I arrived in Kansas City for a work trip and the Chiefs game was on, which I knew because it was blasted into my ear on the ride from the airport, but everyone must have been watching it from home since the restaurants, art galleries, boutique shops, and CVSes were all closed and nobody was on…

There’s a recipe for Sicilian lamb patties that I make every fall. I think I found it in Bon Appetit about ten years ago, and it was the first time I felt like I was really cooking instead of just trying to cook. You must use pecorino cheese; there is no substitute, and it lends…

We went to see a production of Cloud 9 in which our friend performed the dual role of a Victorian grandmother and 1970s lesbian, and before that I waited at a bar with sticky counters and nibbled on hush puppies stuffed with shrimp. After the play, we went across the street to Lalibela for Ethiopian,…

It’s finally cold enough to go have lunch on our rooftop balcony at work. Viet made me a sack lunch of a banana, a peach, and a bag of pre-sliced apples. (Photo: Riverbend Park, Virginia.) >> September 23 << September 21

I made sloppy joes using ground beef, onions, and a tomato to brighten it up, seasoning with a lot of hot and sweet paprika and some cayenne, and serving them with smoked paprika ketchup. (Photo: Mountain top, rural New Hampshire.) >> September 22 << September 20

A garden omelet (tortilla de la huerta), as I try to get through as much of The Food of Spain as I can while I still have fresh summer ingredients. I sliced an eggplant and cooked it with peppers, using the method where you throw in a lot of oil and allow the eggplant to…

Back to a lot of late nights and the pressure to get ready for a work event. I’ve been buying muffins from Safeway, because I need to find breakfast somewhere and it saves me the three dollars going to some coffee shop near the office. Like most grocery store pastries, they are sticky, meaning that…

I tried a white wine from Cumberland, Maryland, on the panhandle that is topographically similar to West Virginia. The wine seemed to lack character, though it was refreshing and it did go very well with slices of peach. We are in the midst of an endless summer that feels in every respect like the middle…

A coca is a Catalan version of a pizza. I use a very thin crust and omit any kind of sauce or cheese, emphasizing the roasted vegetables which are placed upon it in a thick layer. For this version, the crust was just olive oil and water mixed with flour and no yeast. I combined…

We went to an outdoor happy hour near U Street crowded with gay men. At the beginning of the Obama administration they would have been clean-shaven and fresh-faced, and the new bars and condo buildings were just beginning to transform the neighborhood; and now, at the end of it, most of them have sculpted facial hair…

My recipe for Southern biscuits directs you to shape the dough into a six inch-by-six inch square. This leaves you with a very thick crust divided into very small biscuits, and you could probably serve them at a nice restaurant with quotation marks around the menu item. Rolling out a 12-inch square would bring them…

I put lamb shoulder in the oven and made romesco sauce, which is a no-nonsense mixture of roasted tomatoes and cold vinegar. I cooked a pound of tomatoes with two garlic cloves for about 20 minutes, peeled the skins, then put them in a food processor with half a cup of roasted almonds. Since there…