We went to a concert venue to watch solar company bands compete for first prize in a music contest, and it was a lot more entertaining than it sounds. Even more of a surprise was that they had actual good food. There was a counter of mini sandwiches being replenished on a continual basis, one…

There was a place I went for lunch which looked every bit like a sports bar or perhaps a brewery, but the menu was entirely Spanish. Or, at least, the words on the menu corresponded to popular Spanish dishes, but their habit of cooking tapas like Irish pub food seemed ill-advised. The potatoes were baked…

For breakfast at a restaurant across the street from my hotel I didn’t have quite enough to eat, so I ordered a side of avocado slices. I was hoping for some understanding of why California avocados are so famous, and why transplants miss them so much. But there had been nothing memorable about the ingredients in…

I flew to San Francisco for work and was immediately thrown into an unfamiliar milieu of cable cars and tourists. I spent the afternoon trying to find an WiFi connection in my hotel that even approached the strength of the public network outside, and by the time I could think about where to eat I…

We went to the first birthday party for a friend who changed her name, and we enjoyed a very filling birthday cake with sprinkles shaped like people. All I needed for dinner later was shrimp wonton soup. A rabbit got into our herb garden, flattening and displacing the thyme, which now leans over the garden…

We were celebrating with a friend who may soon be accepted into the foreign service and mulling over destinations where we might like to go visit him, and I ordered the fish curry at Baan Thai, forcing myself to eat slowly in order to handle the heat. (Photo: Laguna de Catemaco, Mexico.) >> July 9…

My routine when I wake up is to check the news for any shootings or terrorist attacks that happened overnight, and now more often than not there’s something new. I keep thinking it can’t continue at the same pace, but of course it can; we live in a very big world. And we shouldn’t flatter…

Right. I came home after an enthralling day of manipulating documents in Powerpoint, and Viet, who was also working late, had brought home a pizza from Costco. I’ve found most of the products at this wholesale warehouse to be both affordable and at good value, but the pizza was smothered in cheese and I couldn’t…

It’s felt a lot like the Pacific Northwest for much of the summer, with a mist that won’t go away and forests that colonize every space available. The garden is still producing endive and romaine, which I mixed with basil for the best kind of salad that doesn’t require more than a drizzle of olive…

I picked the beets out of my garden because the greens were starting to wilt, but they hadn’t grown to be more than shallot-sized. They were very sweet, and I put them in the corner of a plate with chicken and roasted potatoes. (Photo: Iwo Jima Memorial, Arlington, Virginia.) >> July 5 << July 3

I made cheddar biscuits. In The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion, they come right after the recipe for Southern breakfast biscuits, which begins: “If you’re a Southern baker with any basic skills at all, you can skip right past this recipe. In fact, we’d appreciate it if you’d turn the page immediately.” I have none…

We had some people over and I was going to make cucumber sandwiches in honor of Brexit, but I couldn’t find the right kind of tasteless white bread, and I don’t think we’ve arrived at peak cucumber season so the Persians I had tasted mostly like water. Instead, I put cucumbers on cracker-sized slices of…