The beets and rainbow chard are growing well since I planted them about a week ago. The beets seem as if they’ll do especially well.
Over the weekend I purchased the last of the plants I intend to grow in the coming months and managed to pot everything. Now it’s a learning curve of what each [...]

I have made a Florence google map guide to my favorite places and picks for accomodations, shopping, restaurants and wine bars in Florence along with extensive notes for each marker and some suggestions for what to pair the stop with. I hope you’ll find it useful!

He made his way home from India. I’d asked him to bring me something, anything, preferably not malaria or bedbugs. He can’t be named because he’s now an international food smuggler: I received a beautiful silk scarf and even more exciting the following:

Star anise

Cardamom

I have no idea what this is. Please help me. I got [...]

The recipe from Smitten Kitchen was rather perfect (if not caloric–mine, the way I followed, served 12 peices, each I figured out has 260 calories, 12 grams of fat (2 are saturated), 60mg of cholesterol, 145mg of sodium, 1mg of potassium, 33 carbs (20 are sugar), 5 grams of protein, 2% vit A, 4% calcium, [...]

So as you know from my last entry, Thanksgiving this year was a big, cooperative event. What follows is a photo entry of the action and dishes. I don’t have all of the recipes, but will follow this post with 2-3 of them. If there’s a specific recipe you’d like, please post a comment and [...]

We made our way up to Mendocino to meet a friend of mine and her extended family for Thanksgiving. The occasion called for some serious brevity as our setting was as such: two nights and one and a half days of smart, sharp, opinionated women (ages 13-60 something) and the sole male representative I brought [...]

Updates have been slow lately, despite that I’ve been cooking lots of super-fresh pasta primavera, pestos, grilling, and making fresh lemonade just about every day. I’ve been traveling, and there’s more ahead.
I took a trip to the south and ate, and ate, and ate. I only managed to grab pictures of the last day, so [...]

I have crazy stories about being stranded in Italy, spending an unplanned night in Rome, eating fried chicken in Georgia, getting back to San Francisco and more but mostly I left 10 kilos in Italy. Yep. You can have them, Italy. Send them to the south.

Something sharp is LODGED in my foot after several days at the beach in Levanto. Yesterday the surf was really rough (2nd day of red flag) and i took a beating along the rocky sea floor and as I came out must have hit a sharp rock or a peice of glass or something that [...]

I had a wonderful weekend via smart car in less traveled Italy only to have my purse and everything possibly very valuable to me inside it at the time on the bus ride from the car drop off to my apartment. Mostly I was in Castagnetto Carducci and Bolgheri, but hit San Gimignano and others [...]