But the feeling is generally fleeting, like the bitter, tannic impression of a tight, young wine on the tongue that fades as the wine opens and the fruit comes to the fore. I stopped writing here because my life was ridiculously out of balance, and it was taking a toll on my health in the most obvious way. Every meal I ate tied my intestines into knots until my insides felt like macrame. I had no energy. I got migraines. My whole body was tense. And I cried. A lot. Something had to give.

Actually, a lot had to give. So I pared my life down to the minimum. I focused on my 40-hour a week job as the writer and editor for K&L Wine Merchants, started getting regular exercise again, and I began seeing a hypnotist to learn how to manage the stress and the emotional weight of being a food and wine writer with a digestive disorder.

I told myself, when I felt better I would write again. And when I did finally feel better, around the turn of the year, I couldn’t do it. I told myself I would practice living a more balanced life, and if there was room for the extra work I would write. But there was never anything leftover. I was getting ready for my wedding, I was on my honeymoon, I was recovering from my honeymoon. I was gardening. I was traveling for work, for play. I was living and loving it, but there wasn’t anything left for my blog.

And there still isn’t, I’m sad to say. But I am writing. And I would love your support. So if you’ve enjoyed my writing over the past few years, please visit the K&L blog. I’ve been having a blast interviewing winemakers, teaching myself how to edit video (and getting paid for all of it) and I even plan to work in some recipes of my own and my friends, and I’m having fun. And who knows, maybe with a little more time, and a little more practice at this balance thing, there will be a place for me as SpicySaltySweet. Until then…

But sometimes life calls for change. And Neal’s new job has him sitting in East-West traffic for an hour every night. So I’m going to pack some boxes and paint some walls and take a deep breath. We’ll be closer to the beach and have a whole new neighborhood to explore. There will be new farmers’ markets to check out and a bigger kitchen to play in. I’m going to make the most of our new home, because for the first time ever, I’m not making the move alone.

That said, I’ll probably be offline for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been up to:

A new Farmers’ Market report – my monthly column for Serious Eats.

The first piece for my new food & politics column on the LA Weekly’s blog Squid Ink.

A piece on food blog ethics featuring my writing partner Brooke (aka Foodwoolf) and I in the LA Times.

Red Rock Crab

Call me naïve, but I really didn’t expect the fish smell to last that long. But with this morning’s shower, I have finally managed to remove the last olfactory remnants of chum and seaweed and fish guts lingering in my hair and on my skin from Saturday’s crabbing trip in Santa Barbara. The story I was working on for EdibleLA won’t come out until the fall, but I was starting to worry that the salty, slightly fermented perfume might last that long too.

Paul Chopping Chum

Saturday’s trip was far from a pleasure cruise, not that I expected or wanted it to be. The Sea Fever, my subject John Wilson’s boat, is meant for one thing—catching crab and lobster. There is no bathroom, just a bucket in the small cabin down below, no running water to wash your face if you’re stomach is pitching with the sea, and no comfy chairs to sit and watch Roxy the Golden Retriever bark at the dolphins and seals playing around the boat as John and his deckhand Paul haul in another trap clammering with crab.

Neal came with me, grimacing across the bed through the last of the moonlight being cast through our bedroom window when the alarm went off at 4 a.m. Fueled by a pot of coffee, we flew up the coast to the Santa Barbara Harbor, stepping onto John’s 45-foot boat just after 6, the pale grey dawn pushing through the mists settled over the calm ocean. As we pulled out of the harbor, I asked if there was anything I could do to help. My offer was met by silence. As the boat rocked across the waves to the first crab trap I had to bury my urge to give into the building seasickness. I was on assignment. I couldn’t spend the day looking over the side. I braced myself, snapping pictures of our two-man crew preparing for the day’s work.

