09 May 2014 8 Comments
in Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories) Tags: Fundraising, humor, King's Hawaiian Bread, Maldon salt, pizza, rib eye, The 1909, Topanga, Topanga Elementary Charter School
I am not a caterer.
Caterers have large refrigerators and big stainless steel warming trays and things like that. I’m a chef. I have knives. And I like to see the looks on people’s faces when they taste something good that I have made. It’s hard to do that when you’ve laid out a buffet for 200 people.
The menu
So, I approached the silent auction I was cooking for as if it was just a big dinner I was doing for 200 of my friends. (Which is essentially what it was anyway.) More
07 Feb 2014 21 Comments
in Recipes, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories) Tags: arugula salad, cauliflower, cauliflower candy, cooking, food, humor, Laura Miles, Portland, recipe, yoga
I used to be roommates with my sister Laura, who was a skinny yoga teacher pescetarian type (and partially responsible for the name of this blog). Laura used to roast all manners of vegetables — squash, eggplant, cucumbers — always sliced into little coins, always cooked until they became caramely and delicious. It was a nifty trick I was never quite able to repeat — perhaps because Laura was such a prodigious user of olive oil. Where others would drizzle, she would pour.
Before
One day, I was roasting some cauliflower and forgot about it. It cooked about 45 minutes longer than I had intended. And when I finally returned to the oven, the plump snow florets had shrunk by two thirds into little brown caramel bombs. More
31 Jan 2014 23 Comments
in Food, Humor, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories) Tags: Ding Dong, Hostess, humor, junk food, Pacific Coast Highway, Sweetest Comeback Ever, Twinkie
When cupcake and confection maker, Hostess, went bankrupt a few years back, I watched the news with some mixture of interest and nostalgia.
I hadn’t eaten a Hostess product in probably more than a quarter century, and had paid little interest to their presence on the grocery store shelf all those years. I was never much for Twinkies, which seemed to be getting all the press as the company went under. I liked the apple pies, the little chocolate donuts and, most of all, the Ding Dong. I thought they did chocolate well.
How to make your Ding Dong look fancy so you can serve it to your snooty foodie friends
The Ding Dong, for the uninitiated, is a little disc of chocolate cake with a cream center, and chocolate coating. Like most Hostess products, it remains fresh and moist even after several months on the shelf. More
17 Jan 2014 17 Comments
in On the Road, Recipes, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories) Tags: eggplant, Kusadasi, Mediterranean, Mehmet, meze, recipes, Turkey, Turkish cooking, şakşuka
It is a noteworthy thing when, having gone your entire life never meeting anyone named “Mehmet,” you meet two at the same time. Of course, it is less remarkable if you are in Turkey — as we were — were every third guy is named “Mehmet.” (The Turkish version of “Mohammed.”)
Cats in the Grand Bazaar
It was more than a decade ago, in the seaside town of Kusadasi, to be precise. Our honeymoon — a friend with a cruise line that I did a lot of work with had arranged the gift of a voyage through Italy, Croatia, the Greek Isles and Turkey. On a day in port, we had gone to see the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, and were en route back to our ship when we stopped in a bar for a beer and a bite to eat. More
25 Nov 2013 7 Comments
in Food, Markets & Stores, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories) Tags: caviar, charcuterie, cooking, Epicure Imports, food, foodie, humor, North Hollywood, warehouse sale
I can’t remember who told me about it — a gourmet food sale to end all gourmet food sales. I was at a party somewhere, talking to someone, they described a nirvana of exotic food items, all at wholesale prices — in a sale that only happened a couple times a year, and only if you knew about it.
The line on the loading dock outside Epicure the opening morning of the Holiday sale
I had promptly forgotten all about it when, the next day, an email arrived from [whomever it was] with information on how to sign up for sale notifications and a link. I followed the link, gave them my name, and promptly forgot about it again. More
skinny girls & mayonnaise 