“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Chantal turn down champagne,” Ryan said in our kitchen a few days ago. We had a guest in town from DC, and let’s just say…the flutes were flying. The ongoing “sparkling wine as an everyday drink” is a...
Growing up, I experienced occasional bouts of Girl Scout envy. Friends would come back from their camping trips — talking about fireside ghosts and tree-branch MacGyvering — and I, the non-Girl Scout, would feel like the squarest peg in town. Maybe that’s why I’m obsessed with...
Matcha, the posh and powdered variety of green tea, is having a moment. Just last month Gotham crowned it “the new black coffee,” and last week the New York Times included it in its ongoing coverage of the tea tempest. On Instagram, we’re seeing more...
You know that feeling you get when you come in from the cold and there’s a hot toddy waiting for you, all roaring with lemony steam? It gets the heart pumping and the skin glowing. It's a feeling that lights up the darkest December sky! With...
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when you spend most of the year anxiously awaiting a crop from your garden, you will eventually be up to your eyebrows with that crop, scrambling for ways to eat it all. For some of our friends, it’s...
“I felt like I needed a detox from my life,” Yovana Mendoza explains early into our visit to the Hillcrest Farmer’s Market, moments before cracking open a ‘White Genoa’ fig in the most gorgeous way imaginable. “I was always a really big party girl. Alcohol,...
When you grow up in Maryland like C did, some of your best meals take place on top of newspapers. We’re talking about crabs, of course! Since moving to California, our crab feasts have centered around Dungeness from the Pacific Northwest — and lump meat recipes...
Last week on the Fourth of July, we welcomed a group of friends who drove down from L.A. for the weekend. (We also worked on our vertical herb garden — but more on that later.) After an afternoon of drinking dark-and-stormies on the beach —...
Nasturtium has got to be one of the most underrated — and tastiest — plants of mid-spring. Maybe it’s just too easy to take its flowers for granted; their brilliant red, yellow and orange blossoms are beyond abundant this time of year, blanketing canyons, flashing...
This year, Groundhog Day falls on a Saturday, which means you can either toast the spring-embracing skittishness of Punxsutawney Phil or drown your sorrows in smoked porter as you hunker down for six more weeks of winter. Either way, consider it a warmup for the Superbowl. February...