365 Days of Food

It’s midsummer back on the East Coast and the black-eyed susans are in bloom. I found a chihuahua which I thought had escaped from my neighbor’s backyard and I lured it back in and closed the fence, only to learn later that it was a different chihuahua entirely. I was afraid I’d set up some…

There was no complimentary food on the cross-country flight home, not even peanuts, though they did find the time to encourage us to apply for the airline credit card. I would have even been happy with the “Taste of Europe” biscotti wafers I’d received on an earlier flight. At the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina,…

There were several French restaurants in the neighborhood where I was staying, and it looked like it must been a historic center for French immigrants, so I had been well aware that Bastille Day was coming up all week. That evening, in spite of the news, there was a block party in celebration of the…

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…