New Year’s Eve 2014

02 Jan 2015 15 Comments

by scolgin in Starlets Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Our annual New Year’s Eve dinner with a small handful of friends commenced at 6 p.m. on December 31st with a matsutake and lardo pizza and copious amounts of champagne.

Through the several hours of the carefully planned and sourced meal, we would dine our way through seven courses (pizza not included), six or seven bottles of pinot noir and a magnum of Francis Ford Coppola-autographed 1980-something Neibaum-Coppola cabernet (you can’t keep that stuff forever), some French and Australian wines, a bit of mescal and more. A bit foggy as I write…

Here are some of the highlights. Happy New Year! And see if you can find the Monty Python joke somewhere in there…

The menu

The menu

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A Fine Day for Chili

09 Nov 2014 7 Comments

by scolgin in Pork, Starlets, Video Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Out on my morning run, I saw a couple deer mating. And I knew it was going to be a good day.

For it was the Saturday of the Topanga Chili Cook-Off and Swap Meet, which my friend Nonie — who is on the board of the Community Club — had coerced me into entering.

Tom and his chili paddle

Tom and his chili paddle

Last year, I was a judge alongside my pal Ernie. There were two chilis entered, neither of which were very good. “I think the best chili was the one they were selling at the concession,” I said to the gal running the event.

“But that came from a can!” she protested. More

Kinley’s Egg

10 Oct 2014 12 Comments

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

My 4-year-old daughter Imogen had her 4-year-old pal, Kinley, over to play the other day. They were outside enjoying themselves, when Kinley approached me sheepishly.

Kinley and her egg

Kinley and her egg

“Sean,” she said, “Can we go get eggs from the chicken coop?”

I explained to her that I had, sadly, already gathered the eggs a short while before. But they could certainly go see if any more had been laid. She then went on to explain to me how her 6-year-old brother, Finn, was trying to lay his own egg. I asked their mother, Amber, about this later, and she told me that Finn actually wanted to hatch a chicken from an egg, not lay an egg. I’m not certain if he planned to nest on the egg himself. More

Why I Don’t Like Frog Legs

03 Oct 2014 34 Comments

by scolgin in Humor, Recipes Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The main reason I don’t like frog legs can be summed up by one very vulgar photo, for which I apologize in advance.

Here it goes:

IMG_5936

As part of our large recent meat purchase from my meat purveyor friend in Portland, my pal Donnie got a rather large box of frog legs. More

Naomi’s Blown Eggs

19 Sep 2014 7 Comments

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

“Why don’t you do a post about me?” 10-year-old Naomi Schneider said, gazing over my shoulder as I showed her various posts about her father and mother.

“Why would I do a post about you?” I answered.

Naomi

Naomi

“Because,” she said.

I assured her that she must be somewhere on my blog, and began opening posts about Tuesday sushi nights and Mexico vacations and Sonoma wine barbecues and other Schneider-related topics, and finally found a group shot at the Ferry Building in San Francisco where a teeny, tiny Naomi could be spotted in a corner. More

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