“Cassoulet is a rich combination of beans baked with meats, as much a part of Southwestern France as Boston baked beans are of New England.” – Julia Child*

So…basically cassoulet is beanie weenies.

I’M NOT SERIOUS.  Please don’t blacklist me, French customs… [Read more →]

This picture really irked me this morning.  Kinda drove me up the wall, actually. [Read more →]

An instructor stands on the floor of a sloping auditorium, a dozen glasses filled with various ruby-colored liquids organized in rows like soldiers on an adjacent counter.  He looks up at the wide-eyed faces of students that stare over their own individual sets of glasses, eager to start tasting wine. Today’s lesson will focus on pinot noir, a cool-climate grape that is famously associated with the region of Burgundy in France.

You open your notebook and scribble in “pinot noir” at the top of a blank piece of paper.  All of a sudden you hear a *Thud!  Ping!* and an “OH, SHI-!” as a crimson tide of today’s lesson cascades over the back of your white sweater, splattering Pollock-esque dots and lines across the pages that are set before you.  Chaos ensues…*

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And also 2010’s, 2011’s, 2012’s… [Read more →]

I’ve finally decided to climb out of the Himalayan mountain range of paperwork and get some fresh air in the kitchen… [Read more →]

We’re finally moved in.  Thank goodness. [Read more →]

Ok, normally I would tweet rather than post something like this, but Roger Ebert’s latest blog entry struck a long and loud chord that will reverberate for a long time.

Any commentary I could offer wouldn’t do it any justice, so I’ll let it speak for itself:  Nil by Mouth.  Read it.

Out with the old…

I actually started this post a few weeks ago.  In the original entry, I expressed great excitement for the new year, for the monumental progression that was about to take place, the kind that only grown-ups can be really thrilled about.  But Life’s latest curveball caught me off guard, and well, things have changed.   [Read more →]

As a young child, I used to play “musical conductor” with my dad.  A vinyl Wellington’s Victory would be taken out of its weathered sleeve, placed on the turntable, and blasted at a minimum 50 billion decibels through a set of speakers that outsized my five-year-old-self.  At the sound of the first trumpet, dad and I would raise our bamboo chopstick “batons” and wave them at an imaginary orchestra.  We would conduct our way through the reverberating sounds of booming cannons, strings, wind and brass.  When the symphony ended, we would take a bow. [Read more →]