John Examining Crab

Unfortunately, Neal wasn’t so fortunate. He spent the entire morning running between the makeshift bed in the cabin where he splayed out, noise canceling headphones on his head, trying to keep the world steady, and the side of the boat, Roxy licking his hand sweetly. Around noon, up near the Gaviota pier, John offered to drop Neal off. All he had to do was jump about two and a half feet from the boat to a rope, avoid a couple of baby seals, and climb to land. He did it willingly, smiling for the first time all day as he waved goodbye from the steadiness of the old pier.

In the meantime, John and Paul hooked buoys along an invisible line, looping them around an industrial-sized reel that assisted in pulling 150 to 200 pounds of vinyl-coated steel and crab to the surface. The duo moved swiftly and efficiently, John sorting through the crab, tossing pregnant females and specimens whose shells were too soft (crab are molting this time of year) with a pitcher’s arm back into the drink. As the last crabs landed in a bucket, Paul placed a container stuffed with chopped mackerel and a halibut carcass back into the trap. When John found the spot he wanted to drop it back, they heaved it over the side, the orange buoys skimming the rolling waves as the rest drifted slowly back to the ocean floor—150, 160, 180 feet below the surface.

Paul Waiting to Cast a Trap

Between traps we talked. We talked about crabbing and lobster catching, fishing and the bureaucratic b.s. that makes a life at sea at combination of hard physical work, loneliness and politics. But to get all that you’ll have to read the EdibleLA piece this fall. Until then, here are a couple of photos of the day to whet your palate.

Roxy the Seafaring Dog Never Gets Seasick

Note: You can pick up gorgeous Red Rock crab like these, as well as Santa Barbara Yellow Rock crab, line-caught halibut and red snapper from John Wilson at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market on Sundays. John will also have Spiny Lobsters this fall.

Mise en place. In baking, have everything measured ahead of time.

Salt and heat kill yeast.

Kneading the dough. Do it by hand to get a feel for the texture.

Shaping the loaf. Press and roll.

The loaves, cooling from the oven.

What the final pumpernickel loaf looks like.

Fresh bread and butter

I got really excited when I heard food writer Michael Ruhlman had a new book, until I heard the title—Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. I hate math. I mean I loathe it. Math makes me feel like I have poisonous spiders crawling all over my body, like I’m in a horror movie and I know what comes next but I’m helpless to stop it. Just writing about how math turns me into the same anxious little girl who scribbled in her journal about how mean her mommy was making her try to memorize multiplication tables.

Fortunately I’ve found my math anxiety doesn’t get in the way of much. Sure, I occasionally tip the pizza guy really well, but I just chock that up to good karma instead of my inability to do math on the fly. I can pay my bills. And with the calculator and the Little Chef converter app on my cell phone, I’m pretty much good to go, even in the kitchen. Except for one thing—baking.

I’ve wanted to make bread for a few years, and I even bought Peter Reinhart’s the Bread Baker’s Apprentice to start learning. But I haven’t been able to get past the second chapter, the one where he starts talking about…ratios. All of a sudden Reinhart starts sounding like the teacher from Charlie Brown in my head—all whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa. Then I have to put the book down or risk hyperventilating.

Not one to be ruled by fear, I decided to enlist in an intro to bread baking class at my local Sur La Table last Saturday, and I recruited my friend Suzy to come with me. The recipes sounded basic enough: brioche, pumpernickel raisin bread, French baguette, foccaccia and cranberry bread. They would even teach us how to make a biga, which I hoped would add the tangy complexity missing from my pizza dough. The instructor, Tina Rogers, was young and set us all immediately at ease, throwing dough on the work surface like it were a flat basketball. There was nothing delicate or precious about her presentation, which made the subject seem less intimidating. In class we moved around, mixing, kneading and shaping dough to proof and bake. She explained the biga, and how to feed it, and I felt confident, assured that I could go home and start making bread. (If you want a fun, carbohydrate-filled afternoon, simple explanations and some hands-on experience, I definitely recommend taking the class.)

