Entries by Leslie

Dining Out for Life update

Update…I’m the Dining Out for Life ambassador at Sol Food in San Rafael!Come visit me, eat some great food, support a great cause on Tuesday, April 22. See all the info in my post here. If you can’t join me at Sol Food, please find a restaurant that is convenient for you, but dine out somewhere! And buy your raffle tickets off my page!

dining out for life: April 22

Mark your calendar. This coming Tuesday night, April 22, you will need to be going out to dinner in the SF Bay Area. This is our local restaurateurs annual night to participate in giving back in the fight against HIV/AIDS, Dining Out for Life. Once upon a time in the late 80s, when AIDS was younger […]

biomimicry…the beginning of the story

bi·o·mim·ic·ry bīōˈmiməkrē/ noun: the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modeled on biological entities and processes. Our planet and its organisms have been growing, creating and evolving efficient life systems for over 3.8 billion years. The science of biomimicry studies and models man-made processes after these biological systems. The term biomimicry seems to have been coined […]

furniture in Milan

Last week marked the annual Salone Internazionale del Mobile, billed the world’s largest furniture fair, in Milan.  I was right here in sunny California, but took a little tour via Pinterest just to see what I was missing. Check it out to see what’s new, or in many cases what’s old but with a twist or a new color […]

8 beautiful questions…

  A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something—and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change. ~Warren Berger from his book A More Beautiful Question Warren Berger also writes for Fast Company and created a list of 8 questions we […]

april 15, 2014: pesach 5774

  Thank you SF Eater for getting me out of a little fix. Passover begins Tuesday, which means the first Seder is Monday night. For the uninitiated, that means that we Jew-folk are crazily buying food and cooking it beginning about 3 days ago. Hence the tardiness of this post. SF Eater to the rescue….today […]

Gumbo Tales: Sara Roahen

‘Of all the follies I committed en route to becoming a New Orleanian–pronouncing Burgundy Street like the wine (in New Orleans-speak, the emphasis is on gun), locking my mountain bike on the front porch (once, before it disappeared), agreeing to work on Fat Tuesday–the most egregious was disrespecting the po-boy. Just a submarine sandwich, I’d […]

food palettes…a starting place

With every design project the designer must choose a starting point. For a restaurant project it might be the food. Here is my flight of fancy using food palettes as conceptual beginnings. All photos courtesy foodarts.com.  Click on  photos to get to recipes. Cured Salmon with Oyster Panna Cotta, Crab, Avruga Caviar & Avocado/Crème Fraîche Chocolate/Almond Tortellini […]

Edison lamp redux!

The water is off on my street today, so I called my friend Jane to see if I could pop over occasionally to use the loo and maybe grab a drink. She’s English….that’s why I’m popping and loo-ing. So I was over this morning and noticed she had a lamp in her bathroom light fixture that […]

say thank you

Apparently John Lennon wrote thank you notes. Jimmy Fallon is also a fan of thank you notes. And I want to thank Jimmy Fallon for bringing his version of gratitude into the limelight. They elicit a type of joy that probably isn’t what Emily Post was after. I’m also a big fan of letter writing, […]

seven generations

“In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation… even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.” ~Great Law of the Iroquois Earth Day is April 22.  I’d like to respectfully suggest that we take the law of the Iroquois into our own hearts and start again. […]

eating fish in a barrel

a rant aside If you’ve been reading me for long, you know that so-called ‘edison bulbs’ drive me crazy. Yes, they are pretty and trendy and give that old-timey back to the farm feel to things. But they also use a ridiculous amount of energy (versus their light output) and create a significant amount of […]

just coffee, no plastic please

Coffee should be simple. I’m all about simple, especially first thing in the morning. But simple and lazy are two very different things.  I don’t want to mention any names, because there are quite a few of them, but lazy is taking over the coffee world. Simple is water poured over coffee. Slightly, and only […]

happiness creates success

This morning I needed a happiness shot.  Not for any particular reason, but I just did and I got it from Shawn Achor, a psychologist and the founder and CEO of Good Think, Inc. He gave a TED talk a few years ago that reflects the way that I parent, which is great, but in the moment […]

chef cam is live!

The James Beard Kitchen cam made its debut today with Daniel Boulud and his team cooking from his cookbook Daniel:  My French Cuisine. I found myself watching as much to see talented chefs making beautiful food as to see if they display the temperament of the many chefs whose kitchens I spent time in many moons […]