A blog about food, history, data visualization, and more
Two years ago, I wrote a somewhat light-hearted piece about the “depluminator,” a device that enabled me to pick plums from limbs high on the two plum trees in my yard. It was really simple, consisting of a rake, a box, and a bungee cord. But it didn’t work very well. I soon learned that […]
(Updated, 11/24/16: fixed broken links) I’m always on the hunt for an interesting cookie recipe, but somehow I missed an article by David Leite (of Leite’s Culinaria) in the New York Times last July that included a chocolate chunk cookie recipe adapted from one by dessert genius Jacques Torres. A few months after publication, the […]
The basement of my house and backyard are home to numerous colonies of Argentine ants, a species of small ants that is enormously successful in California (their colonies have multiple queens and their diet is especially flexible). Now and then they decide to relocate into my kitchen, using cracks and pinholes as their points of […]
The second half of the CUESA farm tour last month was Hidden Star Orchards (also known as Smit Ranch and Smith Ranch), a farm known best for apples, cherries, and grapes. Near the end of the tour, they handed out bottles of apple juice or cider—I couldn’t tell because the label had detached from my […]
I love smoky flavors–one of my standby snacks in the summer is a quesadilla with cheese, a few slices of local ripe tomatoes, and a few dashes of Bufalo chipotle hot sauce. Looking for a way to get smoke without “fire,” I recently tried using lapsang souchong tea–a tea which has been dried over a […]
Barbara of Tigers & Strawberries pointed out the importance of pressing tofu in her helpful post about using tofu in stir-fries. Pressing the tofu removes water and leads to firmer and more resilient tofu. When making tofu squares with miso, I like to press the tofu for a few hours (or just 20 minutes, after […]
Sometimes I hear something that is different from my long-held perceptions, and want to find out the real story. This time the issue was coffee storage. The KCRW Good Food program of October 15, 2005 had a visit from their supermarket guru, Phil Lempert to talk about supermarket coffee. He said that putting coffee in […]