And while I know I could reproduce most of the breads in class, I’m still at loss when it comes what to do next with my starter. I’ve made my biga; I even named it Lester, after the intrepid Red Sox starting pitcher Jon Lester, who came back from battling lymphoma to pitch a no-hitter last year. But the recipe Tina gave us was for a biga to be used in black olive bread, which I don’t want to make. And Reinhart’s books says that your starter’s ingredients have to be in direct proportion to the rest of the recipe’s ingredients, which to me means I can’t just go throwing my biga into my pizza dough willy-nilly, right? And the note on her recipe sheet says the biga will only last for a few days, but I wanted a “starter” something that I could tend to like a child, feeding and burping, feeding and burping. And every time I read another bread-baking blog post, or try to re-read Reinhart, I get further from knowing what to do.

All I can think of is the warm crumb of fresh-baked bread on my tongue, and the yeasty sweetness that will fill the air if I just make this hurdle. Maybe it’s time to call Nancy Silverton, the queen of bread and founder of La Brea Bakery, for some advice. Maybe it’s time to read Ruhlman.

What, no Alice? I wasn’t sure it was possible to make a movie about food politics, particularly about local and sustainable food, without the obligatory homage to the queen, Ms. Alice Waters. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not among the nouveau-Alice-bashers—I lover her food, her cookbooks and what she stands for—but I don’t think the she carries the weight of the sustainability movement on her back like a sherpa up Mount Everest. These days there are more climbers.

Fresh, a new documentary by Sofia Joanes, aims to shine the spotlight on the farmers, journalists, markets and academics that are working day and day out to re-invent our food system as something that is healthier, more sustainable and more accessible to our entire population. If you’ve read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, or if you saw the documentary Food Fight last fall, then you’ll probably recognize Polyface Farms owner and pioneer Virginia farmer Joe Salatin and Will Allen, founder of, a education-oriented community farm and store in Milwaukie, Wisconsin, who both play a prominent roll in this well-made film. Joanes doesn’t just point out the “evils” of the industrial food system—food deserts, obesity, poor rural economies, more prevalent and antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria like salamonella and E. Coli—she mounts a counterattack to the arguments made for the status quo that say local or organic (or both) are too expensive and inefficient to feed our nation. She interviews independent market owners like David Ball, who’s Missouri market chain, Hen House, works directly with the Good Natured Family Farms coop to get food produced by small, local family farmers like meat, eggs, cheese and produce to people in the community for a fair price, creating jobs and keeping more money in the local economy.

My qualm with this film and those like it is this: who is the intended audience? I requested a press screener because I missed the movie when it came to the film festival in Orange County last month, but I’m already committed to change. Will the people who need to see this, the politicians, the traditional farmers, the poor people being exploited in our inner city food deserts see Fresh? It may have only taken 50 years to shift our food system to one reliant on the industrial food chain, to chain supermarkets touting shelves chock full of processed corn and soybeans, but it will take a revolutionary grassroots movement to turn it into something better.

Get your mom to a screening of Fresh in your area, or contact Sofia to set one up. It doesn’t look like the revolution will be televised—but at least it might be available on DVD.

I always made fun of those girls who talked incessantly about their weddings, swore up and down and backwards that I wouldn’t be one of them. Even if you’re perfectly fine being the single girl, it’s hard to pretend you give a shit about centerpieces. And save the dates. And whether or not you’re going to have your guests ride around on a decommissioned Disneyland steam train. But I’ll get to that later.

I didn’t get it, ultimately, because I hadn’t planned my own wedding, I’d like to think, not because I was jealous or insensitive. I just had absolutely no idea how time-consuming the whole process could be. But it’s like a full time job, especially when you’re not exactly sure what you want. It took four months to find a venue and nearly a month to deal with the contracts. But now, nearly five months after Neal and I got engaged, we’re just one wedding insurance plan and a couple of signatures shy of having nailed down our venue and our date: April 24, 2010.

