There’s a lot going around on the foodie interwebs right now about brown butter and toasted heavy cream, for plenty of dang good reasons. Like my pasty, somewhat chunky sun-tanning sister-in-law says, “Brown fat is better than white fat.” So I thought I’d create a brown butter almond cookie. Before you go zooming off to […]
I thought about the carrots as we were driving away in December for two weeks in Mexico. I thought about the carrots as we were driving home, but then it was Christmas. I thought about the carrots as we were driving away in January for two weeks in Florida. I thought about the carrots as […]
Most ranchers and farmers know how to inseminate a sheep or plow a furrow, respectively, but often don’t know what to do with their progeny: pigs feet, beef tongue, kohlrabi, cabbage, or in this case, lamb neck chops, are ciphers. The adorable lamb rancher Merrit Monnat of M&P Ranch gave me a quizzical look, a […]
Happy to report this morning that even if I can’t find an agent, I can get published writing about my agent search. Having fun replying to comments about this, too, at Brevity Blog. Thanks, Editor Dinty Moore, for publishing it. In Search of Today’s Literary Zeitgeist … and an Agent
Levi was born after three days of ridiculously hard labor to our daughter Annie, on October 4, 2008. 10/4, good buddy. The quips were hard to miss from the very beginning, even the early wordless ones. The day I made us a tea party when he was three, and held up his pinky and laughed […]
Answering the phone used to be thrilling. It was your best friend, or Publisher’s Clearing House, for real. OK, yeah, occasionally it was bad news. But when you picked up, you knew someone wanted you, the actual you, not a number on a robo call list.
When Princess Diana was alive, I read that the Royals threw away their underwear after one wearing. I was thinking of that this morning as I replaced the worn-out elastic in the waist of a skirt I bought in 1992. A skirt so old, the company that sold it, J. Crew, was sold off. Tossed […]
The best way to change an ailing institution is to blow it up. That’s what COVID did to the restaurant model as we know it. I chortle with glee every time I read of ways post-COVID restaurants are mixing it up, changing the rules and kicking the bums out. And by bums, I mean miscreants […]
In my dream, I am telling jokes in a comedy club. “If I’m a chef, and I eat my own soup, am I a cannibal?” The audience roars. Then I tell jokes about my bunion, a broken garbage disposal and the time I got arrested for stalking my high school biology teacher. She was hot. […]
“I’m fine! I love it here.” Lena took the phone out to the porch. The porch and its shed roof are as wide as the cabin itself. She never tires of the scene it frames: a life-size Viewmaster reel of the Wallowa mountains looming up on the far end of the meadow. The vast diorama […]
Two passions: food, words. Some days, it’s a tug of war, some days, a peaceful coexistence.
Best day ever? Create it, cook it, eat it, write about it. I sold my restaurant, Nora’s Table, in 2015, and now I can be possessed by anything in the long day that I choose: writing 400 words, creating the next menu for the Chefs Collective at Ruby June Inn, teaching a cooking class at Jacob Williams Winery, or tromping through the fields with farmer Laurel Bouret.
A rainy afternoon with a foundational cookbook, such as Marlene Mater’s fabulous “Allepo Cookbook” or Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s “Charcuterie” can feed my spirit and spark my creative power. So can reading Maggie Shipstead, Michael Chabon or Alison Kraus.
I live in Hood River, Oregon, with Stuart, also known as the Happy Meal Man. In other words, all I can desire. And then there’s Satchel, our six-year old Idaho Shag who is simply the world’s best dog. We run together, and sometimes, we even let Stu join us.
Our oldest daughter Annie and grandson Levi live in Eugene, Oregon. Annie is cooking in restaurants, like her Mom. Son Max and his wife Hannah and our granddaughter Shiloh are in Portland, where he is a school principal. It’s a good tribe, all the way around.
