I’ve always been a fan of kale, but never ate it raw. That is, until a friend of ours took us to Echo Park’s Elf Café and we ordered the spicy kale salad. Crunchy and piquant, it’s like no other salad I’ve tasted, and the good news is—it’s pretty easy to make your­self. Spicy Kale […]

My mom is an excel­lent cook, and a woman who rarely—if ever—eats prepack­aged food. So when she tells you she likes some­thing that comes in a box, I sug­gest you lis­ten up. Her tip: Beecher’s mac­a­roni and cheese. You can buy it online, but I found it nearby at Smart & Final. (My mom says […]

It’s my day in the Pretty Mommy recipe exchange—and my birth­day, so I thought I’d go big. Fes­tive. How­ever. What I tried to make—a caramel bar like the one they serve at Santa Monica’s Huck­le­berry—was not as expected. The con­struc­tion of the bar is much like a lemon bar: a short­bread crust and a thick […]

Some­thing is wreak­ing havoc on my sys­tem right now. The cul­prit is likely the soup I exca­vated from the depths of the fridge on Mon­day and blithely ingested assum­ing that heat would kill any­thing toxic. It did not. Yes­ter­day was our anniver­sary. Three years since we were very blurry but my dad was in focus. Lessons I […]

I used to spend a lot of time think­ing about my desert island discs. (Off the top of my head: Doolit­tle, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Foxbase Alpha, 69 Love Songs, Sum­mer­teeth, #1 Record/Radio City, Per­fect Teeth and some­thing by Led Zep­pelin but I can’t decide which one at the moment.) But lately I’ve been thinking […]

I’ve got­ten a pass for the past six weeks or so. Pack up a house, drive across the coun­try, and unpack said house into a slightly smaller house, and no one expects culi­nary bril­liance for a while. Despite our excite­ment about new vis­tas in take­out and a long list of restau­rants we are dying to […]

My love affair with cab­bage began in my post-college kitchen, when I worked my way through Lorna Sass’ Short-Cut Veg­e­tar­ian. Sass uses cab­bage in a ton of recipes, and I can see why: it’s cheap, it’s plen­ti­ful, and it’s so ver­sa­tile. A few weeks ago, with a han­ker­ing for some­thing spicy, I tried out Smitten […]

A recent newslet­ter from our CSA men­tioned that peo­ple some­times drop out due to the fact that they are over­whelmed and don’t know what to do with all the veg­eta­bles. I can relate; if you’d asked me five years ago if I would ever cook turnips, I doubt I would have said yes. Farm-fresh produce, […]

I have always loved beets, but I spent my pre-cooking years eat­ing them from salad bars. Sure, I knew what they looked like in the wild, I just had no idea how you did any­thing with them. Until very recently, though, roast­ing beets was, sadly, a royal pain. I am a decent cook, I fol­low instructions […]

There are a lot of things I miss about Kansas City, but a big one is def­i­nitely food. (Mr. TRF elu­ci­dates here.) I miss KC’s empha­sis on locally sourced ingre­di­ents, and the abil­ity to buy local milk and eggs at almost every gro­cery store. For the amount of food that can be grown in Florida, […]