Not that you asked or anything, but you may have noticed a slight blip in the normal schedule of revealing my neuroses and recipe offerings. Well, I have been working. As in a j-o-b, as much as I've been avoiding that three letter word for at least a decade or more.

I suppose it's not really a job because I'm helping out an old friend who opened a beautiful luxury goods emporium in downtown LA and I have fun every single day. But technically, it's a place of business and I go there for many, many many hours a week and it has greatly cut into the time I devote to grousing. Maybe everyone actually wins in this situation...

Sooooo, I'm getting back on track with the cooking and I have a serious backlog of delicious things I've made over the last couple of months. I'm hoping that if I construct some serious system of rewards and punishments I'll be back on the regular as fast as you can say, "Baby needs new shoes and will get a pair if she gets her shit together". Things to look forward to: huevos sort-of rancheros with chorizo, the perfect Caesar salad (I don't lie), salad lyonnaise, breakfast bacon fregola and some food porn from a beautiful Sunday supper at Magical Merlin's hideaway.

Until then, here are some preview pictures of the latest kitchen triumphs and disappointments, or as I like to call them, my children. I hope you check back for their companion recipes in the coming days and weeks. Until then...

Soup on!

I know I've gotten a lot older since the last time I was living in New York. You know how I know? Let me tell you: everyone around me is twenty ("why are we at THIS bar?"), they're totally too loud ("can't we go to a more civilized bar?"), they're wearing all the stupid neon stuff I did when I was twelve (the tattoo on her leg totes clashed with the green on her skirt, can we go to the next bar?") and there are bike lanes everywhere ("please don't hit me when I walk right out in front of you without looking when I'm leaving the bar"). When did this happen? When did I actually pay good money for CROCS and am I in the early stages of dementia since when I bought this footwear abomination I was stupid enough to get a pedicure first? My feet are already totally ruined from trying the crocs on and from walking about 100 miles in flip flops over the last few days while I gathered up my new gear (a gorgeous santoku knife, among other things) for my stage. I'm kind of a moron. As Arash commented on one of my Facebook status updates, "what kind of person gets a pedicure before the do slave labor in a kitchen?" Me, that's who. And I don't even get to enjoy it for ten minutes before I screw it up.

But today is special because today is day one of my stage at an amazing restaurant in the West Village. The Magical Kim Merlin invited me to breakfast as a sendoff into this adventure this morning, and, true to her awesome form, we wound up at Balthazar, which in my 32 years of coming to and living in New York, I had never been to. It was decadent, to say the very least. I loved both the eggs en cocotte (the ten minutes of bake time is totally worth it) and the eggs benedict and I'm now the proud owner of a gigantic basket of pastries that I carried eighteen blocks home in the rain, clutched desperately to my chest so they wouldn't get soggy.

There was even a few rolls of thunder as I was trudging up 1st Avenue, and instead of feeling angry about getting caught in the deluge, I was thrilled. It's been months and months of sunshine back in LA and this was the perfect cleansing. I wished my parched bamboo back home could have had such a treat.

the latest break in programming brought to you by Guerrilla Atelier

eggs en cocotte: and so my stage begins and I've already got blisters and they aren't even from my awesome crocs

Why? Because soup is cheap, delicious and easy. Kind of like me.

a weekly attempt to eat well and to savor life. or to see how much food I can get on my clothes.