckos, where moths are the size of your hand and walls transitory, time takes on a drowsy quality and you get into the rhythm of the tropics and the realities that entails. Some of those realities, like the lush beauty and balmy waters, are lovely. Some, like the mosquitos, are not.
Baja from 30,000 feet
The last time I contemplated myself as meal on this blog was a post I did from Lake Tahoe reflecting on the Donner party. But after our first night of our now annual fall trip to Casa Tres Coronitas in which I received some 15 to 20 bites inside the mosquito netting that surrounded our bed (while my daughter, outside the netting, got that many on her face alone), I find myself considering it again. More
06 Sep 2013
by scolgin
in On the Road, Recipes, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories), World's Best Sandwiches
Tags: food, humor, Keith Moon, Lindsay Buckingham, Ludo Lefebvre, LudoBites, Malibu, Pierce Brosnan, Steve McQueen, Trois Mec
There are many interesting stories surrounding the Steve McQueen beach house in Malibu. Some of the most colorful involve him and his neighbor, the notoriously rowdy British drummer for the Who, Keith Moon.
Morning at the Steve McQueen beach house
Once, for example, exasperated by Moon’s refusal to turn off a light in an upstairs bathroom that shone into McQueen’s bedroom, the actor grabbed a gun and shot the light out. Another time, he found Moon passed out in a full Nazi uniform at the bottom of his beach access stairs. The tide was rising, and would soon overtake the stairs, and McQueen had to consider for a moment whether or not to drag the despised neighbor to higher ground. More
16 Aug 2013
by scolgin
in Observations, On the Road, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories)
Tags: Alaska, Celestino Drago, cloudberries, food, humor, Ketchikan, raspberries, salmon, Santa Monica farmer's market, smoked salmon
When I sail to Alaska, as I have done five or six times now, I always look forward to waking up early the first morning we have arrived in the Great Land. I’ll spring out onto the balcony at dawn — which, in Alaska, is 4:30 or 5 in the morning. You know immediately by the towering snow-capped peaks, forested isles and placid waters of the Inside Passage that you have arrived — the bald eagles carving the sky and spouting humpback whales confirming the fact.
Willa and Immy in the woods near Dewey Lake, Skagway, Alaska
As evidenced by its sheer mass, Alaska is a land of big things. The mountains are big, the glaciers are big, the animals are big and the sky is big. Also big is the abundance of food — if you’ve not seen a salmon run on an Alaskan stream, you have no idea why there is so much of the fish in the supermarket at this time of year. The bears become so sated and picky that they will eat only the skin and discard the rest of the fish. The long hours of sunlight enable Alaskan farmers to grow those giant cabbages and pumpkins you’ve seen in pictures. More
13 Aug 2013
by scolgin
in Humor, Observations, On the Road
Tags: Alaska, cruising, Crystal Cruises, food, Grand Princess, humor, Nobu, Princess Cruises, travel, Valentino
I’ve just returned from Alaska. For those of you who might’ve noticed that my obsessively regular blog had gone eerily quiet and wondered, it had fully been my intention, as it usually is when I travel, to write posts from wherever I am about the interesting food-related experiences I am having there. But I was aboard a cruise ship, and with wi-fi connection at $.75 a minute, the blogging could wait.
Flynn, Maya and Willa with their hero, Vasheesh, head chef of the Horizon Court buffet
So now you get the benefit of my reflections upon my time in Alaska, versus the immediacy of receiving posts from the front. In other words, you get the edited version versus the rambling. And that’s better anyway, right? More
26 Mar 2013
by scolgin
in Food, Humor, On the Road
Tags: cannibalism, Donner Party, Donner Pass, Lake Tahoe, Motel Hell, Nando Parrado, zombies
Our friend, Heather, thinks our pig, Henri, is evil. It’s my own fault — she once remarked that he had an evil look in his eyes, and I said it was because I fed him bacon. I didn’t really, but the image stuck with Heather.
I like to write posts while I’m on vacation, as I am right now. I hadn’t realized, as we drove up into the Sierra Nevada to join my childhood pal Curtis and his family at their spacious chalet in Lake Tahoe, that our route would take us through Donner Pass, and past Donner Lake and the Truckee River.
Truckee Lake viewed from Donner Pass, 1868
It takes only a slightly malevolent leap of imagination to connect a food blog to the name “Donner”. For those likely very few of you who may not be familiar with this particular piece of western lore, I’ll give you the Cliff Notes version. More
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