Chiles Rellenos, High Speed Chases & Le Creuset

17 Sep 2012 15 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor, Observations, Video Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I was in kitchen, making dinner, when my 8-year-old son yelled from the family room. “Dad, car chase!”

Here in Los Angeles, we have our share of high-speed car chases — if you’re old enough to remember the O.J. Simpson murders, you’ll recall we even have slow-speed car chases. We’ve got a lot of cars, a lot of freeways, and a fair percentage of people doing things they shouldn’t be. I typically don’t pay much attention — it seems prurient, like staring at a car wreck or a topless woman on a European beach. But once in awhile, I get sucked in. Which is what happened the other night, as I cooked chiles rellenos. More

The Drizzle that Makes All the Difference

14 Sep 2012 6 Comments

by scolgin in Cooking Tips, Recipes Tags: , , , , , , , ,

There are a lot of great drizzles in the world.

A drizzle of honey over thick Greek yogurt.

A drizzle of chocolate atop an old-fashioned buttermilk donut.

A cold drizzle on a gray Parisian day that causes you to duck into a cozy bistro for a bowl of soup and a long afternoon with a bottle of wine.

But for my money, the greatest drizzle of them all, the drizzle that makes all the difference, is the drizzle of a good, fruity olive oil over a plate of pasta.

This is one of the simplest and most important cooking tips among the many I will bestow upon you here. More

Is it Poetry or Is it SPAM?

11 Sep 2012 12 Comments

by scolgin in Humor, Observations Tags: , , , , , , ,

Although I have a Master’s degree in creative writing and have been published in various poetry journals, you wouldn’t know it from some of my poetry.

The other night I lay in bed wide awake at 2 a.m., thinking about a poem. I got up and went to the computer. Here’s the poem I wrote:

401K

You contribute
to your 401K
again
and again.

You watch
as your money
earns interest.

*   *   *

*   *   *

Often, my silliest poems are about food. More

Breakfast Sandwich 101

07 Sep 2012 11 Comments

by scolgin in Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Once, many eons ago, when tweets and clouds were still part of nature, when “kindle” meant to build a fire and men knew not of their brethren’s minute-by-minute status, there was the Egg McMuffin. The prototypical breakfast sandwich, the one that started it all.

French toast bacon breakfast sandwich

In reality, there have probably been breakfast sandwiches for as long as there has been two slices of bread and an egg to put between them. More

Random Thoughts for a Tuesday

04 Sep 2012 10 Comments

by scolgin in Good Gadget, Bad Gadget, Observations Tags: , , , , , , ,

One of the new little chickens in our coop died today. Something happened to its legs, which for chickens — like horses — is pretty much a death sentence.

New chicks (and two Guineafowl) at the water bowl

I’ve gotten used to a chicken dying occasionally — they get stuck in strange places, the coyotes get them, etc. — so it doesn’t phase me so much. Less blasé, however, am I than the chickens themselves. They just sort of step over their dead friend and continue about their business, casting each other glances every so often as if to say, “What’ya suppose is the matter with Larry?” More

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