Wine and Food Travel

A friend recently asked me to investigate a certain tree she had growing in her backyard in Los Angeles. It looked like a fig tree, but the fruits were not quite as red, and the inside looked more floral than fruity. The aroma was mild and the taste was almost unidentifiable. Was it edible fruit? Was it poisonous? After a bit of digging around, I found these trees to be figs after all, just not the...

My weekends aren’t typical weekends. They don’t include plans to hit the bars, spend hours shopping, or sleep in late. I like to keep my weekends free and airy, taking the time to wake up early and get some solid work in. The hangover just isn’t my thing. But there is one event I will plan for, one mainstay my weekends keep in steady rotation: the Hollywood farmers’ market. Living...

Once upon a time in the western world, if a chocolate’s brand didn’t end in -stle, -shey or -bury then one might not have been familiar with the artisanal chocolates available, especially not if the niche varietal were refined to a more unrefined chocolate product –– chocolate that is so pure the characteristic gritty texture actually reeducates the consumer and foils the smooth textures of...

What do two girls do when they hit pay day? They spend their money (hopefully wisely) on some finer things in life. For my friend Marie and I, we decided to get chocolates in the suburban town of Glendale, California. Pulling up into the corner parking lot of a strip mall on Verdugo Road, my eyes quickly scoured the row of retail stores and quickly focused in our final destination: Mignon Chocolates. Now,...

Apricots are peaches’ lesser loved cousins. They are not quite as juicy, not quite as sweet, and not quite as popular as the hailed summer peaches. And I’ll be one to admit that I, too, never gave them a fair shot in the past. There’s just something about dried apricots that feels like grandparents’ food, no? Well that’s all silly, I now realize after frequenting the farmers markets and enjoying...