Category: Travel

August 29, 2019

I’m doing a bunch of teaching and related things in the coming months, so here’s a list in case you’re interested in any of the following:

January 29, 2019

The cuisine of Southwestern France ranks among the most iconic and delicious in the whole country. What would you say to an eight-day culinary tour of this incredible region, living at a gorgeous retreat with a big pool? What if we also had a yoga teacher on site, so we could all eat and drink guilt-free?  

May 22, 2018
April 9, 2018

Italy taught me to cook. When I moved to Rome at 20, I had rudimentary kitchen skills. Over the course of the next couple of years, when I went out to eat I savored every bite, trying to understand how seemingly simple food contained so much flavor, and then I’d try to reverse-engineer those dishes back in the kitchen. Daily shopping in Campo dei Fiori taught me the central answer: the quality of ingredients, grown nearby, is key. Practice (and lots of what I called “research eating”) taught me the techniques I needed. The rest is history; in the ensuing years I’ve built on that knowledge and turned it into a career as a food writer, photographer, teacher, and gardener. Now I get to share this passionate connection to one of the world’s great cuisines with you as I lead a ten-day cooking class in Umbria this fall.  

October 25, 2017
September 12, 2017

I took the kid to Italy for his thirteenth birthday; we just got back a few days ago. I realized when we arrived in Rome that it had been fifteen years since I was last there, an inconceivably long time given the crucial part Italy played in forming who I became artistically and culinarily. The visual influences became apparent immediately in my paintings, and that continued until I left figuration behind entirely a few years later. The culinary influence proved to be even more durable, and increased in importance as I began growing and cooking food all the time when we left Brooklyn for the country. Now that I write about food for a living, the Italian approach to ingredients—the simplicity, the honesty, the glorification of peasant frugality—remains one of my touchstones.

June 18, 2015
February 24, 2015
September 17, 2012

I do enjoy a vacation from blogging sometimes. There has been no shortage of cooking, both here and in Vermont, but not so much documentation. Among other memorable events, I taught a bread class, cooked for 75 or so people at a charity benefit, and fed my family daily as is my wont, but just wasn’t feeling the writing about it part. With an average of a post every other day for six and a half years, I don’t feel bad about taking a break. So now, as regular content resumes—subject to an impending deadline and how well I stave off the cold that Milo caught right before his birthday, torpedoing a weekend’s worth of fun—I’ll begin lazily simply with a few shots of How I Spent My Summer Vacation.

July 5, 2012

Recently we went to visit some old friends at their weekend house down in Sullivan county. We hadn’t seen them in ages, so it was good to catch up.