Also, interestingly, I’ve found that as I’ve settled into this new life with my husband-to-be, I’m entertaining and cooking more than ever, but compelled (less than ever) to photograph what I’m making, Tweet my updates, check in on Facebook, or write posts.  All of that social media activity tends to break the flow of what’s really happening, and it has become harder and harder for me to do as I’ve felt more rooted and connected to the real world around me.  (As I write this, I notice that my last Tweet was over a month ago – yikes.)  Someone suggested that I hire a PR assistant to tweet and post for me, but then, what’s the point of that?  It seems so inauthentic and deceitful to my readers, for that matter.  Do other bloggers really do that?  I hope not.

As much as I know I’ll miss my friends in the blogging community, I feel more enriched and more grounded in a broader sense than ever before.  I feel present and happy and appreciative of this special time.

My television pilots and instructional videos continue to float around in the entertainment world, and I hope with all my heart that one of the networks will pick me up someday soon.  Everyone seems to want “big concept” shows like Top Chef and Cake Wars these days, which isn’t really me.  I hope that eventually the trend will shift back to a style of programming that is geared toward an audience that actually wants to learn how to cook.  If it does, and there’s room for me in the lineup, I’ll be ready!

For now, I leave you with a virtual potluck of some favorite recipes that have appeared on this blog over the past three years.  Click on the picture, and you’ll be taken to the recipe in the archives.  I hope this is enough to keep you cooking and happy until I return.

I sign off with the deepest gratitude for the many talented bloggers, producers, photographers and stylists who have inspired me and supported me from the beginning.  We’re not done yet!  I’ll be back as soon as I’m ready, and we’ll dive back in.

-Miri

Holiday greetings! Thanksgiving was a total blast. We rented an 8 foot table, moved the couch and ottoman, and put that big ol’ table right down the middle of our living room. Ten people gathered round it for a feast of turkey, sage and sausage stuffing, cornbread, whipped sweet potatoes, buttermilk biscuits, cranberry sauce and green beans. My dad (pictured with me) and I  did most of the cooking and baking (that’s me rolling out the biscuits), which is more like performing an elaborate piece of choreography in our tiny shoebox of a kitchen. But we had a fabulous, fabulous time. Moe’s mother and sister came, along with my parents, our good friends G&K, and our other good friends B&S, along with their one-year-old daughter.

But what was most special about this year’s Thanksgiving was not what we ate, but what we ate it on.   Our table was adorned with some very special pieces of china and silver, all from my grandmother.  Her china is white and ivory with a band of gold around the perimeter, delicately etched with a lacy floral pattern.  It dates to the 1930s, when my great grandmother bought a 20-piece set at Marshall Fields in Chicago.  (My mother now has the other half of the set.)  The sterling set consists of goblets, serving pieces, and a butter dish.  My grandmother had a stroke nearly ten years ago and, sadly, can’t entertain like she used to.  But it made her happy this year that all of her most cherished pieces were being put to good use.

And Hanukkah is here already! We celebrated and lit the menorah last night with cousins from out of town and I whipped up a dinner to make my Jewish grandma proud: whole roasted chicken, matzah stuffing, and crispy potato latkes with sour cream and apple sauce. For dessert, we devoured a platter of homemade baklava given to me as a holiday gift by a dear friend. We had a wonderful time talking and laughing over wine and delicious, traditional food. This, to me, is what the holidays are all about.

And for Christmas and New Year’s? We are off to Vietnam and Thailand for a two-week tropical trip of beaches, sand and some of the world’s freshest seafood. Not terribly traditional, I’ll give you that, but I think we’ll have a great time. We’ll be on Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam, for the first leg of our journey, then Railay Beach, Thailand through the first week of January.

Photos of food, beaches and paradise to follow shortly.

Happy holidays to you and yours.

-Miri

1. Fresh bright cheeses go with fresh bright wines. For example, a sauvignon blanc would go well with an herbed goats milk cheese like Fleur Verte.

2. At the other end of the spectrum… a “bigger” wine like cabernet sauvignon goes well with more complex cheeses that are aged and nutty in flavor, such as a stilton.

3. “Raw milk cheese” simply means that the milk was not pasteurized before the cheese making process began, which in turn means that the cheese making process began within two hours of when the milk was collected from the animal.

4. The hardness of the cheese is correlated with how long the cheese is aged. Hard cheeses like parmigiano-reggiano are aged 18-24 months. A semi-soft cheese such as ossau araty (Basque sheep’s milk cheese) is aged 30-60 days. Semi-soft cheeses must be made with pasteurized milk in the US because raw milk contains live microflora that (according to the USDA) can cause illness.

5. In a soft, aged cheese like Tomme Crayeuse, the center of the round is less aged than the outer portion. So it will have a different texture and flavor… it’s softer and more tart.

6. There is no lactose in cheese aged over 60 days. Goat, sheep and water buffalo cheeses are the easiest to digest for people who have lactose or dairy intolerance.

