My family is pretty loosy goosy about the holidays. We’ve reduced the mania to a few key factors- a great night together with some Christmas carols, a $50 Secret Santa gift, and a fantastic meal. It’s simple and perfect. My dad is normally responsible for cooking the dinner –which is never a disappointment because he is a fantastic cook. This year, however, my folks had overbooked themselves on Secret Santa day and asked me to take care of the meal. I was thrilled because I had found a few recipes I was dying to take for a test drive and I knew my family would be eager guinea pigs.
I have not yet had the pleasure of eating in, Nancy Silverton’s restaurant in Los Angeles but that didn’t stop me from buying the cookbook as soon as it was published. Nancy Silverton has the same passion and dedication to the joy of cooking and eating without being a foodie douchebag that I hope to achieve some day.
Her recipes are always inspiring to read. When I say this, I mean that as a chef I read her recipes and am automatically designing menus that will blend with and promote the flavors of the food she is describing. She makes it easy because she understands how simple flavors can be intertwined to create something delicious.
Needless to say, when The Mozza Cookbook
American bison are an important part of the prairie ecosystem and after a 
A bit of a cold spell finally hit the Pacific Northwest this past week. The rain was so nice, except it rained while we were harvesting our vineyard, not cool mother nature, not cool. We have had such an unusually hot summer so the rain was a nice change for the most part.
Many years ago, when I was younger and even more foolish than today, I took it upon myself to perfect the shortcake. I spent a week going through a dozen or so recipes from my favorite writers, cooking them, plotting the ingredients on a spreadsheet and then testing different combinations until I came up with the shortcake of my dreams.
Levi woke up a few mornings ago and the first thing he said to me was, “I really want you to make chocolate chip cookies”. I asked him what kind, what did he want in them, did he want them cakey or chewy? He looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. And then he looked at me and said, “just a plain and simple chocolate chip cookie – and mom, fill up the cookie jar with them!”.