As an author whose works Anthropic stole to build its business, I say: let ‘em fight.

This morning’s reading: more from Potato Europe. Swedish restaurateur Stefan Ekengren’s (2024) Potato Total. Tight book from Gestalten, about 190 pp., 85–90 recipes. Includes the deranged notion of bringing a bowl of hot spuds to the table with a ricer so diners can press their own à la minute.

I have over 3,000 cookbooks at home and a well-equipped, well-used kitchen. A friend who’s known me nearly 15 years came over for porch whiskey. He tells me about his week. He: I wanted tomato soup, but I didn’t have a recipe, so I asked ChatGPT. Me: He: <sips whiskey> Me: You f*cking what?

Cookbook friends (particularly in Ireland and the UK): I'm hoping to verify some language in Maura Laverty's Cookery Book (1946). I have come up empty-handed hunting for a digital copy. Would anyone with a copy be willing to share whole-page images of her griskins recipe, including any headnotes?

The last two comedies I can remember genuinely laughing out loud at were Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010) and Bridesmaids (2011). Since then? There’s been amusing stuff. A laugh here and there. But no real gut-busters. Might give this one a spin.

Writers and editors (who still edit print copies): what pen works best for your edits? I’ve long used whatever red pen was handy, but I keep returning to the Pilot Precise V5, 0.5 mm very fine (I tend to plug in lots of margin and interlinear notes). Restocking soon—what brands/models hold up?

Planter emptied. Dirt removed, sifted of roots and rocks (there’s a French drain at the bottom with loose drainage gravel). Drain replaced, landscape fabric lain over the rocks. Riddled, improved dirt back in situ. Yer man’s tired. Lotta effin work for the convenience of kitchen herbs just outside.

Fire In The Mouth: a pousse-cafe (of sorts) from Marinetti’s preposterous Futurist Cookbook (La Cucina Futurista). Not meant for consumption. Like my own Bitter n Glitter, a Jägermeister and Goldschlager shot.

Meal planning from the San Antonio Light, Sunday, August 7, 1938. Make what you will of the meals, but I cracked a smile at the illustrations for each day of the week. The bear feels a little shaky for Tiw’s day but Thor, Woden, and the rest are spot on.

Cutting through alleys en route to a haircut when suddenly

Drifted off to sleep on a couch. Husband laughed when I woke with a start at the first chords of Pink Pony Club. He: I didn’t know you were such a Chappell Roan fan. Me (50+, 10 kilos overweight, full of pork, whiskey, and potatoes, having just snored myself awake): Haha. You know me.

Cookbook friends (particularly in Ireland and the UK): I'm hoping to verify some language in Maura Laverty's Cookery Book (1946). I have come up empty-handed hunting for a digital copy. Would anyone with a copy be willing to share whole-page images of her griskins recipe, including any headnotes?

Bold claim for a gummy with no THC.

Helen Mirren eating an In-N-Out Cheeseburger at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, 2007.

I used to reshelve books I’d pulled in libraries —until a librarian clocked me at UC Davis maybe 15 years ago. “Just put them on the cart. We scan them back in, and that lets us know which books get used and which don’t.” Also, I reckon, people put them back in the wrong spots. #diplomacy

Lunchtime reading: Sip & Feast (2025) by Delmage and Boerum. (Mostly) Italian-American cooking, including OG classics I grew up with in New Jersey and St. Louis: chicken francese, stuffed shells, braciole, spaghetti pie, chicken scarp, manicotti. Hard-core comfort foods. Well done. Deets in alt.

Lunchtime reading with daydreams of summer: La glace de nos rêves (2025, en français) by Henri Guittet. 60ish recipes. Striking ice flavors, including black sesame; raspberry and sumac; lychee and galangal; kiwi fruit and Noilly Prat; figs and shiso, brown beer, etc. Citation in the alt.

Yeah, yeah, it’s just Tuesday here today. San Diego has no Mardi Gras tradition, that’s true enough. However, I do get to eat and drink whatever I like for the next 40 days, so it’s a draw.

Neighbor told me he’s having tree trimmers come next week to bring this border tree down 15-20 feet. I’ve already cut it back to the property line. “I’ll split the cost to take it to the ground,” says I. No dice. Ah, well. An improvement nonetheless. Don’t ever plant Brazilian pepper tree.

This morning’s reading: The Book of Citrus Fruits (2025). Reprint of early 18th-c. systemic descriptions of 170 different citrus—a view of the exotic from north of the Alps—by Nuremberg merchant J. C. Volkamer. Color plates throughout; the cover image is a typical example. Text in EN, DE, FR.

BRICE: As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance. LADY CROOM: Do not dabble in paradox, Edward, it puts you in danger of fortuitous wit. This morning’s reading: Arcadia (1993) by Tom Stoppard.

Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it.

Damn. Just catching up to the news that Bud Cort has died. In Hal Ashby’s 1971 film Harold and Maude, Ruth Gordon offered Cort ginger pie. For nearly 30 years, I’ve baked ginger pies inspired by that moment between them. Recipe link in the replies. But first:

Dinner for two earlier this week—with two happy hour drinks apiece—over $200 with a tip. When y’all visit and ask me where to eat in San Diego, know that I mostly cook at home because of prices in even just ok places (tho Colima’s does a solid vaquero burrito with chorizo and carne asada for <$12).

