I am a constant reader, with ecclectic tastes. On my nightstand you might find a British murder mystery, military history (Civil War or World War II), political biography, contemporary fiction, or a literary classic (anything I never got around to reading in English Lit or any leftover paperbacks from my sons’ English classes).

Right now, I’m reading The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, A Memoir, by Bill Bryson, a hilarious look back at growing up in the 1950s in Des Moines, Iowa.

Bryson takes us back to American food tastes then:

“Like most people in Iowa in the 1950s, we were more cautious eaters in our house. On the rare occasions when we were presented with food with which we were not comfortable or familiar — on planes or trains or when invited to a meal cooked by someone who was not herself from Iowa — we tended to tilt it up carefully with a knife and examine it from every angle as if determining whether it might need to be defused. Once on a trip to San Francisco, my father was taken by friends to a Chinese restaurant and he described it afterward in the somber tones of someone recounting a near-death experience.” [more…]

Last week was one of the first glorious summer-like weekends in San Francisco. So I spent Saturday and Sunday gardening blissfully. It was time to open the sun umbrella over the table on the deck, fire up the grill to cook up some burgers, and sit back with a cool glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade.

With the skyrocketing cost of gas and food, expect consumers to be entertaining at home in their own backyard instead of going away on vacations and dining out. And why not, with more consumers building outdoor living spaces that make staying home a summer pleasure? [more…]

I had lunch a couple of weeks ago in San Francisco at Perbacco with two friends, a New York magazine food editor and a prolific, award-winning cookbook author. When I joined the table, the place was humming — every chair filled, waiters bustling around. “There’s no recession, here,” I commented, looking around the room. To which they both replied that people of a certain income group are immune to recession and for them, life goes on.

Not so fast. Not long after that lunch, I saw a survey reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that found the rich are doing some belt tightening, too. The paper pointed out that Unity Marketing, a firm that monitors the luxury market, said its Luxury Consumption Index was at the lowest ever in January. The company’s survey found that 39 percent of the well-heeled would spend less on luxury goods in 2008 than before (16 percent would spend more). Whether or not that includes food purchases and restaurant dining is to be seen.

Meanwhile, all is not well in the restaurant world. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal’s “Weekend Journal” led with a story on “Cutback Cuisine” — how restaurants. even the luxury ones, are managing food costs by menuing more pastas, reducing portion size, using lower-cost ingredients and getting rid of low-profit entrees. [more…]

Awhile ago, PC Magazine waxed poetic about the glories of the wired home. Hey, I’m all for wi-fi so I can be online throughout the house. And I need my TiVo. But don’t touch my kitchen.

I love electronic toys — podcasts on my iPod, music from my smart phone, games on my pda — even little Roomba to clean my house. But few of these come without frustrations. Like when I couldn’t get into iTunes to download “Wait, Wait don’t Tell Me,” before a business trip. Or when my smartphone stopped giving me e-mail when my mom was in the hospital. The last straw was when my Palm stopped making a bluetooth connection with my cell phone after the hours I spent configuring e-mail and Internet access. (Only little Roomba performs his little heart out, all the time.)

So I began thinking. As we harness technology in the kitchen, how are we going to connect to access all the services promised and how are we going to maintain the technology? What does a service contract look like for an Internet-enabled refrigerator? [more…]

I was food editor of the Honolulu Advertiser as the Vietnam war drew to a close. Having been exposed to the proliferation of Vietnamese restaurants in Paris, I fully expected an immediate onslaught of Vietnamese restaurants to blossom across the Hawaiian Islands. So I rushed out to do my Vietnamese food story, interviewing native food experts to give my readers a taste of the cuisine to come. I waited…and waited. I was young — in my 20s — and didn’t have enough seasoning or sense of history to realize that such anticipated bounty doesn’t happen overnight.

However, I have been intrigued by why Filipino food hasn'’t caught on. Preparing to speak at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone’s first Worlds of Flavor conference on Asia in 1997, I researched demographic trends to gauge which Asian immigrant groups would likely have the biggest impact on American food marketing in the years ahead. I was surprised that in the period 1981 to 1995, the largest group of Asians immigrating to the U.S. hailed from the Philippines.

While we were seeing a proliferation of Vietnamese restaurants (second largest number of immigrants in this period) and Indian restaurants (fourth largest), where were the Filipino eateries? [more…]

My sons and I have been debating whether the “You!” identified as Time magazine’s person of the year includes me and other Baby Boomers or just refers to Generation Y/Millennials (those 12 to 29 years old in 2006). Unlike my sons, I don’t have a MySpace or Facebook page, I’m not in starring in a video on YouTube and I haven’t rated a seller on ebay.

But I beg to differ. I do blog (not as often as I intend to) and I have contributed to a travel wiki and I have added a book review to Amazon. So I am exhibiting a bit of personal control on the Information Age in my own modest way.

While it’s true that most of us who are computer literate aren’t taking advantage of all the ways we could imprint our opinions and personalities on the great world, we are making our thoughts, feelings and ideas known. Even in the area of food. [more…]

Terry Blonder Golson, who lives in a small town west of Boston, loves chickens. For ten years, she has kept a small flock in her backyard. The hens, of different breeds, are very individual and quite beautiful.

Terry calls them “my girls” and they have such names as Buffy, Ginger, Edwina, Eleanor and Aunt Petunia. You can take a peek at them strutting and scratching via Terry’s hen cam, but only during the day — the hen cam shuts down at night when the hens go to bed. [more…]

You can’t be a “local” in Hawaii without loving plate lunches. A Hawaiian plate lunch recognizes just two food groups: meat and starch. Whatever the main dish — teriyaki beef, fried mahimahi or pork katsu (breaded pork cutlet) — it comes with macaroni salad AND two scoops of rice, with a nominal nod to vegetables by a bit of shredded cabbage, a lettuce leaf, or a few pieces of kim chee (Korean pickled vegetables).

This uniquely Hawaiian food expression is now gaining ground in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado — nine states in all. The mastermind is Honolulu’s Eddie Flores, who came to the United States as a 16-year-old Filipino immigrant and built a multi-million foodservice empire on a Hawaiian plate lunch franchise. [more…]

Recently, I had the pleasure of helping to plan a San Francisco food education tour for eight journalists from China, who were visiting the country as guests of the U.S. Potato Board. They were on the last leg of their American discovery journey and we had just two days. With so many fabulous food-related places to visit, we had to make some difficult choices.

We started at public relations agency Ketchum’s San Francisco office, where I gave an overview of food trends, including a look at the evolution of Chinese cuisine in the United States. [more…]

I’ve always loved grilled food and we have certainly grilled our share of ribs, steaks, burgers and hot dogs over many summers. But until recently we fell short of the 26 times per year average grill usage per household, as reported by the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association.

We just purchased our first gas grill last month and now I get it. Almost-instant heat. Minimal food prep. Nominal cleanup. Delicious, healthy meals. What’s not to like? We’re now grilling several times a week, weeknights included.

Gas grilling is hardly different from broiling in the kitchen. Which may be why, although still a heavily male activity, more than 35 percent of women are now grilling, according to the same survey. [more…]