I understand that anyone can have an off-day, but to whoever was responsible for naming the mung bean? Maybe you should have focus-grouped that. To be fair, it never occurred to me, all these years, that I was eating products derived from a legume many uninitiated Americans would think sounds vaguely like elimination product. When I started cooking with mung beans myself, I learned quickly that: [click to continue…]
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At least twice a year, my neighborhood is invaded by buzzing throngs of suburbanites hoping to catch a glimpse of their favorite rock luminaries in nearby Golden Gate Park. I know something’s up when I come home from a hard day’s work and can’t find a parking spot within ten blocks of my apartment. Or, when taking the University Shuttle, I’m accompanied by a group of chatty, drunk high-schoolers I do not recognize from lab. [click to continue…]
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It’s easy to think you’ll be that parent who won’t allow a trivial thing like childrearing affect your worldview. You’ll be the one who takes his toddler to cocktail parties, doesn’t give a shit about naps, only allows cool music on the car stereo, etc. Then, one day, you find yourself covered in princess stickers and humming Yo Gabba Gabba! songs at work. There are times when I feel a bit sheepish about my old attitudes. When I finally get why parents do the ridiculous shit they do. Ohhhhh, THAT’s why my nieces go to bed at 6PM! (So my sister can have a life!) Then there are times I wonder who the hell I am. [click to continue…]
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(photo: angi @riceandwheat)
My least favorite aspect of graduate school is the process of saying goodbye. There is ceremony. Stifling tears, the departing student delivers a PowerPoint deck filled with inside jokes and parent-friendly illustrations. This is usually followed by a reception, maybe a barbecue, sometimes an evening out with friends and extended family. Then, suddenly, this person—with whom you’ve spent more time in the past several years than your own spouse—is… back at work. They continue to answer to greetings like, “You still here?” “I thought you had graduated…” or “Is it OK if I start moving my stuff into onto your bench?” After an awkward, lame-duck phase lasting from 1 – 16 months, there is another going-away party. This one doesn’t involve parents or thesis advisors. It’s in the secondary goodbye situation that you seriously begin to contemplate what your life will be like without this person.
Being a bit long in the tooth, I’ve experienced my share of goodbyes. Each time, I face the same, harsh reality: Another beer can chicken contestant out the door. [click to continue…]
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Three years ago, one of my favorite musicians produced a record whose title was inspired by a note he scrawled in the studio:
Dear Science, please fix all the things you keep talking about or shut the fuck up.
My reaction (scrawled in kid’s handwriting):
Ouch.
As scientists, our goals are to understand where we came from, what makes us tick, and why things work the way they work. We’ve learned a lot. But some questions—especially the really interesting ones—are big enough that we just aren’t going to answer them anytime soon.
In fact, a large part of being a scientist is [click to continue…]
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Dad, do you know what we haven’t had in a really long time? Watermelon. I feebly explain to my daughter that we only have watermelon in the summertime. A challenging story to sell when grocery stores here insist upon displaying those insipid “personal watermelons” year-round. Sadly, Esme will wait roughly one sixth of her life to eat it again.
You mean when I’m ten? Yes, Esme, you may certainly [click to continue…]
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Los Angeles seems like both a home and a theory to me. I spent the first thirteen years of my life there, and continue to visit every few months. Despite its changes, and all I read about what’s going on in the city (OK, really just what’s going on in food, but that’s admittedly a lot), I experience LA much the way I experienced it as a child. Living a relatively insular life, wandering through slightly run-down suburban neighborhoods, watching television, and eating a LOT of my mother’s cooking.
True to her stereotype, [click to continue…]
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What?
—Don Draper
My wife and I are cut from the same cloth in certain ways. We are both compelled by a desire to craft stories—through images, words, what we decide to show, emphasize, and hide. Sometimes they’re stories we have a personal need to tell, and doing so feels like opening a mental valve. Other stories need to be wrangled. At those times, it’s less clear what motivates us. What is it that we’re seeking? Amusement? Satisfaction? Praise?
Often, the primary audience for our stories consists of friends and family. People who, we assume, are predisposed to be interested in what we have to say. And yet, [click to continue…]
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Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking
When I said I’d like to
Smash every tooth in your head
—The Smiths
I’ll admit it. I actually feel sorry for the little bastards. It seems like just yesterday—Halloween, in fact—that cupcakes still held their suffocating grasp on the hearts of America. They were on top of the world, dominating blog conversation, appearing spread-eagled on glossy magazines nationwide, having what used to be an exclusive feature on the internet’s top food property… It seemed that the Cupcake Empire was well on its way to reaching Starbucksian proportions.
And then. [click to continue…]
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It periodically surfaces that I am not a fan of brunch. You could say that I hate it. When possible, I try not to reveal this stance in sensitive situations or crowded theaters. The ensuing maelstrom and chorus of gasps may lead one to believe I have just uttered a preference for eating small children. But it’s true. In the restaurant-obsessed cities of San Francisco and New York, there is no greater repository of culinary mediocrity than the Sunday brunch.
And we are all complicit. Show me an American who pursues cutting-edge, ethnic food carts with the tenacity of a storm-chaser, and I’ll show you someone whose brunch palate does not extend beyond the parameters of an International House of Pancakes. Call me what you want. A snob. A killjoy. A Hater of America. I guarantee you, I’ve heard worse. But I have yet to encounter a compelling defense of brunch. Until now. [click to continue…]
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