Oddities and Obsessions

ImageI’ve always been a sucker for colorful vegetables. But hand me another dark, drizzly day, and you’ll find me going gaga at the grocery store for anything chartreuse…or fuchsia…or sunset orange. I need the color to stimulate my senses.

But sometimes I get myself in trouble. Take this whole green cauliflower thing. I love this stuff, which I happen to call Broccoflower®. Because that’s what it’s labeled at my grocery store. I included a side dish recipe for it in Fast, Fresh & Green, and developed a pasta recipe with it for my next book. The problem came when I asked my cross-testers, Jessica and Eliza, to go find Broccoflower in their grocery stores. Initially they both said they couldn’t find it. But both had the presence of mind to call me from the grocery store and describe what they did see. So after cell-phone exchanges and emailed photos, we determined that what both of them found was a very similar vegetable labeled “green cauliflower.”

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heirloommaniactagI admit it. I’m a tomato junkie. But not just any tomato. Heirlooms. And how this came to be I’m not completely sure. It’s not like I grew up on a farm. And I know it’s not because I have romantic notions of plucking tomatoes off vines in some hazy late summer yellow-lit garden. But when summer rolls around the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, my body goes into automatic mode and my thirst for heirlooms sends me into a frenzy–all rational sense gone. I’m not afraid to admit it: I am an Heirloomaniac.

Thursday, 4:17pm

I’m racing down the 405 with precious cargo on the seat next to me. Four boxes of heirlooms are belted in and I must tell myself to wait. Wait until tomorrow when they’ve all been photographed and my job is over. But….. I…… I just can’t wait. I reach over and grab a Marvel Stripe. Chomp. At 64 miles an hour. Juice explodes and I’m a mess. I don’t care*. I’m glad I made it home safely.

Friday, 7:26am

I woke up early and tinkered around the studio. Had a few new surfaces to use and decided to shoot film, medium format. A few polaroid backs were stacked on the prop table waiting to be loaded, but I couldn’t stop glancing over at the boxes. Yes, the boxes. Boxes of Marvel Stripes, Beefsteaks and Yellow Pineapples were ripening before my very eyes, their sugary acidic insides ticking away. I had to move fast.

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frenchfarmcook.jpgOnce upon a time, a long time ago, I decided to go on a liquid fast to lose weight. Needless to say, living on 400 calories a day of fake “milk shakes” is hell, but one strategy, which may sound counter-intuitive, was particularly helpful in getting me through 14 weeks of deprivation: I kept a stack of cookbooks next to the couch and another one by my bed. Reading recipes replaced eating recipes, and I lost a lot of weight. By the time I was ready to eat again, it turned out that I had replaced one addiction for another. My craving for cookbooks filled five shelves and then spilled onto the counters in my den.

Coupled with the many boxes of antiques scattered around the room, I kept expecting the camera crew from “Hoarders” to knock on my door. But what was I to do when I bought Susan Hermann Loomis’ “Farmhouse Cookbook” for its Best-Ever Chocolate Cake recipe, and then, five years later, her “French Farmhouse Cookbook” is released, with another chocolate cake recipe that says, “I thought I’d found the best-ever chocolate cake…but just when you think you’ve tasted the best there is, something better comes along”? Naturally, I had to buy that one, too. Eventually, it dawned on me that even if I made a new recipe every day for the rest of my life, I still couldn’t make all the ones I wanted to try in my 250+ cookbooks.

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1stpastaLast year at this time I wrote about eating pasta twice a day every day we were in Umbria. It seemed impossible to think about a lunch or dinner without beginning it with a bowl of spaghetti, ravioli, gnocchi or strangozzi.

Well, we’re here again, thank god, but I’ve cut my caloric intake in half. Well, I don’t know if that’s exactly true — but the intent is there.

My lunch — every day — is made expressly for me by Jill, my newly-inspired kitchen magician on her Italian-version Nutribullet. Yes, every day she brings me a large glass filled with the extractions of various raw vegetables, fruits and nuts. She’s gotten very creative, adding fresh ginger one time, red pepper another, mint a third. It’s a health-conscious festival!

And for dinner, I’m Hoovering in the pasta just like in the old days. The first night we went, as we always do on the first night, to the Palazzaccio, where I had their spaghetti alla benedettina, which is in a wonderfully subtle tomato and fresh bay laurel sauce.

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brussels.jpgThe Brussels sprouts pictured are awesome. 

I recently made these Brussels sprouts, and at sometime, either before of after making these amazing sprouts (I’m really not kidding, people who don’t like Brussels sprouts like this dish) I chomped on a medium-sized handful of pine nuts.  It was only about an eighth of a cup of these sweet, resinous kernels--not a big handful. But, something strange occurred in my mouth the next day. First, my morning oatmeal tasted so BITTER. Was there something wrong with the oatmeal? Was there some sort of cream on my face that I was inadvertently licking (?!!?).

Later on that  same day, I ate a few Marcona almonds, and I couldn’t believe how horrible they tasted--and they’re so expensive. At dinner, food tasted fine while I initially chewed it, but after swallowing, the aftertaste was strangely metallic. My condition (that lasted only 2 days) subsided, and I forgot about it. UNTIL, I worked at the BON APPETIT magazine offices last friday, and learned that three people there had all recently suffered from the same bizarre ailment!

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