My dad’s teeth are falling out. Even the ones they put in to replace the ones that had already fallen out. He’s a few months shy of 87 — they’ve lasted a long time. (A friend was telling us recently that the one thing that annoyed his octogenarian mother more than anything was when people said things like, “Well, he lived a good long life,” or “Can’t be disappointed with that many years!”)
Salmon chowder, pumpkin soup and French onion soup (l to r)
This is not a cautionary tale about taking care of your teeth. I spend enough time on that with my children. Rather, it is a reflection on the one thing I could do for my father to help ease his burden: make soup. More
A dear friend of mine emailed me recently and asked me what were my top 5 cookbook recommendations for his nephew, who had just moved out into his first apartment and was hungry.
My "bachelor" 7-year-old son Flynn's favorite cookbook.
Guys who move away from mom for the first time often don’t realize that food doesn’t just appear on the table. I had the fortune of already having worked in restaurants and being a good cook the first time I moved out. More
On the east coast, you have clam bakes. I’m jealous of you. In Alaska, you have salmon bakes. And I’m jealous of you, too. But on the West Coast, we have crab feeds. And you are jealous of us.
Sure, our friends around Baltimore will point out that they, too, have a crab tradition — spending frustrating hours picking and sucking miniscule bits of meat out of piles of Old Bay-seasoned blue crabs. But to those of us in the West, used to big mountains and wide open spaces, that’s the equivalent of eating a meatball when you could have a rib-eye. I’m talking about beautiful, abundant Dungeness crab, pulled from the Pacific bursting with snow white meat. Up where my mom lives in Sonoma County — where some of the best crabbing waters are — you’ll see signs during crab season inviting you to local crab feed fundraisers. $15 for all you can eat. That’s my kind of community event.
Most things I can figure out very quickly. But some I labor over futilely, never quite mastering them. It’s like that with my favorite salsa from the Sanchez Carniceria in Culver City. For months I tried to reproduce it in order to save myself: a) the $3.99 for a small container, and b) the trip to Culver City. Finally I waved the white flag, content to either purchase it or enjoy my own reasonably good salsa. The Sanchezes are doing some sort of alchemy down there. More
Soon it will be salmon season! (I know you’re not buying that farmed Atlantic salmon that’s dyed orange and is ruining natural salmon runs worldwide.) And rather than that ol’ standby of slapping giant olive oil-and-soy-marinated fillets onto the grill and cooking them until they turn into chalk, I’d like to show you another — I like to think better — way of cooking salmon. (Especially if you’ll be inviting me over for dinner during salmon season.)
skinny girls & mayonnaise 