Produced for the LATimes/February 2008
Not so long ago I went to the best party in years: The guests brought wine or beer. The hosts provided the makings for Chinese dumplings. And everyone did the work assembling them. I walked into a kitchen full of mostly strangers and left having enjoyed a good conversation with nearly all of them.
Clearly, there are icebreakers, and then there are dumplings.
Los Angeles Times/January 2008
“EXPECT the expected” is usually the best slogan when you’re invited for brunch, but what a new friend had waiting on his kitchen counter a few Saturdays ago was not just a fresh idea. It could be the greatest thing since sliced pizza.
My host Bruce Stutz, a writer and obsessive cook recently back from Barcelona,
Saveur (published in altered form)
Sometime after I got out of restaurant school and started writing about food, my next-older sister unexpectedly sent me the closest thing to an heirloom from my bleak childhood: my mom’s 1956 “Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book.” Continue reading