Ah, summer

You know, if I were in a more articulate frame of mind, today would be a great day to exercise my eloquence-muscle and use this little blog o’ mine to sing the praises of seasonal summer cooking.

But today is also a rain-soaked Tuesday, and I’m a working stiff in every sense–sleep-deprived and body-sore and generally about as lucid as an owl full of schnapps. So here’s all the eloquence I can muster right now:

IT’S NECTARINE SEASON. FINALLY.

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Day of the Dad

Awright. Time for me to gush about my pops.

You know how, whenever you hear about tall, sturdy guys, the first thing everyone says is, “Oh, he’s just a big teddy bear?” In my dad’s case, that’s 100 percent true. He’s 6’4″, and an utterly gentle soul. He’s a born-and-bred intellectual, a fierce verbal sparring partner, and a profoundly moral thinker. He’s also the first person I ever heard call himself a feminist. He’s a remarkable man, and an amazing father. And given the events of the past month, with our family’s first-ever cancer scare, I’m struggling all the more to express how much he means to me.

So, instead of going completely mushy splat all over your computer screen, I’m going to tell you about the Manly Man Macho Meal I made for him for Father’s Day. Salmon burgers, grilled to perfection.

Yeah, you’re jealous. Don’t lie.

Digression: the dangerous sell

So, this is a food blog.  Most of the time, that means cooking, eating, and then running to my computer to tell the Internet all about it.  I just made some killer Father’s Day eats yesterday that I’m dying to write about.  But they’ll have to wait a bit, for a new kind of post.

Sometimes food is about more than pots and knives the perfect touch of heat.  There’s also culture, and politics, and environment, and a whole host of thorny and complex issues around the act of eating in the United States.  I think about these issues a lot.  It’s only fair that I write about them, too.

So here is the first of what I’ll call “Digressions.”  These are musings about the world just outside my kitchen, and what happens when it finds its way in.

And, for my first trick…a rant about yogurt.

(Disclaimer: potentially triggering subject matter after the jump.)

From leftovers to lunch

Okay, I’ve tried to find some unifying theme for this post.  I’ve been typing and then deleting cute, smart-alecky intros for the past twenty minutes.  But you know what?  Here’s the upshot:

I made kimchi fried rice.  And it’s freaking delicious.

Chipping in

Hello, blog.  I’ve missed you.

The past few weeks have been…strange, to say the least.  My father was diagnosed with cancer, and suddenly our family had to learn a whole new vocabulary.

Tumor.  Malignant.  Carcinoma.  Radiation.  It’s amazing how a few singular words can suddenly taste so different rolling off your tongue.

Thankfully, the only words in our mouths right now are ones of relief and gratitude.  Dad is healing at warp-speed, and (fingers crossed) on the way to being certified tumor-free.  We’ve moved on from swarming and fussing and waiting with fingernails in our mouths, and settled back down somewhere near normal.  It’s been a wild ride.

Time for some comfort food.