…we couldn’t find the keys. We lifted every cushion, searched every compartment. I even walked the docks looking in each slip in case it had fallen out of her pocket. Had it fallen in the water, the little floaty would have kept it from sinking. After several hours, we sat down dejected.
There was only one thing to do.
![How to Cook [the best] Turkey](https://i1.wp.com/coleruth.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/DSC_1322-e1356884788294.jpg?resize=424%2C140)
On Christmas Eve I got an email from my friend Anders in Sweden asking me for a turkey recipe. Wow, I thought to myself, that’s cutting it close.
The clan I infiltrated this Christmas had planned on serving ham, but at the last minute decided that Christmas wouldn’t be the same without a bird. So, only hours after I received Anders’ email, I found myself at the supermarket buying a turkey. And I knew exactly what to do with it.
When three firetrucks pulled up to my building last night and ten firemen rolled out and made a bee-line for the apartment upstairs from me,…
Yesterday I made progress. I installed a bookshelf and dusted off books that have been in boxes for years. In fact, I haven’t had my books out since 2006. I shipped them to Sweden in 2000, shipped them back in 2009, put them into storage and then shipped them to L.A. in October. I tore up boxes that had my ex-husband’s initials on them. You gotta respect a box that lasts 15 years. One box, the kind paper is sold in, from circa 2000, made it across the Atlantic in a shipping container (book rate) – and back. If you’ve ever shipped books internationally, you know why they put your box in a big canvas mail bag. If your books arrive dry, you’re a happy camper.
Oh! Larousse Gatronomique. Oh, my collection of M.F.K. Fisher books! How I missed them.
It’s worth going to Ojai for Bart’s Books alone – but throw in a lovely lunch in a courtyard, and I’m as happy as a clam.
The pictures you see here are all from 2009. They are from one of the last rolls of film I used. Aren’t they beautiful? It’s funny. I want to call it nostalgia: that slight dustiness and the way the light glows.
I’ve made a lot of trips this year to out-of-the-way locations in the name of good food. I drove two hours along Sweden’s western coast…
When my grandparents announced that they would be making their annual trip to the Santa Ynez valley, I started salivating. This was in October. Most…
Sometime in the last ten years my father joined the microbrew craze. He’s tried brewing his own beer, he and my mom go to breweries…