Had my BEST run in the month we’ve been here in San Diego this morning … military police not withstanding. We headed toward the beach at Coronado. Stu was taking Satchel to the most excellent dog beach, while my plan was to run south on the beach, past the Del Coronado. I was looking for […]
Honored to have Decolonial Passage publish this essay, and then nominate it for Best of the Net 2023. We have crossed the Big Island of Hawaii to the western Kohala shore in search of a sandy beach and surf. It is raining hard on the eastern shore, in Hilo, where we are staying for […]
A good stock is a force of nature. It can stand up to a studio executive or a Supreme Court nominee. It is made of flesh and bones, herbs, onions, whole peppercorns, perhaps a few whole allspice, carrots, celery and time. Hours of untended time, and at a temperature that moves things just below the […]
Authentic. We bash that work around a lot, and like great sex and a Tesla, it’s what what everyone wants. Stu was telling me about some tourism ads he heard about the other day for Pendleton, Oregon, targeted at hipsters who want a handmade, authentic experience: real cowboy stuff, handmade saddles and blankets, which you […]
I was an outsider in my third grade classroom at Soquel Elementary School in 1963. It was not quite two years after the death of my father, and my mother simply couldn’t live anymore in the house he built us in Watsonville, 14 miles away. So here we were, new house, new town, new school, […]
As a child, I loved to watch magicians perform. I was convinced that if I just looked at the right place at the very right second, I could see beneath their illusions. I could discover how that coin appeared or how those two seemingly joined rings came apart. Sometimes, when I read this parable in […]
When Mary Karr published her darkly funny memoir, Liars’ Club, about her hard-drinking gun shooting parents, she was terrified about going out on book tour. People will think I’m a freak, she thought. But in reading after reading, people came up to her and said, “Your family is just like mine!” And so Karr adopted […]
One day you are sitting on the coach getting over hernia surgery, and the next day you’re in the pages of the New York Times, The New York Magazine, Mediaite, and David Green is saying your name on NPR’s Morning Edition. Not because you cured polio or flew to the moon. No, it’s because you […]
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.
