Summer Fun: Chili at the Beach

  Last Saturday morning, I grabbed my camera and shades, and drove south on PCH towards Huntington Beach and their 6th Annual Chili and Salsa cook-off. With the windows down, the wind tussling my hair, infinite blue sky above, and the Pacific on my right, I had a real Cinderella moment: Freida’s old hunter-green Bonneville [...]

When Memories Come Alive: Butter Cookies

Ever since I started elementary school, my family spent two weeks of winter break in the mountains, where we had an adorable, miniature, and very rustic cabin. Everything we needed, we had to pack into the trunk of Father’s Fiat 1300; there were no stores and the narrow, mountain road was often buried under the [...]

Father Knows Best: Recycling Is a Beautiful Thing

When I was a child, recycling had more to do with saving money than protecting the environment. Mother thoroughly washed every single glass jar and stored it in the pantry to be reused for preserves. We returned the glass bottles that held milk and yogurt to the small neighborhood grocery store knowing they would be [...]

Love Is in the Mail: Organic Green Juice Box from Melissa's Produce

  I used to dread seeing the innocent-looking USPS van parked on the street, knowing that it would bring me only hours of misery, anguish and worry. But a few months ago, I bid farewell to that life and moved on, not even once looking back to the past. I chat with my mailman now [...]

California Sunshine - Luxury No More: Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice

  I am standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. A coffee maker is gurgling just to the right, and a few feet behind me there is a skillet with onions and potatoes cut in small cubes, destined to become a diner-worthy accompaniment to the eggs and toast. It’s cold in our small 70s kitchen [...]

An Interview with Faith: An Edible Mosaic Cookbook Tour

It’s been several weeks since Casey of Kitchen Play instigated Cookbook Tour to promote An Edible Mosaic, a brand new book by one of our own, Faith Gorsky Safarini. The six of us embarked on this exciting ride, trying to approach the task from various angles. We wrote a review of the book; we cooked one [...]

An Impending Trip To the Middle East: An Edible Mosaic

  My parents were avid collectors of books. A few times a month a large cardboard box would appear at the door, and I could not wait for Mother to cut into it and retract the treasures I knew lurked inside. I would bury my nose in the middle of the book and inhale the [...]

The Other Side of Food: PMA's Fresh Summit, 2012

I had a chance to visit Product Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit which took place the last weekend of October in Anaheim, California. It was the biggest fresh produce expo in history with about 21,000 attendees from more than 60 countries sharing the imposing 247,000 square feet of the exhibit hall. Food industry professionals gathered here to present their best [...]

Do You Want to Know Where Your Food Comes From? Visit Lazy Acres Market in Long Beach

Lazy Acres Market opened this week in Long Beach. Some of you might shrug your shoulders and move on to the story of the Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez break-up (do not ask me how I know this; it is not because I have two teenage daughters under my roof, but despite of the fact). [...]

Sep 202012
Of Cheese

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” ~~G.K. Chesterton Djurdja admits that she is at least 80 years old, but I believe that she is somewhat conservative. She complains constantly of her back pains, leg pains, head pains. She wobbles when she walks, but when no one is looking she straightens up [...]

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