I moved to New York for my husband’s job, but it ended up being a beneficial move for me as well. I found my agent, and eventually my publisher while living here. And when the time came to meet with my potential editor and a herd of others from Simon Spotlight, I was just a subway ride away. When my agent called to inform me of this meeting, of course I was thrilled, but equally terrified.
What would I say? What would I wear? But most importantly, what would I bring to eat? Food has the ability to say so much about a person and, considering I was writing a food memoir, I wanted to bring the perfect item. My meeting was at 11 in the morning—not really breakfast, not really brunch. I needed something that was easily transportable. Share-able. Not [...]

Sometimes you just make those salads that sound so good. With summery ingredients like juicy tomatoes and crisp cucumbers, bits of torn, aromatic basil, and my favorite, slithery, salty anchovies, it should be great. You follow the recipe almost to the T, and you know what? It just falls flat– not on its face but skidding ever so gently on its bum.
When I saw this recipe for what seemed like a delectably simple farro salad in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook my mind began to reel with all of the pithy titles I would name this post. So Near, So Farro. Farro Too Good. Or maybe, Once Upon a Time, In a Land Farro Way. (Yes, I know that none of these titles make a lick of sense.) But then I made this salad, and I’m sorry to say, for the sake of [...]