Winter

Do you ever look at chestnuts at this time of year and wonder what to do with them besides add them to stuffing? When I was a kid we used to simply roast them over the fire and they were fun to eat.

A couple of years ago, Brian and I were at a dinner party and the hostess served a first course of this soup. No one could guess what it was and it was absolutely delicious.

This soup is not a beautiful soup to look at, but I guarantee you will be amazed at how delicious it is. It would be a great first course at your Thanksgiving dinner. I topped the soup with croutons that I made using the method out of Thomas Keller's new book, Ad Hoc at Home.

These are the croutons they make at the restaurant and they are intense – garlicky, oily, and crunchy, a perfect topping for the soup. Chestnuts, nutritionally, are similar to brown rice. They are gluten free, cholesterol free, and nearly fat free.

From the LA Times

Some people mark the start of fall with an apple pie. Others start breaking out the big reds from their wine cellars. Me? I'm a bean boy.

All it takes is the first sign of a nip in the air or the first morning that smells like ocean rain and I drag my Dutch oven out of the cupboard and start a big pot of beans simmering.

It doesn't really matter that I know the next day may be back up in the 90s. In fact, that uncertainty even makes it a little sweeter.

That week of rain we had at the end of September? A Portuguese-style stew of white beans with shrimp and clams, given a final lift by chopped pickled peppers.

A week or so later, after the 100-degree temperatures had lifted? White beans braised with dandelion greens and served as a bed for crisp-skinned duck breasts (the leftovers, without the duck, were just as good a couple of nights later, with a few tablespoons of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano stirred in).

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Spicy Sweet Ginger-Garlic
Chicken WingsWe have a yearly tradition. For Super Bowl Sunday, we invite friends over to our house to eat, have some drinks and watch the game. Until our younger son, Michael, came into our lives, neither of us were much interested in sports.

Attending UCLA during the John Wooden days, when the men's basketball team reigned supreme, I never went to a single game. I didn't care. But Michael did. From the time he was a toddler, he watched Sports Center, baseball, basketball and football.

Like any parent we wanted to find common ground with our son. For us, that meant catching up with a three year old's encyclopedic knowledge of major league sports.

At first a chore, we got into it. We learned to cheer on the Lakers, root for the Dodgers and follow the careers of our favorite quarterbacks (Manning, Brady, Luck, RGIII, Rogers and Kaepernick).

Eat your beets! We've all heard that from our moms quite often as kids. Unfortunately it was more often canned beets that we were persuaded to eat. As a curious eater, I've come to appreciate beets in many different preparations. I especially love them roasted in salads. But have you ever thought of eating them raw? Sliced very thinly, beets and other root vegetables, make great salads. Yes, it's possible to slice them thin with a knife, but a mandoline does the job better than anything else to get paper-thin shavings.

In this beautiful salad I combine three different colors of beets, plus a watermelon radish, and add pomegranate seeds for additional ruby color. The radish adds a different type of crunch and hotness. The pomegranate seeds along with a squeeze of orange juice add sweetness and tang to the salad. A sprinkling of dill adds green color as well as herbal flavor. After trying this salad, you will be surprised to find how naturally sweet beets taste when eaten raw. They are nature's candy in both taste and color.