The unexpected White Thanksgiving we experienced here in Seattle certainly threw us all some curve balls. The end result at my house was that--for the first time in many years--my Thanksgiving dinner table didn't include any of my blood relations. Brother sick, niece working, sister stuck on Queen Anne hill, [...]
Much as I like to think I'm an organized person, inevitably there are trips when I realize too late something that I failed to pack. Usually remedying the problem just takes a trip to the drug store for some toothpaste, or relying on the room's alarm clock rather than my favorite [...]
I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me before, but ricotta's a great ingredient to have on hand. One small tub came to the rescue twice in this past week and it's got me thinking I should add ricotta to my grocery cart most every week. Friday night we were joining [...]
It must be a bumper-crop year for chanterelle mushrooms here in the Northwest. My local grocery store, the wonderful West Seattle Thriftway, has had a consistent supply of lovely chanterelles for $8.99 per pound, one of the lowest prices I recall seeing for the beauties in recent years. And I've [...]
Home again, home again jiggity jog...... What a trip that was, three weeks so full and enriching and reviving that it felt like we were gone for two months. So I suppose we got our money's worth. And our time's worth. But it's great to be home. Another sign of [...]
Or, as I like to think of it, "Showdown at O-Cluck Corral!" Over the past 15 years or so I've been called on to judge a great range of foods. From critiquing prototypes of seafood dishes being considered for commercial production at the Symphony of Seafood, which I judged this year and [...]
I've been on a granola spree lately. And it kind of took me by surprise. Well, to be true, I do remember this moment: on a business trip a few months back, I was on deadline working in my hotel room through the breakfast hour. I usually find room service [...]
Okay, enough with the stone fruits! I've clearly been on a bent about that category of delicious summertime fruits. For a moment I'll move along from the peach and plum tones of those juicy treats and give some props to the jeweltone berries. A few occurrences conspired to put visions of summer [...]
I have got to make a point of getting to Vessel sometime in the next week or so. Just got an email reminder that they're celebrating one of the most venerable drinking establishment in the world--Harry's Bar--with signature items from their menu (beef carpaccio was created there, so the legend [...]
If I had to hang my hat on one theme about which I've written the most in my (ahem) nearly 2 decades of food writing, it's Northwest ingredients. Celebration of foods that are grown in my backyard, that have been part of my life since I was a little kid, [...]