7. Butterfat content has to do with the creaminess of the cheese. Swiss has 45% bf, double crème cheese (brie) are about 65% bf, and triple crème cheeses (like Brillat-Savarin) are 75% bf. To put all of this into perspective… butter is at least 85% butterfat.

8. How long before guests arrive should you take your cheeses out of the fridge? Hard cheese can sit out for up to an hour, semi-hard cheeses can sit out for about 20 minutes. Soft and fresh cheeses should come out of the fridge just as guests are arriving.

9. Some of my favorite pairings… aged balsamic on parmigiano-reggiano… Tomme Crayeuse with dried figs and port… Colston Bassett Stilton with honey and port… Epoisses with Riesling.

10. Honey is incredible on all cheeses. You can’t go wrong.

Have you ever started to assemble a cheese platter for a party and then realized that you have no idea what you’re doing?  I have.  Beyond the very basic and boring rule of “one hard cheese, one semi-hard cheese, and one soft cheese,” I’ve never felt the least bit confident about how to pick a good cheese or how to pick three (or more) cheeses that go well together.  And pairing cheese with wine and other foods?  Forget it.  Totally out of my league.

And haven’t you always been curious about what else, besides cheese, might go on a cheese platter?  Grapes?  Crackers?  Snore.  I’ve been desperate to find someone who could help me come up with something a little more exciting.

Let me tell you who can.  Juliana Uruburu, director of cheese at the Bay Area’s famous Market Hall and instructor of “Perfect Cheese Pairings” at the San Francisco Cheese School.

I attended Juliana’s two-hour class this week and was blown away by 1) how fun it was and 2) how little I know about cheese. (I was also blown away by how tipsy one can get on nothing but cheese and wine for dinner, but let’s save that for the end.)

The Cheese School holds small classes in a lovely wood-floored, open-windowed loft space on Powell Street not far from Fisherman’s Wharf.  You sit at a long dining room-style table that’s set with the prettiest china and sparkling wine glasses and tiny, adorable cheese utensils.  The instructor imparts to you all of her infinite wisdom (in a very informal lecture) about cheese and food and wine while you dine on the very cheese and food and wine she’s talking about.  You ask questions and you take notes and she stops to explain things and then you ask more questions and you take more notes.  And then you drink some wine and you forget that you already asked a particular question but she answers anyway and everyone laughs together and has more wine.

Tell me… what wouldn’t be fun about all that?

As for number 2, as much as you’re having fun, you will definitely come away from the experience feeling like you need more classes.  I felt far more comfortable about how to assemble a cheese platter after this particular class, and there were certain logical tips I knew I could file away in my mental recipe box for easy retrieval. (“Bright, fruity wines go with bright, lively cheeses,” and “Honey is amazing on ANY cheese!”)  But I know that we hardly scratched the surface of all there is to know about cheese.  You know those numbers and letters stamped into the rind of your parmigiano regiano?  There’s a whole handbook on how to decode those numbers!  They tell you not only where the cheese wheel came from but what family produced it and at what time of year.  And forget pairing cheese with wine.  There are classes on pairing cheese with beer, pairing cheese with port, and even pairing cheese with sake.  Sake!  Who would ever think of serving cheese with sake?  Apparently, it can be done.

Next week, for those of you who don’t live close enough to attend a class in person, I’ll post the Top Ten things I Learned in Cheese School and a copy of my horribly scribbled but somewhat funny (and partially wine-stained) class notes.  For the rest of you, I encourage you to sign up for a class pronto, before you find yourself staring dumbfoundedly at another boring cheese platter. You absolutely must go on empty stomach and indulge in nothing but cheese and wine for dinner.  You deserve it.  Just be sure to cab it home.

Photo credit: San Francisco Cheese School

I have had the exciting privilege of appearing on NBC’s “Arizona Midday” with my friend Chef Chuck of Chef Chuck’s Cucina.  Hosted by Destry Jetton (and, yes, she is as drop-dead gorgeous in person as she is on screen!), Arizona Midday features a cooking segment nearly every week.  In our last appearance, we made Spaghetti a la Carbonara and some really amazing, simple stuffed artichokes.  I’ll be on again on September 16th, so I hope you’ll tune in if you’re local.

Because after 4th of July, we went right back to Tahoe for more boating on the lake, and then I went to visit my grandmother in St. Louis for a few days.  Somehow we managed to squeeze in a few days in Cabo somewhere in there, too.

So of course I’ve felt a little guilty about “blog neglect” and I’ve been meaning to cook something really fabulous and spend some time photographing it and writing up a really fascinating post about it.  I’ve been trolling around on other blogs for inspiration and falling asleep with cooking magazines tucked under my chin, searching for the perfect recipe.

