When I was a kid, at around seven or eight years old, my mom brought home this vintage 1950’s Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook from a garage sale. I was instantly captivated by the vivid photographs of (what I considered at the time) all the “fancy food” and the depiction of this idealized domestic world from…
Author: Puddingyrl
I'm a pastry chef (geek) whose appetite invariably exceeds the actual size of my stomach. Skinny jeans be damned! My innate curiosity usually leads to full-blown obsessions--culinary and otherwise--which is why you'll find me sticking my finger in the proverbial pudding...if not licking the whole damn bowl. Given my varied interests, I figured blogging is a good way for me to explore those ideas that are always nibbling at my brain. Along for the ride are two of my girlfriends who share some of my obsessions and have no problems diving headlong into that bowl of pudding. After all, it's more fun to share the calories!
Nora Knows Best
Nora Ephron is my spirit animal. There, I’ve said it. I’ve felt this way ever since I first stumbled across her poignantly funny, biting, foodcentric autobiographical novel Heartburn (1983) back in my twenties. I instantly related to Nora’s brand of edgy humor…and her obsession with food. Watching her son Jacob Bernstein’s insightful HBO documentary Everything…
Rites of Spring
Although I wasn’t particularly thrilled about “springing ahead” and losing an hour of precious sleep (yeah, who’s lame idea was it anyways and why are we still doing it when it’s universally acknowledged to being rather pointless in the modern world?!), I was, nevertheless, done with Winter. And you know what really puts me in…
Irish eyes are smiling…after you’ve stuffed yourself with food
Visions of shamrock shakes, minty Oreos and green bagels are dancing in our heads once again, all of which has us thinking about our favorite Irish-themed movies. If you’re looking for tour de force performances, there’s always that award-winning one-man powerhouse known as Daniel Day Lewis–My Left Foot (1990), In the Name of the Father…
Cheeseburgers, badass chicks and cocktails
Rainy weekends always give me a great excuse to do two things–cook and watch television–not that I necessarily need a rainy weekend to do either. In fact, I often find inspiration for my culinary experimentation just from channel-surfing. A case in point, the other night I happened upon an episode of Best Bars in America…
For your consideration…
Even as a movie fan, I have to admit that, when it comes to the Oscars, I’m sometimes more interested in the fashion than I am about who wins, especially when the Oscar nominations by and large echo those of other awards, like the Golden Globes, Screen Actor’s Guild and BAFTA–call it a case…
Binge Worthy
The weekend is upon us and like many people trying to wind down from a week of stress (which for me is pretty much all the time), we like to hunker down for some therapeutic binge-watching, catching up on all those recordings piling up on our DVRs or finally getting around to seeing what the…
An Affair to Remember…Now that was when people KNEW how to be in love.
We thought it was only fitting, given that it’s Valentine’s Day weekend, to celebrate the granddaddy of all classic Hollywood romantic dramas An Affair to Remember (1957). Sure, there have been several versions of this classic tale about a playboy and a singer, engaged to other people, meeting and falling in love on a transatlantic…
Gung Hay Fat Choy…Ringing in the Year of the Monkey
In San Francisco…hell, in the Bay Area…there is NO shortage of Chinese restaurants to go to for a celebratory Chinese New Year dinner. However, as any local will tell you, all the decent ones (and even some borderline mediocre ones) are packed to the rafters during this time of the year with families of all…
Downton Abbey…or High Tea at Highclere
I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a sucker for good British drama, costume or otherwise. Being the Anglophile that I am, I am not merely satisfied with watching PBS or BBC America to get my fix. Oh, no. I subscribe to Tunnel Bear so I can bypass those pesky internet region-restrictions and watch all…