28 Jun 2010, Posted by admin

About The Author

The short version. Yes, really. Might be wise to skip.

My bar/office. Small apartment. Honest.

I’m a journalist and editor based in Los Angeles. I write about people. Because they’re interesting. Why they do what they do, and how they got there. Sometimes I talk about their stories on NPR, food television shows or on panels (I’ve also been known to babble about relish and underground restaurants on local radio shows).  Occasionally, I  serve as a food/beverage or cookbook judge for folks like the James Beard Awards (As for being a judge on The Next Food Network Star… well, we all learn about the realities of reality TV the hard way, don’t we?).  Sometimes the stories turn into books like Secret Suppers, on the how, why and what behind the folks running illegal restaurants across the country. Usually the overall topic is our food/beverage culture, past and present. But not always. Sometimes, the clowns really do call or the old-time music beckons.

Self portrait, age 3. Still have red hair. Occasionally, sunburnt feet.

Often the stories are for the Los Angeles Times, where I’ve had a column for several years on artisan food/beverage folks.

I also write about cooking/baking (Puerco con chile negro, shortbread,the tasty stuff), and when someone actually lets me, our food history icons or that really fantastic Popsicle stick furniture maker who reconnected with his past through his art. Or what I discover on travels to visit my family in Fort Worth and New Orleans.

I always learn something from the people I write about. Honest. No one paid me to say that (believe me). The best stories just “happen” — no press release required.

I’ve been a contributing editor for LA Weekly’s Squid Ink blog since its nascent 2-page-hit beginnings, now the Village Voice‘s most read nationwide food blog  (Ah, the joyous journalism era of blog traffic = All anyone seems to ask about). Over there, I cover wine/winemakers, artisans/farmers, and serve as the cookbook reviewer — some of those LA Weekly posts you’ll see here (Going green/recycling?).

I contribute regularly to various magazines — Los Angeles Times Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, Saveur, Cooking Light (Gosh, just writing this is making me tired; Ah, contemporary journalism rates). Before blogs, I was a columnist for the Tribune’s wire service, which is just a fancy way of saying my stories would occasionally pop up in my hometown paper (cue my parents fishing through the recycle bin: “Oh yes, we read it!”).

I also help folks write their nonfiction books or cookbooks, professionally test recipes and such. Oh, and I keep saying I’m working on a baking book. (Right. Most nights I’ve become rather adept at procrastinating by cooking dinner and popping that Pinot.).

One other thing. Because folks often ask. How did I end up in this rather niche area of food journalism (yet not restaurant/wine criticism)? That would require a long philosophical conversation under a tree somewhere. But basically, after all those college theory of relativity debates I aspired to be a museum directrice (something about merging theory, art, business — who knows). So I worked my way from the bottom up at several fine art museums on both coasts, with a terribly prudent grad school stop in between (oh Austin, how we miss your laid back, BBQ sauce-stained ways). Somewhere in there, I spent my nights running a little online bakery for about a year. You already know how this story ends. Ten years later, I walked away from all that practicality (Is working for a nonprofit practical?), so I could start from the bottom again. Yay.

Pastry school followed, then an internship at the LA Times Test Kitchen, another on the editorial side, and one on the pastry line at Lucques restaurant (Surely you are too old to “intern” at some point?). A brief stint as editor of a magazine that never launched, back to the newspaper as an in-house contract editor/writer for all of a year (oh, the lovely print media demise), and several years after that first “Yes, Chef,” here I am. Writing about people. Well, it logically works in my head somehow.

Am I the foremost expert in any one area of food history study, say rice beer or monkey bread? Nope, though I have accumulated vast amounts of useless yeast-related knowledge in recent years. Actually, brewing, winemaking and baking are very similar, but that’s a story for another time.