It can be pretty easy today to buy quite good commercial ice creams, whether one of the many regional small-scale producers -- like Snoqualmie from my back yard -- or premium national brands (I don't really love regular Häagen-Dazs, but am a fan of the Five line). I even sampled at the [...]
There are so many reasons that it's been as long as it has since I last sat down to write a post here. I won't bore you with details, aside from the more recent reason that I was out of town for most of December. It was a trip my [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I realize this looks more like potato salad than cauliflower, which is clearly an indication that I should have spent more time trying to capture my subject. But I was hungry..... Last week was indulgent to say the least, me and my culinary colleagues who attended the IACP [...]