Author: Admin_user1

​Sicilian grandmothers are known for their warm hearts, steel spines, and pasta to die for. Don’t ever cross one. “My Nana,” wrote a Sicilian now living in New York , “is an extremely powerful figure in my family. At five-foot-nothing, she towers over everyone else. My Papa knows to keep his mouth shut, or he’s…

Have you ever noticed how often San Francisco has been the setting for lurid cinematic disasters? I personally have watched my fair city attacked by Godzilla, aliens, zombies, brain-enhanced apes, cyborgs, a giant octopus, a Bond villain, the Body Snatchers, biological weapons, and the Incredible Hulk, to say nothing of floods, fires, and of course,…

The Crunchy Granola Spectrum ​“San Anselmo?” a friend said, when I mentioned we keep a cottage there for summers in the US. “Where’s that on the crunchy granola spectrum?” Here in quirky Marin County, just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, the further you are from the city, the less mainstream and more offbeat…

“Ask if the haunted room is available,” Rich said as we approached the front desk at Hotel La Rose in Santa Rosa, CA. “Seriously?” As a rational, modern woman, I do not, of course, believe in ghosts. But as a fourth-generation Californian, I was raised to respect vibes, and it seemed to me any room…

Returning to your home country after a long absence is rarely easy. Occasionally you glide seamlessly back into place, but more often you hit the ground in a series of bumps and skids, small moments of culture shock and disorientation that leave you breathless and wondering how much you really know about your nation or…

A bowl of the watermelon gazpacho Rich and I prepared at our family reunion this week. ​ ​ ​The last time I chopped up a watermelon in haste for a company meal, the area around my cutting board looked like a crime scene requiring forensic attention from the blood spatter pattern analysis team on the…

The little California town I go to every summer lost its diner a few years back, and I am convinced Bubba’s demise was due to the slogan: “Where grease meets organic.” Because let’s face it, American diners are all about good old-fashioned, fat-dripping, don’t-count-the-calories comfort food, preferably dished up at 2 AM by a uniformed…

We live in extraordinary times with extraordinary possibilities. I grew up on science fiction stories and am constantly astonished how many have become real: driverless cars, virtual reality, robots doing surgery. At a lecture a few nights ago, I learned that young people are now in training for the 2032 mission that will land humans…

For summer paella parties, I like frozen grapes to keep the white wine cold without risking the dilution that can come with ice. One of the things I like best about paella is that it’s nearly always made by men. In Spain, it’s generally the centerpiece of a leisurely Sunday lunch, and I have been…

I have to admit, it felt strange — surreal, even — the first time I ate breakfast in the same bar I’d been drinking in the night before. But this isn’t uncommon in Seville, where the line between coffee house and tavern is a blurry one. Then there was the morning I found myself sipping…