I have a bad habit of bringing my favorite cooking utensils places, and leaving them there. You may remember the sad saga of my favorite wooden spoon which got left in a ski cabin at Big Bear. Similarly, I left my favorite tongs at a cooking lesson I was giving for my friends’ gourmet girls group. And then I left my next-favorite tongs at the Steve McQueen beach house in Malibu.
A man cannot live long without tongs.
So it was that I was out at Target, shopping for a new pair of tongs amidst the long aisle of mostly useless cooking gadgets. The very same day, I received the first of what will undoubtedly be a “Summer is coming” onslaught of emails from Sur la Table, Williams-Sonoma, Cooks.com and other helpful sources touting this season’s newest and greatest tools and resources for the outdoor cook. More
Every spring, our hillsides in California are covered with a misting of glorious, delicate yellow flowers — wild mustard. Perhaps this is where we got our name, The Golden State.
When I was a child, someone introduced me to “Indian chewing gum.” Once summer had baked the leafless mustard plants into chalky white skeletons, you could break open the main stalk and inside was a kind of foamy, chewy dried pith. It had no flavor, but did have a pleasant chewiness, at least for the first few seconds before it became mushy and/or got jammed up in between your teeth where you couldn’t get it out. More
We have a new nanny. My wife and I say to each other, “Well, she’s better than nothing.” And we mean it — she is, actually, better than nothing.
B-grade nanny lunch
It’s hard to find a good nanny. Our previous nanny, Karina, was with us for seven years. She was the only nanny my two oldest children, Flynn and Willa, ever knew during their early years. Our third child Imogen has, at age 21 months, already had five. More
I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a creature of habit. I find a shirt I like, and I wear it a lot, for a really long time. I’m like that with kitchen utensils, too. So it was with great alarm that I recently realized I couldn’t find my favorite wooden spoon.
After my knife, the wooden spoon is the most important tool in the kitchen. If a man’s home is his castle, and the kitchen my throne room, then the wooden spoon is my scepter. Sometimes I hold it when I’m not even cooking, like a security blanket. More
On Sunday afternoons, many of my male friends will retreat to their “man caves.” I’ve written before about these enigmatic places — spare rooms, basements, converted garages where a guy can steal away to play computer games or smoke a joint or read, I guess. I don’t know what happens in man caves, I’ve never actually been in one. In my imagination they are dark and smell of tobacco and dust.
The kitchen serves a similar purpose in my life. When I’m cooking, it’s a space — both mentally and physically — I can withdraw to, focus and engage in my craft. Except unlike a man-cave, there’s no locked door, no barrier to entry for my wife or kids. More
skinny girls & mayonnaise 