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!

Memorial Day is supposed to be a solemn holiday-- one to reflect on those Americans that have served and died in that service for our country. But the only evidence of reflection I saw this weekend was whether or not the BBQ was too rare to eat. Memorial Day seems to me, at least in this most ungodly and Babylonian of states, more about beer, cookouts and screenings of “Purple Rain” at the cemetery. Not that there’s anything wrong with that... I mean, after all, could a five foot nothing mixed race dude from Minnesota wearing violet lycra pantaloons and pointy boots really be a famous musician and arbiter of style anywhere else in the world besides America? Well, besides France, of course.

Really, what a gloriously mixed-up, mashed about mess of a place this is. We are a nation of ligers; an unnatural mix of a lion and a tiger that makes for one screwed up animal, since lions live in prides and hate the water while tigers are solitary and are great swimmers. Put them together and we are a totally confused animal that has no idea what it wants and needs but is pretty sure it’ll still be killing some giant land animal for dinner. There is such diversity and beauty in this society made up of glaring contradictions that it almost makes the ridiculous religious and political rants some of my facebook friends seem palatable... well, almost.

So I’ve been thinking about what traits we, as a group of more than 310 million people living on one landmass, share as Americans and which of them makes me most proud. And I’ve come to the conclusion that my hands-down favorite is dissatisfaction.

That’s right. I say screw people that are totally satisfied since satisfaction breeds laziness, smugness and the propensity to stick to the status quo. I say be pissed with whatever it is that isn’t working for you and acknowledge that you would like things to be different, and then go and make a change. Not to sound like a Michael Jackson song or anything.

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aztec tortilla lime soup: a garnish is still a garnish

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.