The inspiration for this salad was, if you can believe it, cafeteria food.

Remember that trip to Zurich? At Tim’s office, I had a tiny layered salad similar to this, served in a shot glass. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to reproduce it on a larger scale back home.

The thing about this salad is, it’s like a full meal: you get the meaty component, the green component, and at the end, the sweet component. The layers only mix with each other selectively, so each bite is unique.

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Posted in: appetizers, cooking, salads, sides | Tags: arugula, composed salad, layered salad, salad, side, strawberries, strawberry, summer | 4 COMMENTS

The weekend left me with a full belly, a sore throat, a bike seat-bruised behind. Clearly, this is the correct state in which to leave Amsterdam.

There is something about me that you might not know, and it is this: I never learned to ride a bike. When other children were running around the neighborhood playing tag and learning how to pedal their tiny two-wheeled conveyances, scraping knees in the process, I was spending afternoons at the dance studio or with a tutor. Growing up, I had never found it necessary to ride, living in LA where the automobile is king, so I didn’t. But in Amsterdam, bicycles are the best and most-used mode of transportation — upon stepping out of the central train station, you are greeted with a multi-level bicycle parking structure. And if I wanted to see the best the city had to offer, I would need to ride. We rented a tandem so that I needn’t learn to balance and navigate and pedal all at once, and went for a long, idyllic ride down the Amstel River.

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Posted in: travel | Tags: amstel river, amsterdam, bicycle, bike rides, dutch, holland, netherlands, Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, tandem, travel, vacation | 1 COMMENT

Another museum from this week, the Musée Rodin.

The Kiss, or A Love as Deep as the Graves.

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Posted in: paris | Tags: garden, gates of hell, musee, musee rodin, museum, paris, rodin, sculpture, the kiss, the thinker | 1 COMMENT

It’s been a museum-heavy week. It’s my friend Clare‘s last week in Paris, so I accompanied her to a couple of the museums I’ve been interested in seeing. The first one was the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, which involved a lot of taxidermy and a lot of me humming The Circle of Life, followed by coffee at La Caféothèque.

What is happening here. I do not even. Continue Reading

Posted in: paris | Tags: musee, museum, natural history, natural history museum, paris | 0 COMMENTS

It feels like it’s all peaches, all the time on the food blogs right now. With good reason: peaches are going crazy this summer. Every single one I’ve brought home has been ripe and sweet, with not a dud among them.

We all know that the best way to eat a peach is out-of-hand, over the sink with juice dripping down your chin. But the aroma and flavor of the fruit pair well with so many things — especially in the savory, salty arena — it would be a shame not to experiment.

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Posted in: appetizers, cooking, party food, snacks | Tags: appetizer, balsamic, basil, bruschetta, chevre, crostini, goat cheese, ham, peach crostini, prosciutto, snack | 8 COMMENTS

Friends: if you are on le régime, I warn you to stop reading this right now. Because this? This is what nearly destroyed my fledgling considerations of going on a — oh, you know, lifestyle change.

Justification: popcorn is a whole grain. Rebuttal: oh who are you kidding, that’s a half cup of Nutella in there.

I think it’s okay, though. I’ve been eating just tiny bowls of it, like this. Moderation, right? I know if I put the whole huge bowl near me, it’s game over. And it’s so sweet and rich, just a few bites will do you. Not that anyone’s judging if you end up eating the whole bowl. We’ve all been there.

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Posted in: cooking, desserts, snacks | Tags: caramel, caramel corn, dairy free, gluten free, honey, nutella, nutella popcorn, popcorn, snack, snacks, sweets | 0 COMMENTS

I’ve been feeling a little more than myself these days, friends. Let’s call it the Parisian fifteen. I mean, with all the wine, butter, and pastries that I’m constantly surrounded with, all of it superb, I more or less expected to get a bit more rubenesque during my time in France. Not to mention the fact that, despite walking more in this city, I’m still not quite as active as I was in LA. I used to go out to dance salsa at least twice a week. Now I’m lucky if I get to a club once every three weeks.

I’m okay with looking little rounder. My mother is always telling me I need to gain a few pounds anyway. But along with the lack of definition in the ab-area came this general feeling of unwellness — crankiness, headaches, a general feeling of blah in my body. I am not okay with feeling unfit.

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Posted in: appetizers, cooking, salads, sides | Tags: dairy free, gluten free, green goddess, green goddess dressing, healthy, lettuce, little gem, little gem lettuce, salad, salad dressing, salad fingers | 1 COMMENT