When my wife and I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles some time in the last century (yikes!), we were young(er), just engaged and still childless. We settled in the Hollywood-adjacent neighborhood of Los Feliz and soon discovered many of its culinary pleasures. Like any true exploration of LA, it was an international experience, […]

After my trials and tribulations with cucumber soup this week, going to see an author reading about Thoreau seemed somehow inappropriate. The most recent blog deadline had already rushed past and the desperation that filled my life was anything but quiet. I railed and  railed. What was I writing this stupid blog for anyway? Didn’t […]

After a summer’s worth of Olympian games, my youngest is finally finishing up the Percy Jackson series.*  To celebrate I decided to take The  Soup Blog Greek… again.  And no, this isn’t a re-run. Remember Spanakopita Soup?  Good stuff, huh?  Well this recipe is even fresher, though more “of the people,” not so overpowering and […]

When my youngest daughter saw the soup on the dinner table this week, she groaned. “Cold soup?  Can’t you just serve that to the grown ups?” Like most kids, she has pretty narrow parameters about the way she likes foods.  She’s more adventurous than her sister, but to both of them, cold soup is a […]

The cucumber is soft-spoken.  It’s flavor is neither strong nor brash.  As a result it’s a vegetable that often doesn’t get a lot of respect. You might even say it’s the Rodney Dangerfield* of vegetables. At best the cucumber is a supporting player adding texture and crunch to other ingredients that hog the spotlight.  In […]