Hello there. It’s been an interesting year, so far. I traveled twice—to Florida to visit my grandparents and breathe luxurious tropical air, and to Utah to visit a dear friend and to see Sundance Film Festival. And snow. Genuine, real-life snow that made me say childish things like, “We’re in a snow…

This wasn’t the plan. I sat down to write a year in review style post. Instead, I’m diverting my attention to this plate of leftovers in front of me—lamb meatballs simmered for six hours with wine and shallots, butternut squash with tahini, and latkes à la Yotam Ottolenghi. My sister-in-law,…

Today is my twenty-ninth birthday. But, as some of the needling interlopers whom I call friends have pointed out, this is not year twenty-nine. This is year thirty, technically. You might wonder what cruel non-human would ever put it that way. But rest assured, reader, that I have always been able…

Hello. Somehow it’s November 27th. I’ve spent the last four-ish days in the chaotic-but-pleasant haze of Thanksgiving entertaining. My attention has been fixed on things like clarified butter and the proper internal temperature of a turkey breast. At one point, I had a small meltdown over the quantity of stuffing…

Hello. I’m writing to you from Tokyo, Japan. Adam and I have been here for about a week now, and we’re almost too dazzled to sort out our first impressions. The quick summary, though, is that we love it. We left Los Angeles when the weather finally, finally decided to…

Those of you who know me won’t be surprised when I say that I’m a bit manic about cookbooks. I have a gift for locating (and then purchasing) them in completely unexpected places, like thrift stores, museum gift shops, garage sales, airports… Just name a location—I probably have one from…

A Ballerina’s Tale (Netflix)—The first African American woman to become a principal dancer in the American Ballet Theater, Misty Copeland broke down barriers to get where she is today. Now she’s reshaping the ballet’s notoriously narrow definition of the “ideal ballerina” for the next generation. Covering Copeland’s tumultuous childhood and the…

A few weeks ago, we flew to Indiana to visit my brother, Warren. Because it was his birthday and because we’d never been, we decided to spend three days in Chicago. It’s only a four-ish hour drive from the small town where Warren lives. For Californians like us, it’s a…

Here’s one of the most enjoyable things about reading Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing—everyone else seems to have read it too. I often read in public spaces (coffee shops, airports, airport coffee shops…) with relatively few interruptions. This book, however, works like a universal ice breaker for amateur writers out…