In early December, an esteemed acquaintance of mine, Jill Soloway (writer and director of the current award winning feature Afternoon Delight) mentioned on Facebook that her beekeeper friend David Bock had local honey for sale and that it made a ‘perfect holiday gift’.
My first thought was “Wow, locally made honey? There are actually beekeepers in the city? What does that even look like?” My second thought was “hell yeah it makes a perfect holiday gift. I’d sure want to receive it.” The other perk I discovered was that raw local honey can boost your immunity to allergies. Her post on Facebook said he’d be selling the honey at a stand outside his house until 2:00 p.m. that day.
Things came to a screeching halt however, when I saw his address. The street name had a foreboding quality to it. “Division Street”. I didn’t know Los Angeles even had one and I’m a native. Sure, maybe Chicago or San Francisco but for some reason I felt like if you found yourself on Division Street in Los Angeles, you’d be hurled back in time to the Los Angeles Elizabeth Short might have dwelt in.
The last time I’d come this far east was when my daughter Lena was 14 and wanted to see the band Of Montreal in a club called The Echoplex. It should have been called Club Code Violation but man that show was good! On the way back from The Echoplex we drove on a street that was like driving on an inverted “V”. It seems so benign when you type out the words “driving on an inverted ‘v’… believe me, it’s not. It was traumatic, especially in the dark.
Hi, I'm Dave and I'm a shellfishaholic. My wife wants me to stop
writing about shellfish because they aren't everyone's cup of tea. But
I can't resist the temptation. When we were in Boston recently, the one
restaurant I had to visit was the 
There’s no denying it – I am a pork-man through and through. Though I am not one of these 20 or 30 something dudes with a pig’s head tattooed on his forearm who from time to time is adoringly featured on Food Network, pigs and me go way, way back. Though I am a Jew, blade-cut pork chops, pickled pigs feet, Canadian bacon, rolled pork butt, breakfast sausage and the piece du resistance of my childhood – spare ribs (usually slathered in Duk Sauce – a sugary, vaguely fruity tasting, thin jelly with chunks of plums and something I later learned was ginger, that came in a tall jar with a label featuring a racist caricature of a smiling buck-toothed Chinese man wearing a coolie hat and sporting a queue [the Chinese government abolished the queue in 1911 but it seemingly persisted on labels of Duk Sauce at least through the early 1970’s]) were a staple of my New York childhood.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I decided to go on a liquid fast to lose weight. Needless to say, living on 400 calories a day of fake “milk shakes” is hell, but one strategy, which may sound counter-intuitive, was particularly helpful in getting me through 14 weeks of deprivation: I kept a stack of cookbooks next to the couch and another one by my bed. Reading recipes replaced eating recipes, and I lost a lot of weight. By the time I was ready to eat again, it turned out that I had replaced one addiction for another. My craving for cookbooks filled five shelves and then spilled onto the counters in my den.
I've discovered there's no place in the middle when it comes to olives. People love olives or they adamantly, for sure, no doubt about it, can not stand them. I've never heard anyone say, "Olives? Oh, I can take them or leave them."
