The Crabby Cook - by Jessica Harper

You’ve eaten too many chocolate chip cookies in your lifetime. In the last year alone, you have had enough of them to satisfy the dessert needs of an entire state, say, Indiana, for a week. And that includes the catering of several gay weddings. Read More

I had it on that list I have titled, “Things to do on a really slow day.” (As opposed to others I keep handy like my “To do when you have a ten minute window” and “To put off as long as possible” lists.) It was a recipe involving a thing called a pomelo. Read More

Okay, so after all that prepping I did (described here in case you had something better to do than read my previous post) for what de Blasio said would be the end of the world last week, I was pretty disappointed by Juno’s lack of spunk. (Hey, Juno, have you met Sandy?) Snowmageddon was to have peaked on Tuesday, but Tuesday was snooze-day, a no-news day.

And there I was with my hair all done and my nails perfect, presentable in case my body was found frozen stiff in a snow bank on Columbus Avenue.

I did not want all that effort at to go to waste. (So rarely do I have my beauty shit together.) Restaurants, by 10 a.m. no longer intimidated by the storm-that-wasn’t, were open, and I decided to go get a dosa.

I was only recently introduced to the dosa, which is basically a very large crepe wrapped around ingredients that you may select—vegetables, eggs, cheese, chicken, whatever—which is offered with a selection of chutneys. If you want to make it at home, here’s how. I am too lazy to do this so I go just go around the corner to Hampton Chutney and leave the cooking to them.

The dosa is as big as big as de Blasio’s forearm and makes a very satisfying meal after being up all night wondering why the world did not seem to be ending. I’m actually glad it didn’t. I get to eat more dosas.

I stumbled into Gastronomie 491 on Columbus Avenue after hours of pre-turkey shopping and there was an angel there handing out samples of Jenni’s ice cream to exhaustoids like myself. Read More

So it’s Thanksgiving and you’re already irritable just thinking about the cooking tasks that lie ahead of you. You wish that it was  your sister-in-law who was the one cooking, as usual,  but she is bailing this year and going to Paris (where they have lousy pumpkin pie, by the way). So there you are with the piles of sweet potatoes and cranberries, getting crabbier by the minute. Read More

I went into Edelweiss Chocolates in Beverly Hills, not to buy chocolates but to buy their white Jordan almonds which I always keep handy in a silver sugar bowl.

“That’s it?” the lady behind the cash register said, casting her eyes in the direction of the case full of beautiful chocolate confections.

“Yeah, that’s it,” I said. Read More

It’s time to celebrate the football season!

Well, actually, if you are like me, you pretend to celebrate the football season, when what really drives your excitement is the excuse to eat the food associated with the sport. (Think bean dip.) Read More

This is the sort of recipe that you come up with when you are too lazy to go to the market to buy real ingredients but you have to eat so you make something up based on the limp contents of your fridge. Read More

A couple years back i reported to you on a prize-winning, record-setting burger that weighed in at over 210 pounds. Well, apparently that record has been obliterated, shattered, knuckle-dropped, air-popped, heel-stomped and other synonyms for royally busted. Read More

I’ve got this Meyer lemon tree in my yard that is dripping with fruit. With a sudden burst of culinary energy (for some reason I’m channeling Rachael Ray) I am doing a lemon project this week, finally committed to using my harvest for something other than dog toys. Read More