CHEESESLAVE

Kelly the Kitchen Kop flew in Sunday morning and we drove straight to the Hollywood farmer’s market.

Within one hour of landing, Kelly was eating her first raw oyster.

Almost every Saturday Kate and I go to the farmer’s market in Santa Monica and eat raw oysters on the half shell. The oysters from Carlsbad Aquafarm are so fresh (just harvested a few hours before) and unbelievably delicious. We are so lucky to live in Los Angeles and be able to eat fresh oysters for breakfast at the farmer’s market.

One of my best discoveries at the Expo West conference this year was Full of Life Flatbread Pizza. I was extremely impressed with the flavor and the crust. This pizza makes me proud to be a Californian. And thrilled to have another option for a healthy fast food.

For those who know me, I’m a snob about pizza crust. If it’s not fired in a wood-burning oven, it ain’t real pizza. This, my friends, is real pizza made in a wood burning oven.

Happy Valentine’s Day! I have been trying to think of some special treats I could whip up for my loved ones this weekend. Instead of a Valentine’s Day gift or flowers, why not show your love with healthy, nourishing, delicious food? I’ve compiled a list of healthy dessert ideas from some of my favorite blogs.

Every Saturday morning, Kate and I go to the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market and eat oysters for breakfast. This is a photo of her last weekend. She looks cranky but it’s really impatience. You can see the pile of shells on her lap, and she’s pointing and saying, “More!”

She always draws a crowd when she eats oysters at the market. People are stunned that a toddler would willingly eat raw oysters. But why not? I figure if I get her hooked on them now, maybe she’ll love them for the rest of her life — just like her father and I do.

If you read my blog regularly, you know we eat a lot of shellfish. Particularly mollusks, such as oysters, clams, and mussels. I try to feed my family mollusks (usually oysters) once a week.
It was after I read Nina Planck’s wonderful book, Real Food, that I decided that we needed to eat more shellfish. Shellfish [...]

I’m sitting by a cozy fire in snowy Seattle, sipping a margarita and eating chips and salsa. We’re having Christmas tamales tonight. Tamales I brought up from Los Angeles.
Last night, we had a traditional English Christmas dinner. Actually it was inspired by Southwestern France — so it was really more of a hybrid English/French dinner.
But [...]

Tonight we had a last-minute dinner guest (my husband’s business partner). Luckily, when I got the call, I was already making a big batch of risotto.
I wanted to incorporate some leftover shrimp from a Christmas party the night before. Risotto is fast and easy and fancy enough for dinner guests. It’s also highly [...]

I have so many pictures from the WAPF conference last week in San Francisco, I wasn’t sure how to post them all. So I’m going to break this up into a few posts.
This first one will be about the food I ate. There was so much good food there. The lunches and dinners were [...]

Last night was Shellfish Night.
We try to eat shellfish or organ meats at least once a week because they are so chock-full of vitamins. Seriously, folks, they put veggies to shame.
It would take just over a quarter pound of beef per day to fulfill the minimum requirement for zinc, yet a single serving of [...]