It's that time again. It's time to Cook the Ducks! Our LA Kings are facing our local rival, the Anaheim Ducks in the NHL playoffs. To rally with Jonathan Quick and Co., we feasted on duck. It's hard to tell who got destroyed worse— our duck tacos to the Ducks in the game one Saturday night. It was actually quite the nail-biter— Kings tied the...

We are celebrating the week leading up to Cinco de Mayo with a whole slew of Mexican recipes I've been brainstorming and saving up for the past few months (and margaritas), beginning with these chicken tamale burrito bowls. These bowls have everything I love topped on my Chipotle burrito bowl from the store, but made at home and with polenta...

I have honestly never gotten more compliments on a dessert I've made than these cookies. I took two dozen to school one afternoon and within 24 hours, they were all gone. A grassroots canvasser stopped me while walking to my building and asked for one. I ran into one of my cohorts in the elevator, and he requested one. Just about everybody in my...

The recipe for this bread might seem really similar. Recently I made a version with oranges rather than limes, and it was a big hit. Sometimes quick breads don't cook super evenly or rise nicely, but the orange poppyseed bread came out so perfectly I tweaked it by switching out the orange juice and zest for everything lime. Times have been...

Part of the reason I miss Seattle so much is missing out on weekly dinner parties with our neighbors. Well I guess I can't call them dinner parties as much as getting together for food, puppy playdates, and whatever HBO show was in season each year... They were more casual than "party-like" typically.  Not only do we miss our neighbors (Bonnie...

Seriously, at this point what flavors haven't I incorporated into macaroni and cheese? Well, the answer would be pizza. We took all of our favorite pizza flavors, eliminated the crust in favor of whole wheat pasta shells ands this pepperoni pizza mac 'n' cheese was born. We actually didn't use pepperoni, but salami instead, so please forgive me...

When I talked about our Easter brunch a few days ago, I mentioned our monte cristo sandwiches. It's not something we'd ever tried until Cafe Orleans during my birthday celebration at Disneyland last December. After that, we were pretty hooked. Neither of us are huge ham people, but since ham is an Eastery thing, we thought fried sandwiches would...

Despite the fact that these pizzas are definitely not kosher thanks to the pepperoni, this was our way of celebrating the start of Passover...using a matzo as the crust for a pizza. We actually saw that one of the local pizza joints was serving matzo pizza, and even considered ordering it from there, but then decided to make a homemade version...

Walking in to Santa Monica Seafood, I was nervous. How hard could it really be to shuck oysters?  Eating oysters, that I've got done. I mastered that skill very well in Seattle (hat tip to Seastar and The Walrus and the Carpenter). But making oysters at home has been one of those elusive foods we've just never done. My fears were echoed back to...

Yesterday's batch of hot cross buns made way more than we needed to eat on Easter Sunday, so I turned some of the leftovers into a French toast casserole that we baked up this morning. Since today is our wedding anniversary, it was nice to have an easy, yet kind of fancy breakfast to wake up to. I haven't really had the time to make an elaborate...