Cincinnati oysters? Pickled pig's feet. Cincinnati quail=pork or bacon. And salt pork? Why, that’s Cincinnati chicken or turkey. I’m curious. What other foods with place names are not, in fact, that food? Rocky Mountain oysters, frinstance. Bombay duck. Jerusalem artichoke.

Popp swung by the house to sharpen a few old blades. San Diego mobile knife sharpening and barber shop tools. Left behind a small envelope with a card, candy, and…a bandage. For all the razor sharp danger now hereabouts. I’d not seen proper small business guerrilla marketing in ages. Well done.

Too many food writers get hyper-specific, down to the last punctilious second, of how long eggs are cooked yet fail to clarify whether these times are for room temperature eggs or refrigerated. Hat tip to Tim Anderson who shows in Ramen Forever both temps across time AND with different sized eggs.

Treasure found while gardening vol 13 no 6.

Bacon hangers. You know. For hanging bacon.

Oh, FFS. Every time it rains, our San Diego Wi-Fi goes down. I had been researching Ohio/Pennsylvania city chicken (aka mock chicken or Kansas City chicken) online this morning. Now, nothing loads—up or down. If only there were something else to read here, like in olden times.

The musical fruit.

Two ripe limes. From tacos to G&Ts and ceviche to curd, we are accustomed to the flavor of underripe green limes, mostly because they ship easily and are not easily mistaken for lemons. But this is the good stuff right here, just off the tree. Yellow, juicy, aromatic.

Got propofol (aka Milk of Amnesia) for a procedure yesterday. Out of it all day after. Still me, but…altered, slow witted. “Michael Jackson was like THIS every day?” I asked pain doc husband. “Jackson had other things going on, but yeah: don’t drive, don’t make important decisions after propofol.”

Look, when I say to butter the dish, I mean Butter The Dish

With 3,000+ cookbooks, I can tailor them as waiting-room reading during doctor appointments. Ice breakers. Seeing the Iranian MD? Bring new Persian cookbook. The MD/PhD? Something academic from a university press. They all fall for it 100% of the time. This morning? I’m going in for a colonoscopy.

Surprised at how much I enjoy 8-12 minute yard/garden cleanup videos. Skirmishes against entropy. But one this morning was little more than a spruce-up, light raking and polite edging. No, no. Show me the yards of hoarder agoraphobics, parents long. I want catastrophic landscape reckonings.

Lunchtime fridge clean-out: Cold boiled carrots and fresh snap peas tossed with soft butter, white miso, sesame oil, salt and pepper, and strewn with white sesame. Roast off at 400°F for about 15 minutes. Trying to be better about not buying more food than I can use and using what I buy.

Ugh. Why am I, who has eaten nothing but pretzels and beef jerky today, so thirsty?

The last laugh. Husband is appalled that I am open to the idea of being enzymatically reduced to a veterinarian-style bio slurry (after death, natch), but now I’m contemplating an urn for the bone remains to disturb him even further.

Oh, well in that case I’m the Querelle of lawnmowers. I’m the Alice B. Toklas of air fryers. I’m the Mr. Darcy of synthpop, And the Lord Byron of olives. Kneel before the Ozymandias of Roombas. I am the Flowers for Algernon, And the Morley Safer of MDMA. I am, fam, the Mrs Dalloway of group chats

Bean weather. Robinson Ransbottom Pottery drip-glaze bean pot. My mom has a lot of RRP ceramics, but this one I scored at a San Diego thrift store for $3 (she taught me how to trawl for—and recognize—deals). Perfect condition. No chips, cracks, or crazing. 1960s maybe. Factory now closed.

Louis Szathmáry, a 20th-century Chicago chef born in Hungary, signed so many of his own books (many, I imagine, bought by diners at his restaurant, The Bakery) that I’ve often mused collectors might find unsigned copies more valuable.

Heads up drinks historians. If your favorite cocktail/distilling conference has been going light on history panels lately, there are other professional venues to tell your stories.

I’ve been thumbing through @frogandtoadbot.bsky.social’s posts and, I swear, individually and in aggregate, they read like the Bill and Frank episode of The Last of Us. If there are Frog and Toad audiobooks voiced by anyone other than Nick Offerman, I don’t want to hear about it.

Contractor next door mentioned he’s a fan of a show about moonshine. I asked what he thought of it and admitted—casually—that I know a thing or two about wildcat whiskey. That’s when the penny dropped. Hard. Suddenly he had questions. Technical ones. If only there were some book I could recommend.

Garden day. Am spent, sweaty, filthy. Last task: prune the fig trees—meant to be dormant, meant to be hack-back-hard time. No dice. Every single MF one of them already starting new growth. What say ye, fig growers? Prune and hope for the best or acknowledge that I’ve missed my window this winter?

Campari Soda. It’s only 20 proof which, as far as I’m concerned, is practically alcohol-free. As so many things are, it’s better without ice.

“Fun fact,” a friend began at dinner. “Hedgehogs do NOT shoot their spikes at predators.” A cognitive full stop, like a bicycle meeting a pothole. After gentle inquiry and photo evidence, we established for him that hedgehogs are not baby porcupines. “But they’re both pork, right?” I adore him.

6:30am. An overnight rest slathered in mineral oil and the boards are back. They soaked up every bit of the oil and now feel almost leathern.

There is also a playlist, a blue smoke, whiskey-in-hand sort of deal with Coltrane, Howlin’ Wolf, Miles Davis, Artie Shaw, Monk, Chet Baker, Ry Cooder, and like that. Built in part on memories of growing up in Kansas City, where I learned to play tenor saxophone. Still a dick joke, tho.