Two Views of Food

In this simple scene, painted around 1660, painter Pieter de Hooch depicts "A Woman Preparing Bread and Butter for a Boy." Many Dutch painters of the era illustrated the interior of homes of middle class people, showing their daily lives in an idealized way. I love the details of the loaf of bread, …
The Holy Grail?

After years of procrastination, we finally ate dinner tonight at In-N-Out Burger. We never got around to it during our stay in San Diego in 2009. We are leaving here in just over a week: lucky that we made it this time.Our expectations were very modest: we had heard that though it's very highly hype…
"The Ethical Assassin"

The Ethical Assassin by David Liss is a suspense novel in which a naive character, 17-year-old Lemul Altick suddenly finds himself threatened by bizarre criminals and corrupt policemen in the heat and misery of 1980s Florida. Lem -- whose name is coincidentally the same as Swift's Lemuel Gulliver --…
Food in Art: the Norton Simon Museum

First, here is Ganesha the elephant god eating sweets from a basket with his trunk. The documentation on this 6th century sculpture explains that he once ate so much that his stomach burst, and the moon laughed at him. So he threw one of his tusks at the moon -- many Ganesha statues thus show him wi…
Google the Ingredients?

I liked this article in today's NYT Food Section:Can Recipe Search Engines Make You a Better Cook? by Julia Moskin.Like most internet addicts who cook, I often find recipes by web searching. I have been worried because Google's techno-preference for big high-tech food sites became an issue when they…
Renaud's Patisserie

Renaud's of Santa Barbara seems to be known for croissants and macarons (that's one-o macarons, the kind that are crunchy, not the Passover kind). There was a line out the door!The owner seems to be a real French baker, and the look is amazingly French. We ate a pain-au-chocolate for second breakfas…
Santa Barbara Farmers' Market

The market is full of wonderful local and often exotic produce -- artichokes, chirimoyas, dates, citrus, greens of all sorts, avocados, strawberries grown just up the road, and early cherries from the Central Valley. There are Japanese, English and conventional cucumbers and many other interesting v…
Is expensive sea salt worth its salt?

I've often wondered about the eye-popping prices for things like Himalayan sea salt (for one thing, there's no sea in those mountains) and hand-gathered fleur de sel from France. I've never been energetic enough to buy some and taste-test it -- besides, I'm too cheap. Finally, an article by Harold M…
Sweet Prawns of Santa Barbara

Fresh local prawns here are very sweet and delicious. We remember buying them from the fish market on the docks years ago. Last night at Opal Restaurant, where I ate this salad with Santa Barbara prawns, the host said that he did not think they had found any for the menu in the ten years he had been…
Temporary Kitchen in Santa Barbara

Our temporary house has a functional though not luxurious kitchen. The owner is opposed to using microwaves because she says microwaves destroy nutrients and Kirilian photos show that vegetables cooked in a microwave oven are "dead." About this I checked Wikipedia which a few minutes ago stated:"An …
Meyer Lemons

Our temporary house in Santa Barbara includes a beautiful Meyer lemon tree with the biggest, juciest Meyer lemons I have ever seen. On the tree hang many ripe and unripe fruits as well as a few fragrant blossoms. Beautiful!I love the taste of Meyer lemons: like an unusually sour Clementine. I have a…