Author Archives: David

What They Really Said

This is the conversation I always figured NASA had with Neil and Buzz:

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A Better Breakfast Faster?

When She Who Must Be Obeyed stumbled downstairs yesterday morning, she was greeted by He Who Will Not  Be Ignored: He remembered the Batter Blaster can in the fridge, which I had purchased a few weeks earlier. Time to make … Continue reading

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Summer Berry Mille Feuille with Lemon Curd

Nothing will make you feel better about your cooking failures than watching chef Gordon Ramsay excoriate a hapless member of his kitchen brigade. So when my second attempt at a berry dessert crashed and burned, I watched an episode from … Continue reading

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Market Trends

Summer is halfway over, even though the weather has just caught up. At the market that means more variety, so much that I need two photos to show everything I bought today. Above, there’s brioche and ciabatta loaves, sweet cherries, … Continue reading

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Another Reason to Hate the Food Network

Sandra Lee and her show Semi-Homemade is the embodiment of everything that has gone wrong with the Food Network. And here, for your viewing pleasure, is a two-minute summary that supports my claim: Could someone tell her it’s not pronounced … Continue reading

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Dill Pickles (Slight Return)

“Pickles,” declared the t-shirt I saw last weekend, “are cucumbers soaked in evil.” Given my recent string of kitchen failures, I expected nothing less when I opened the jar of dill pickles I put up almost two weeks ago. When … Continue reading

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Individual Fresh Berry Gratins (Slight Return)

I concluded the post about my first attempt to make berry gratins with: I’ll make this again because the recipe didn’t fail me, I failed the recipe. Lesson learned: Don’t fuck with Cook’s Illustrated. Look at the photo: you’d think … Continue reading

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Readercon 20

This afternoon I’m heading to Readercon 20, the speculative fiction conference I have been involved with for twenty years. The best explanation of what I’ve been doing there all this time is in this essay I contributed to the Souvenir … Continue reading

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Tools of the Trade

I‘m a web designer, but every now and then my print background bleeds through. I’ll find myself telling a client “Let’s push that left margin over two more picas,” or “I think we can indent the paragraphs two ems.” I … Continue reading

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Simple Summer PIcnics

Yesterday’s summer recipes post would be incomplete without the followup, “101 20-Minute Dishes for Inspired Picnics,” published a year later. These picnic recipes may be even less complicated than the dinner recipes, but they’re all clever deviations from the usual … Continue reading

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