I can't say how many times a food story I've written, or recipe I've developed, has come with a story of my mother. My favorite is this one, which ended up getting picked up by Saveur's online offerings and has, in the long run, become one of the most popular [...]
Sometimes the impromptu things end being the best, right? The last-minute let's-go-out-for-dinner plans with friends who also happen to be available? That's the spirit behind next weekend's Gourmet Game Night gathering on Orcas Island at Allium restaurant in Eastsound. Sunday night October 16 during happy hour (5:30 to 6:30), I'll [...]
After a particularly hectic, demanding, tiring summer, we were in need of a quick and relaxing get-away late last month. Though the Seattle-area has loads of regional escape plans that radiate out from the city--Whidbey Island, Walla Walla, the ocean coast, Port Townsend, Hood Canal--I wanted to be unwinding sooner than [...]
The view from my balcony at Cannery Pier Hotel, the Hwy 101 bridge crossing the Columbia It had been a good 15 to 20 years or so since my last trip to Astoria. So I was especially happy when an invitation came through from the Oregon Albacore Commission and the [...]
I love this snippet about "How to Forage for Mushrooms" from a not-too-long-ago issue of Esquire magazine. (My husband pulls random pages out for me -- this one doesn't happen to have the issue month on it.) Step 1 reads "Find a humid forest." followed by Step 2: "Leave that [...]
All work and no play has been making Cynthia somewhat dingbatty. Honestly. It's that kind of brain-frizz that makes me turn in circles in the kitchen 3 or 4 times before I remember that all I needed to do was grab a knife out of the drawer to spread peanut [...]
Trailers are for movies, right? Or maybe for hipster curbside no-fuss dining establishments. But actually, trailers are now for cookbooks, too. And other books that show up on shelves each year. I'd never heard the concept of a cookbook trailer until a matter of months ago, when I started seeing/hearing friends talk [...]
I know weather was pretty dismal this past spring in many parts of the U.S., not the least up here in the Northwest where we brokethe kinds of records you're never too excited to hear about: the coldest April; the next-to-wettest March. So now that the last week or so [...]
I wrote last summer about the sometimes-conundrum of how much luggage space you can--or should--devote to games when you're traveling. It's similar to what happens in the "what to pack?" question for clothes, too, never know what the weather's going to be like, what mood I'll be in any given evening [...]
OK, so yes, it is just about 9:00 in the morning as I start writing this. And yes, it's true, I do have an icy, well-shaken martini on my mind. But not because I'm blurring the lines between "breakfast hour" and "cocktail hour." But because I'm thinking about [...]