A Feast of Friends

Christmas is a lot of different things to different people — a celebration of the birth of Jesus for Christians and Catholics around the world, an orgy of consumerism for most Americans, a reason to eat Chinese food and go to the movies for Jews.

Der Weihnachten eve

Der Weihnachten eve

For me, like most holidays, it’s about food, family and friends. We had my wife’s family for dinner and presents Christmas eve, a tradition of theirs, celebrated this year at our house. I had enough to prepare for between Christmas dinner and our annual New Year’s Eve dinner, and might’ve done a stew or chili. But opted instead for a German dinner — homebaked rye bread, potato pancakes, house-fermented sauerkraut, spaetzle with roasted matsutake mushrooms and duck cracklings, duck confit, pan-grilled bratwurst and crispy duck breasts, paired nicely with a Swiss cheese fondue my sister-in-law, Laina, had made. More

“What the Heck is Quinoa?”

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