I was supposed to fly home from New Mexico this morning, but I fell in love with Ghost Ranch and arranged to stay on. I had no idea the place was about to fill up with musicians for its first-ever Bluegrass Camp & Extravaganza. Tonight, the valley swelled with the sounds of plucked strings and…
Did I fool you with my papier-mâché strawberry? Didn’t think so. But my berries were already mashed when I remembered I needed to take a photo with some rhubarb in it, so I thought I’d try to put one over on you. Truth is, I didn’t devote a lot of time to the May options…
When I think of what I would have missed if I’d ignored The Dish n’ Spoon Café today. I was walking into Santa Fe along old Route 66 and I’d gotten myself all turned around. I wandered in big, unintentional loops, appreciating how this town was built around a network of old trails, but desperately…
Today was a traveling day. San Francisco to Santa Fe . . . We crossed the Sierra Nevada. We found the country of adobe and big sky. We drank Santa Fe Pale Ale and had a fine meal at the Galisteo Bistro. A good start to a week-long stay.
In the 7th grade, my home-ec teacher, Mrs. Payne — and yeah, we had a lot of fun with that — made me rip apart and redo my felt frog hand puppet three times, because it was so sloppy. I came from a family of accomplished seamstresses and was embarrassed by my failure to craft…
At last, it’s May and the garden is getting into gear. We don’t have much good ground for planting, so we do most of our gardening in big containers — custom-built planter boxes and half-wine barrels. Today we spent many hours preparing both things. After two-and-a-half months in the kitchen, my tomatoes and peppers will…
This recipe won Best of Show at the 2010 Marin County Fair Last month I made some clementine confits, which yielded a whole lot of luscious, leftover syrup. I sent a dose of both across the country to snowbound Julia, with a question: What should we do with this delightful, golden elixir? Her first experiment was…