(Original Post Date:  September 21, 2010) Lately I’ve noticed the supermarket produce section bursting with juicy plums… giving me the sudden desire to make Spiced Black Plum Jam.  After making up a batch of jam with roughly 4 pounds of Black Plums, I realized that I didn’t have enough jars for all the extra jam.  [...]

(Original Post Date:  September 12, 2010) This afternoon, I felt like baking something… something new and interesting.  So I google searched for Austrian recipes, as I had Mohnkuchen (Austrian Poppy Seed Cake) in mind.  Instead, I stumbled across this recipe for Poppy Seed Bread, erroneously under the heading of “German food”.  Although there are similarities, German food [...]

(Original Post Date:  September 10, 2010) Just last week I posted about how it seemed that summer was finally here… but it looks like I spoke too soon, because our 1 week of hot summer weather rolled right over into a crisp fall cold spell.  It’s been so cold lately that it makes me want [...]

(Original Post Date:  September 3, 2010) This has probably been the coldest summer I can remember in Southern California.  It looks like summer is finally here though… (now that fall is right around the corner). The weather has been nice and warm for about a week straight, and it looks like most of my tomato [...]

(Original Post Date: August 27, 2010) Do you ever feel like being lazy?  Sometimes I feel like eating cake… but I’m just not motivated enough to pull out my super secret cookbook and bake a whole cake from scratch.  During those times, I cheat. Who says you can’t get a good cake out of a [...]

(Original Post Date:  August 24, 2010) Does anyone know what Braciole is?  I’ve never heard of it, nor have I had it before… until I saw it on TV and was curious enough to look it up.  It’s one of those dishes that looks really impressive and complicated, but is actually really easy to make. [...]

(Original Post Date:  August 17, 2010) I love McDonald’s Apple Pies.  Does anyone remember back in the ’80s when they used to be fried?  I don’t remember exactly when they made the switch from “fried” to “baked”… but I think it was an effort to appear “healthy”, although there is nothing healthy about a McDonald’s [...]

(Original Post Date:  August 13, 2010) Have you ever had an Italian Rainbow Cookie?  I had them for the first time last year… and they are so good!  Three layers of spongy-almond dough (in colors to mimic the Italian flag) with chocolate surrounding all sides… yum! I’ve been on a cupcake kick lately… so I thought, [...]

(Original Post Date:  August 9, 2010) When I was growing up, there was a liquor store around the corner from my house.  The owner was a  jolly old man named Eli – who looked like a slimmed down version of Santa Claus.  My dad was friends with him, so Eli used to give me black [...]

(Original Post Date:  August 2, 2010) When I was in grad school at UCLA, there was this little Italian restaurant that I used to love to go to… Giovanni’s Trattoria.  It was located in a small strip mall on Venice Blvd. and run by two brothers who were originally from Italy.  Their food was always fresh, [...]