If you have any experience with eating a favorite dish in another country and seeing it butchered, you will understand the following. While I could certainly use broader global culinary perspective and expertise, even with my admittedly narrow scope, I can think of no better example of the disparity between a local favorite and its [...]

In a country (and a region) so culinarily rich, and so agriculturally focused, it’s pretty amazing how lame Israel seems when it comes to cheese and dairy. The classic iconic representation of this problem is that when you ask for cheese in Israel you only have two options: “white or yellow”. White cheese is liquidy [...]

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As we give context on eating in the “Holy Land” the bread deserves its own post. This one to be specific. Here in the U.S. some of us are lucky to have a handy source for fresh bread on a daily basis. (Perhaps they’re even baking it — nah, nobody [...]

From a geography perspective Israel can seem like a pretty terrible place. Hot desert, rainy rocky mountains, not a great place for agriculture. However, for years, the Israeli’s have “made the desert bloom”. This is not to say that there wasn’t agriculture before the state existed. But there’s no denying the Israeli’s brought a level [...]

Now that the site is looking way better, it’s time to get back to writing about food (in theory the point of this blog — apparently mucking about with WordPress isn’t the main reason we’re here). I’m super lucky that we got to go to Israel for a month this summer and really live there. [...]

This past August TastingMenu quietly celebrated its fifth birthday. Even though much celebration hasn’t transpired on the surface, we’ve been busy behind-the-scenes getting the site refreshed to suit our goals for improving the site dramatically.
The last year has been one of transition for TastingMenu. We moved (mostly) to a new platform - Wordpress, and we [...]

My lovely and talented blog buddy Dana has pointed out that I have not been around much lately. She is of course correct. This blog is supposed to be about the kitchen AND the front of the house, not just the kitchen (as interesting as it may be). For the last month I was on [...]

OK. I know we’re supposed to be discussing restaurants… the real kind, not the ones presented in fictional films. But Gasteau’s, the restaurant in the new Pixar film Ratatouille is simply too good not to mention. Anyone who is fond of the previous Pixar films should know that this second effort by Brad Bird (of [...]

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My love of street food is no secret. I sometimes feel that many chefs who run entire restaurants should spend time manning a street food cart so they can understand freshness, flavor, and most of all focus. Of course, for most people, living in the United States means (to borrow [...]

My friend Leslie, when she’s not busy doing her Sammamish massage thing, likes to bake. With the help of a kit from Williams Sonoma, here’s her latest creation. Super adorable (and I have it on good word, delicious as well).

Not sure if this is a strategy for shoring up the beehive population we’re losing due [...]