This past summer, while having dinner with a friend and her parents, we started talking about the dishes that we would always ask our mothers to make when we were home visiting. For my friend, the answer came quite easily: spaghetti and meatballs. When it was my turn, however, I had to stop and think.…
Several weeks ago when I was reading Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires, I discovered one of the most comforting meals you could ever have: Aushak, i.e. Afghan dumplings that are stuffed with scallions, served on a layer of garlic-spiked Greek yogurt and then topped with a gingery tomato sauce and roughly torn mint leaves. While…
Her face is whiter than the inside of a turnip. (Lebanese saying) For the past two weeks, I've watched as list after list after list of all of the "best of 2012" movies, cookbooks, books, gadgets, tv shows, etc. have come out. There's a part of me that loves this kind of listing; I…
"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." -A Game of Thrones (George R.R. Martin) Last week on my way to a scone making class in San Francisco, I started reading A Game of Thrones. While I realize that scones and A Game of Thrones…
Fate has a thousand wiles when it chooses to impose on us its incomprehensible whims. A temporary blackout, a moment of inattention or blindness is enough to insinuate an act between the Scylla and Charybdis of decision. Afterward, with hindsight, we may endlessly ponder that act, explain our motives, try to discover our true intentions; but the act remains irrevocable.-Bruno…
I can hardly believe that, less than a week ago, I was rambling through Carmel, Monterey and Point Lobos, almost without a care in the world. To put it mildly, all of that seems like a lifetime ago. The Greek and I returned to various tasks in Berkeley last Tuesday evening and now, one Greek…
And what were they, all, all those torments of the past! Everything, even his crime, even his sentence and exile, seemed to him now, in the first impulse, to be some strange, external fact, as if it had not even happened to him. However, that evening he could not think long or continuously of anything,…
There is a silence where hath been no sound. -Thomas Hood ("Silence") I know I've written about pizza before, but, frankly, when all is said and done, it's something worth revisiting again and again. Pizza is just one of those irresistible comfort foods: you put whatever you're in the mood for on top of a…
“Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.” -Annie Dillard I'll be honest with you: not many of the recipes I make and post on this blog go through an experimental "let's try this and see how it tastes" test run. And this isn't to say that everything I touch automatically turns to gold.…
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Leo Tolstoy (What is Art?)Ok, ok, I know what you're thinking: anybody can make a sandwich. That is in fact a true statement. In fact, its very truth is probably the reason that I'm telling you about it. It's not…
Dining with Dostoevsky 