Wally Goldfrank, sociologist and bon vivant, has returned from November in Madagascar raving about the local, regional spins on French cuisine — “profiteroles in the tropics.†Visualize mango tarte tatin! But more. Wally loves a good bowl of soup on a chilly night – so do I – and he sends me a recipe for a butternut squash soup, with white beans and fresh ginger (more…)
Fran O’Neill is a ferociously talented painter.
She’s also a high-energy Australian working at the New York Studio School in Greenwich Village. O’Neill’s muscular paintings, especially the watercolors, are so dense you can practically chew them with your eyes. See for yourself.
Chef Alert! I just got a call on my food hotline from a fan of Italian cooking, and the news is GOOD. For all of you who loved the cooking of chef Giovanni Di Maio at the former, splendid Caffe Bella Napoli, take heart. Di Maio has now taken over the stoves at Capitola’s Il Pirata, (more…)
Let me hear from you in 2007, a year which has already seen an interminable series of expensive symbolic rituals – i.e. the various post mortem rites for Gerald R. Ford, (paid for by your tax dollars) whose funeral lasted longer than his presidency. Is it just me or do you think Ford’s uncanny resemblance to Homer Simpson might have compromised his legacy? Okay, maybe not. At any rate, talk to me!
And check out my profile of Pacific Cookie Company CEO Larry Pearson in the GT Weekly.
Once upon a time all humans spoke the same language. Really. It says so in the Bible. But then humans transgressed and did something silly. They built this really tall tower and since God had told them not to build it, he had to punish them. Right? So He created many, many different languages, poof! so that people of the world could no longer understand each other. Within the context of that sorrowful story, the movie Babel more than earns its name. The angst and alienation created by the spiritual, political and linguistic dis-connect of today’s world is the film’s theme. Postmodern existentialism at its best. (more…)
A book of sensory adventure: The rituals, passions and discoveries of an engaged life.