Then tonight I came home from work and Moe had brought home lobster tail for dinner.  Along with bell peppers in a rainbow of colors and two big, fat artichokes.  Everything looked so good and fresh that I couldn’t help but ask myself, who needs a recipe?  Fresh, seasonal food needs nothing at all except a little olive oil and salt.

So that’s what we did.  We cracked those lobster tails, par-boiled the artichokes, skewered the bell peppers, drizzled everything olive oil, and threw it all on the grill.  And then I photographed the feast with my iPhone. No food styling, no lights or filters.  Just a fabulous, fuss-free, no-recipe dinner.

And then we cracked open a bottle of chardonnay, and we ate.

I’m waiting for photos of this year’s event, but in the meantime I thought I would share with you photos of last year’s event, which I apparently never posted.  I’m not sure how that happened!  Last year’s event was Bollywood-themed and we brought in some of the best Bollywood and Bhangra dancers in the western United States, not to mention some of the tastiest Indian food I’ve ever eaten: lamb tikka masala, tandoori fish, chicken vindaloo, saag (spinach), daal (lentils), and channa masala (chickpeas). I didn’t wear a sari, but I found a dress that had beading similar to the kind you see on fine Indian clothing.  That’s me at the bottom with the CEO.  It was a blast.

This year’s theme was “Cirque” and I’ll leave you in suspense about what we came up with for entertainment and decor.  You’ll find out in a few weeks when I post the photos, I promise.

Meanwhile, guess where I’m off to now that the party’s over?  Hawaii!  It’s my first time ever, so you’ll have lots of photos of that to look forward to, too.  Aloha!

Well, I’ve just wrapped up my travel diary on Bali. Wasn’t it fun? Even I’m enjoying going back and reading about all the adventures I had there with my little sister, Kate. It was a trip I’ll never forget, and I’m so glad we did it together.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any more exotic vacations planned for the foreseeable future, so I’m afraid we’re going to have to go back to basics here on the blog: food and cooking. But what a great time of year it is for those two things! Springtime is right around the corner, which means berries, stone fruit and other warm-weather treats. And longer days mean more time to spend in the kitchen and sitting around the table… the best kinds of therapy.

So I’m going to jump the gun here a little bit and post a recipe for a peach crostata. Peaches are already in the grocery stores, which is a little scary given that there’s still snow on the ground in much of the country. Indeed, they come from Chile, which means they have quite the journey from farm to fork…. not exactly seasonal or local. But I bought a few this week because I simply couldn’t resist an early taste of the warmer season. They were ridiculously expensive (I think they flew first class from Santiago) and a little mealy from the journey, but they were peachy nonetheless.

What to do with peaches that are too mealy to eat fresh and too expensive to throw away? Bake them into a crostata, a free-from pie baked flat on a cookie sheet. Crostata is hardly a recipe, really, and more of a strategy: you just roll out a round of pie dough (use your favorite recipe that yields enough dough for a nine-inch, single-crust pie), arrange the peaches in the middle, and fold the edges up and around the fruit. I used three medium peaches; first I removed the skins (dunk them in boiling water for 45 seconds… it will peel right off), then I sliced them and tossed them in a mixture of 1 teaspoon corn starch and about 1/3 cup sugar. I squeezed half of a lemon over the peach & sugar mixture, for a little zing, and then arranged the slices in concentric circles over a 12-inch round of pie dough placed right onto a cookie sheet, dotting the peaches with little bits of butter and folding the edges up in the last step to keep the peachy juices in while it baked. If you want, you can brush the crust with a little egg wash (one egg lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon water) and sprinkle the egg wash with turbinado sugar.

That’s all. Like I said, it’s more of a strategy than a recipe, which is why I’ve written it in paragraph form. And it works with all kinds of fruit, fresh or frozen. You can use more or less sugar, depending upon how naturally sweet the fruit is, and more or less corn starch depending upon how juicy the fruit is.

Serve a crostata with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, while it’s still just a tad warm.

Now… aren’t you glad springtime’s almost here?

How cute are these?  I think I need to borrow somebody’s little girl this weekend and bake cookies.  Who’s got a daughter for rent?

I found these at Uncommon Goods and they are $32 (child) and $39 (adult) each.  What a great holiday gift!

["Friday Finds" is a weekly series designed purely to give you a little end-of-the-week online shopping bliss.  You see, I spend a lot of time poking around online for nifty kitchen gadgets, ultra-cool home decor items, and specialty edible food products.  And I have a ridiculously long list of links and bookmarks for the best stuff on the Net.  Don't worry, I don't get anything in return for posting about these products.  They're all just my personal faves, and I'm only sharing them because I genuinely believe you will love them, too.]

I hope you’ll resist the temptation to hit those day-after-Thanksgiving sales today and stay in.  Read together.  Play a board game.  Talk about all the Thanksgivings you can remember.  Then talk about all the ones you’d rather forget.

Enjoy some company and a little bit of laughter.

They’re free.