Category: BiteClub

Make-Up Bread

My eldest daughter is one of my very favorite people in the world. Really, that's not just a parent talking: The child has an innate happiness, a fullness of heart, and a spontaneous grace that simply disarms everyone she meets. Like her good looks, I take very little credit for any of that, but I cannot abdicate her Mr Hyde self, so we have to find ways to make up with one another, and this is what we've found: There is no better splint for fractured family love than the baking together of fresh bread.

Fancy Food Show 2011

Fancy Food Show 2011 gourmet food products recap includes Happy Goat caramel sauce, Guy Fieri's BBQ sauce, yuzu marmalade and wine alternative beverages

A Red Lentil Soup w/ Meyer Lemons

So, back to school: As I mentioned last week, with the wanton optimism of the truly ignorant, I enrolled myself in a continuing ed course. Now, having survived Week 1 (technically, my first grade pending, survival remains a speculative condition), it is Week 2's turn with the lash; the good news is, my homework has converged with my dinner, in the form of this wonderful recipe for red lentil soup with lemons, and my lemon trees are hemorrhaging little egg-yolk colored balls like some vainglorious tree at Christmas.

Eat Pig, Drink Pinot, Save Our Schools

I have mixed feelings about school fund-raisers: On the one hand, like most parents, I have kids in public schools that fall chronically short of financial resources; on the other, I believe that I already pay more than enough in taxes to expect a properly funded system of public education, that the root of the problem is not the quantity of money available, but rather the means by which it is allocated. In any case, on the morning after our Pigs 'n Pinot fund-raising dinner, I am hungover, fat, and happy all the same.

Back to School for Grown-ups

So. I've done it. I've voluntarily chosen to subject myself to the pressure of getting a good grade in school - again. It's not that I've never thought about going back to school; to the contrary, I know lots of people - many of whom I envy for it - who have gone back to school, some several times, for advanced degrees in fields wildly disparate from their previous careers. But I never took that plunge, not since I extracted myself, sheepishly AbD, from the doctoral program in which I enrolled straight out of college (if taking 5 years to graduate can properly be considered "straight"). At least, not until last week, when I cleared the wait-list for this continuing-ed course in Web writing...

Pho at Anh Linh

Anh Linh | Santa Rosa

Anh Lihn Vietnamese is a second restaurant for Lee's Noodle House

Foods That Make Kids Cry

A couple of nights ago, I made my eldest daughter cry. But not because of a pending time-out, a too-harsh rebuke, homework overload, or an imminent grounding. No, I made my daughter cry by feeding her dinner because, you see, I'm a passable home cook, but a very bad person, and the animal I cooked used to be Cute.