Numero Uno – Product of the Week
For Labor Day we did a mesquite grill of chicken, figs and ripe peaches. What to put on the chicken? My hand reached out toward the wall of artisanal salsas at New Leaf and emerged with this fabulous complex salsa of ripe mango and sassy chipotle chiles. For roughly...
Blue Ribbon Baker
Congratulations to ardent and skillful home baker, Tom Pistole, whose bread entries at this year's Santa Cruz County Fair won not one, but TWO blue ribbons. Pistole can bake his way out of a paper bag, as any UCSC hill dwellers who've tasted his creative cupcakes can...
Harvest Wine
With Marcel Proust gracing the witty label, Bonny Doon Vineyard's relentless Clos de Gilroy Central Coast Grenache has reached new likeability in its 2010 installment. Full of spice and cherries, this lovely and highly drinkable (as in "drink it immediately") thinking...
Tree of Life
After a long gestation, Terence Malick's fifth film, Tree of Life, has entered our cinematic bloodstream. It is a lengthy elegy on nothing less than desire, loss, faith, love and the cosmos. What else could we expect of a man who once translated Heidegger and taught...
@ la Posta
Tuesdays, la Posta. The marvelous live mandolin and guitar music, the house Montepulciano, the neighborhood special....$15 for pizza and a glass of house wine. We added this sparkling fresh salad of watercress and fava beans, topped with a perfect egg from the house...
Inside the Flame
A book of sensory adventure: The rituals, passions and discoveries of an engaged life.