Summer

     New Orleans has been figuring large on my mind these days.  The 10 year anniversary of The Hurricane and a recent trip to one of my favorite places for R&R, food and music – the Crescent City.      Chef Steve Herbert is…

     Foggy summer days here in the Bay Area make it easy to enjoy this versatile dish.  It takes a bit of oven time, and you will want to bake it early in the day in any case to allow the flavors to develop…

     Can we all agree backyard fruit crops are splendid?  My neighbor’s apricot tree is having a bumper crop this year.  And lucky for me, there are several large branches filled with fruit, and growing on my side of our fence!  They are just…

Fresh blueberries are available everywhere these days – your local farmers market, supermarkets and yes, Costco too. As you may have noticed:  I.  LOVE.  DESSERT!  So while my first response to blueberry season is often a cobbler or cake, I figure it’s time to take…

     A strawberry pastry was part of my own Mother’s Day celebration for years.  The school my son attended from pre-school through sixth grade created a Mother’s Day Tea for moms, with even the littlest hands diving in to wrap refrigerated crescent roll dough around…

Call it “Food Foraging 2.0” – when I posted a plea for fresh, culinary bay leaves on our neighborhood social network.  I was “Jonesing” for a pound cake using bay leaves and oranges that I spied in David Lebovitz’ “My Paris Kitchen” cookbook, and had…

     The distinctive scent of hot water poured over flour transports me back to my Poh Poh’s kitchen.  She is my maternal grandmother, who would let me join her in making dim sum nibbles whenever we visited.  These are some of my earliest cooking…

   Recent travels to Spain have my taste buds primed to recreate the flavors here at home!  Our Bay Area climate is similar to theirs, offering the opportunity to share the same flavors using our local bounty.    With most of our time spent in…

   I’ve been buying up pepper varieties every week for awhile now, and in addition to enjoying sweet peppers raw in salads; I’ve been on a “stuffed pepper binge”.  It’s fun changing up the flavor profiles from classic Americana, Chinese, Italian and my current favorite –…

   Green beans and bacon make a tasty pair.  With green beans at the peak of their summer season, I fill a bag of the most slender and tender beans I spy nearly every week.  I keep them interesting week over week by switching up…