Another Zen Temple Favorite

14 Feb 2014 7 Comments

by scolgin in Cookbooks, Recipes Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I got to my in-box one morning to discover an email from my pal Paul in Florida with a link to a Google book called “The Book of Miso.” The book had been written in the 1970s, published originally as one of those old timey paper editions, one would have to assume. It was filled with the line drawings popular with cookbooks of that era.

Screen Shot 2014-01-31 at 8.10.03 AM

“You probably already have it but it is new to me,” Paul said. People often mistakenly assume that I have every piece of information on cooking ever published. I do not. More

Cauliflower Candy

07 Feb 2014 21 Comments

by scolgin in Recipes, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories) Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

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

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

The Hostess with the Mostess

31 Jan 2014 23 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories) Tags: , , , , , ,

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

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

The Endless Summer, Pt. II — Palm Springs

28 Jan 2014 16 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor, On the Road Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

As if my previous post wasn’t cruel enough for readers in the American midwest and east who once again suffer the unwelcome descent of the Arctic into their midst, we decided to spend the weekend by the pool in Palm Springs.

Bloody Mary & Imogen poolside

Bloody Mary & Imogen poolside

Actually, it was a Sunday memorial for my wife’s maternal grandmother that drew us to the desert. But we thought why not make a weekend of it, and so found a swanky hotel with an atomic age theme and settled in. More

“What the Heck is Quinoa?”

07 Jan 2014 16 Comments

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

It was Sunday afternoon, and I was doing something I rarely do — watching football. It was a playoff game, a classic match-up — the San Francisco 49ers vs. the Green Bay Packers at Green Bay, where the temperature at game time was predicted to be 0 degrees.

I kind of like that sort of football. Especially if I’ve got a few beers in the fridge. And San Francisco is the closest we in Los Angeles have to team to root for.

It was the first inning, er… quarter, I mean. The ‘Niners were up 6-0 and seemed to be moving the ball at will. Then a guy on the Packers got hurt, and they went to commercial. More

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