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La belle sole meunière au petit tonneau ..read more

photo by Kim Sunée Taco Love: a poem 1. I choose my favorite taco truck, and, if possible, follow its whereabouts on Twitter. After leaving my lover (because it’s been a long time coming) and drinking too many cocktails with girlfriends who are trying to make me feel better, I cry a little more and then tell them nothing will console me, but a taco might come close. I then designate the sober friend to drive as I check the feed of the taco truck to see which highway to speed to with all the windows open, the four of us giggling like high-schoolers about to behave badly. 2. We locate ..read more

Maybe it’s the end-of-summer-something-blueish but I always feel a certain heightened sense of awareness this time of year–clouds gathering, the light slants a certain way, rendering the shadows long and myself longing… What to do but take a bit of time out of the day to read Nigel Slater’s thoughts on something like a simple, quiet dinner preparation. You are probably familiar with his 2004 memoir, Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger. I also love Notes from the Larder: A Kitchen Diary with Recipes and The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater. Slater offers small prose poems ..read more

“If you don’t have a home, you at least have your culture and your food and no one can take that away from you.” – Chef Tylun Pang NOTE: This post was originally published years ago, when I first met Chef Pang, but I’m updating it here with this very sad note: Chef Tylun Pang, a dear and wonderful man passed away this year. Chef Pang was an incredible force for good in his community and much beloved by all who knew him. I got to know Chef Pang over the years and every time I’d visit, he’d always find time in his busy day running the kitchens at Ko to stop and drink something cold while sharin ..read more

A friend of mine is at Harvard on a Nieman Fellowship and just texted this morning that he is on a field trip, en route to New Hampshire to visit with the great poet, Donald Hall. And all he can think about “is reading poetry.” I like being reminded mid-morning that we don’t read enough poetry and so here is a poem for the day, by Jane Kenyon, on that elusive thing called happiness. On a side note, I vote for more field trips (for students all ages) to visit poets or to just find a moment during the day to read poetry.  If you had a day to read poetry, what would you choose? “New Hampshir ..read more

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