If you haven’t been to the High Line yet I highly recommend going. Check out my recently published article in the Huffington Post.

We all know it’s been raining like WHAT??!!, and apparently won’t end anytime soon. While I can’t suggest cures for rain blues and b*tchiness (other than a shot of Whiskey), I can offer up my tricks for the rain: miso, a rain shell with a billed hat (mine is a simple EMS), and giant green rain boots with tiny tennis rackets (yes, that’s right). The shell will keep you dry outdoors, the miso cozy and healthy indoors, and the boots… they let you to stomp around in puddles. These tricks (all three) may make you stick your tongue out. I’m not going to argue style and function with you, but I will speak to the food. Miso, how the Japanese it, and how any who make it at home eat it, is not how you find it at a Westernized sushi restaurant in a US city.

On our surprise visit up to see my dad on Father’s Day we made a trip out to my mother’s garden with scissors and a basket to fill up on greens. The garden is flourishing despite the rain and resulting slug infestation. Even in such a small space (about 4 x 2 parking spaces) there’s still enough bounty that I can take home a week’s worth of lettuce, scapes, chard, kale, and herbs and barely make a dent.

Sometimes cooking sounds like a sentence of being shackled to the kitchen counter in a prom dress and pink pumps, and makes me want to run away screaming and wielding a knife. A food blog gives you a unique sense of time and cooking. I have realized, for instance, that the domesticity of making food currently gives me hives. Before the blog I simply would have shirked the cooking and ordered takeout, four weeks in a row. While I will never be a housewife angel, I also relish the audience and the gift of nourishing others. I love cooking, and learning, and creating, but hate constraints, habit, and tedious tasks. I move fast and need to keep learning. I rarely put things in my mouth I don’t like, regardless of whether it’s food, ideas, or labels. But if I don’t love to cook all the time, how can I expect anyone else to?

The 2009 awards were in Monday. One article I read mentioned the only way these awards could reach Oscar-worthy notoriety is if it was broadcast live. As Thomas Keller makes abundantly clear, not all celebrity chefs are comfortable with the camera (and apparently some journalists can only muster questions like “What did you eat for breakfast?”). I scrolled passed the obvious celebrity of Momofuku Ko, Dan Barber, and Jean Georges to the journalism awards.

The USDA food pyramid has been inadequate since its inception in 1992. It is accepted that each day we need to consume protein, fat, and carbohydrates, in addition to the 8 essential amino acids, a lot of water, and some vitamins and minerals. The sources of our nutrients and their volume, however, have been argued for centuries. The USDA food pyramid is so steeped in politics, $$$, and other non-food-related power struggles, it has caused a series of rebuttals over the years from a myriad of specialists and individuals alike, all eager to add their two cents. Below is a sampling of these alternative pyramids, some helpful, some witty, and some literally flipping the pyramid concept on its head.

Each image demonstrates the brilliantly iconic form of the pyramid, while also exposing the limitations of trying to encapsulate a diet in an isosceles triangle. These are just the tip of the iceberg.

Sandwiches are curious foods. While leavened bread has been eaten with food since 4000 BCE, the sandwich wasn’t conceived until the 18th century. Its predecessor was presumably a fresher open-faced version of the English trenchers, where slices of meat and butter were placed atop stale bread “plates.” The story goes that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, England conceived of the food as a convenient way to eat without skipping a hand at cards (Hawaii was also originally named The Sandwich Islands after the Earl).

Global warming apparently has our spring in a sweaty headlock. The first warm weekend of the year is the perfect time to kick back with a beer, forget for a moment that our planet is melting, and catch some glimpses of bare skin. This weekend’s ridiculous ensembles, pregnant women about to burst, and pasty calves and shoulders did not disappoint. HOT. But why do 9 million New Yorkers all have to have cravings for popsicles, watermelon, and ice cream at the same hour on the same day? Today I wanted a popsicle bad. Alas, I couldn’t find a single one without HFCS in the stores. And while I probably am becoming more of a New Yorker by the day, I still refuse to wait in line at one of the many ice cream shops. What is one to do? Make popsicles, of course. Since I only have one tray, I will be making pops all week to cover the blackberry, coconut, lime, and mango flavors I so desire. Today’s popsicles were filled with melon, mint, honey, and creamy Greek yogurt. We snuck a couple an hour ago, and while they’re not quite frozen, they hit my popsicle spot dead on. (Yes, I have a small cluster of taste buds that only detect sweet, cold foods.) Don’t you love having 20 of something?

Being a perceptive cook really means doing the bidding of your food. It’s a good day when you just happen to have a molasses sweet and cornmeal gritty anadama bread (from the Bread Baker’s Apprentice) that is crying out for some grilled cheese and tomatoes. If on that day it happens to be 80 degrees (seriously?) and both your cheese and brow are sweating, you just pair it with a little acidic salad to refresh your palate.

I’ve had the urge lately to make a bite size piece of something fluffy, sweet, and totally unnatural. I am told this requires gelatin. I also happen to have a totally unhealthy relationship with marshmallows. I will indulge in campfire when I have to, but much prefer the pillowy, melty, homemade style from City Bakery. We’re on a baker’s schedule lately, so at 10:30pm on Wednesday it was go time. We needed gelatin and molasses (for an anadama sweet bread), which we guessed was a mission impossible. These once typical ingredients are not generally in high demand at the Manhattan supermarket/market/$8 peanut butter bodgea, and especially not in the stiletto and cobblestone nether region of the Meatpacking District. Besides, why would you buy ingredients for bread and marshmallows when you can just purchase the products for under $5 with money left over for a couple of beers? Because I am the master of my belly and homemade is more delicious.