First fish

First fish

A quick stop at Day’s Market for a bag of ice was the daily de rigueur in the sailboat days of our early marriage. No refrigerator on the Ericson 30 we called home, just a deep insulated box under the speck of formica counter that needed constant replenishment...
Fiction for foodies: Baking Cakes in Kigali

Fiction for foodies: Baking Cakes in Kigali

Every now and then I read a book that just perfectly illustrates how food as a theme unites all the people of the world. Baking Cakes in Kigali is one of those books. It’s most likely not a novel you’ve heard of; at least I hadn’t, although author...
The edible cell

The edible cell

With only one or two exceptions, I love every single one of the teachers my kids have had. They’ve embraced experiential learning, largely abandoning lectures and rote memorization in favor of group projects, individual presentations, skits, and songs. It works....
Old school backyard foodie: Oysters Rockefeller

Old school backyard foodie: Oysters Rockefeller

The oysters smelled like the air on still, foggy mornings when the tide is low and kelp is heaped on the sand and the only footprints are from marauding nighttime snails – an ancient smell of brine and salty tears.

Pike Market, Seattle

Pike Market, Seattle

Soulard Market in St. Louis was my first farmer’s market experience, and as a girl I thought the whole experience quite alien – instead of linoleum floors and neat aisles, we’d walk the chilly concrete open-air hallway past stalls heaped with...
Retro gourmet at Craft & Commerce

Retro gourmet at Craft & Commerce

Imagine the nerdy-cool kid from high school: the quiet and deliberately unfashionable one, the one who chose to wear horn-rimmed glasses and ride his bike to school every single day, the one who actually understood all the cultural references, and who surprised...

Dorito loco taco, or taco asqueroso

How many kinds of wrong is this? Mythical Doritos taco shells surface in Fresno – latimes.com. According to yesterday’s LA Times, Taco Bell started selling Doritos Locos Tacos, a taco made with shell of nacho-cheese-flavored Dorito shell.  Mythic?...
Hoffsicle or Hasselpop?

Hoffsicle or Hasselpop?

In addition to bragging righs as actor/producer/singer/reality television star, David Hasselhoff now can say he’s got the ability to help strangers bond on Sunday morning in Santa Cruz. Here’s how:

Maker Faire 2011: a field trip

Maker Faire 2011: a field trip

Seen Saturday at Maker Faire 2011: kids licking 9-volt batteries and setting tissue paper on fire with magnifying glasses. A bicycle-powered string band on one stage and an electronic digideroo on another. Guitar amps made from trash. A mechanical giraffe wandering...

Urban farming

Novella Carpenter is my newest heroine. I’ve just finished reading her book Farm City: Confessions of an Urban Farmer, in which she moves into a ramshackle apartment on a dead-end street in a dead-end Oakland, CA neighborhood and hesitantly plants a garden in...
A Big Sur Thanksgiving, 1939

A Big Sur Thanksgiving, 1939

Knowing how to brine a perfect turkey is not as important as the ability to remember what, exactly, to give thanks for. Here is novelist Lillian Bos Ross’ description of her 1939 Big Sur Thanksgiving meal. Lillian Bos is one of my heroes; read on to find out more about her.