When we first started talking about getting married, we knew we didn’t want to get married in the summer. Definitely not the summer. All I had to do was think back to the half dozen summer weddings I’d been to over the past couple of years, the sweat rolling down the back of my thighs like raindrops on windowpanes, slowly racing toward my ankles and then pooling in the heels of my now-too-tight dress shoes, which were ridiculously uncomfortable to begin with. A fall wedding would be ideal—it’s my favorite season, even in seasonless SoCal—but I’d be happy with springtime too.

So we started looking for venues. Or should I say I started looking for venues. Neal was still working night and day to get CuteAsHell.com launched, so I decided to “preview” places for us. Bad idea girls. Don’t do it. If your fiancé is too tied with work to participate, wait. He may say that, “whatever you find is fine,” but he doesn’t mean it. I had nearly talked myself into the funky former Smog Shop on La Cienega called, well, Smog Shoppe. I took my parents to see it and then, finally Neal, who said it was a little too funky. And, of course, it was. I had decided to overlook the pin-ups in the men’s room, and the painted handicap sign on the ground. And that it was, well, a Smog Shop, however nicely it was decorated. It might have been right for some other urbanites, but we definitely weren’t that cool.

My only L.A. idea kaibashed, I found myself at a loss. As much as I’d managed to make L.A. home, it wasn’t me. It was dressed up or beach-y and I pictured rustic, elegant and personal, like an oversized dinner party. So my mom and I went up to Northern California, to tour my old Sonoma County stomping grounds. With the help of my L.A. wedding planner, Emily, and some suggestions from Sonoma County “Eco-Chic” event planner Vanessa from Clemetine Eco-Events, my mother and I spent two whirlwind days listening to the red-neck voice on my dad’s GPS tell us we’d “done got where we’re going” all over Sonoma County before we’d gotten there. There were cool barns and pretty gardens and some plastic grass, which I really didn’t understand because the plastic grass was at a garden. There were vineyard views and rolling hills with cows and, finally, a cozy backyard with a vineyard view, called Vine Hill House. It was reasonably priced, included tables and chairs and heat lamps, and the owner would let us choose or own caterer and bring in our own wine (as long as we bought a couple cases of his).

I thought we’d finally gotten somewhere, but when I sat down at home with Neal to show him all the pictures, he seemed unimpressed. It’s all outside, he said. What if it’s cold? What if it rains? Will people be comfortable? Good points, I conceded. And then the kicker, “I really can’t tell anything from photos anyway.”

I can’t remember if I screamed. I probably did. But I know I cried. This wasn’t fun. I felt alone instead of together. And that was that. I wouldn’t look at another venue without him, work be damned.

Like finally deciding to move somewhere to be near family rather than picking my new home based on a job or the landscape, realizing that I just needed to wait for Neal was the best thing I could have done. A month later we drove up to the Central Coast, albeit slightly begrudgingly (it’s a long three-hour drive for East Coast guests who’ve already traveled cross-country), and finally started finding places that suited us. There was a beautiful barn in a lemon grove in Nipomo and a more garage-like barn with crazy neon signs and the most stunning ceremony site overlooking rock outcroppings and a lush, green valley floor in the Edna Valley to choose from. Nothing was perfect, of course, but we both were happy. And, at the risk of being cliché, it felt like us. So we went home.

Just days later, Emily called to tell us she’d turned up one more venue, and this one, she thought, was perfect. And it was available at the end of October. So we cleared our schedule for another quick trip, called my best friend in New York to tell her the dates we were thinking and called Neal’s best friend Charlie, who we wanted to officiate for us. And that’s when things got interesting. Charlie is a pediatric hospitalist in upstate New York, and he’s a busy guy. So when he told us that he didn’t think he’d be able to get out of a commitment the second half of October and pretty much all of November, we believed him. We were frustrated and disappointed, but we decided to change the date. Not having Charlie there was a deal-breaker.

A few weeks later we went back up north, this time with my folks and Emily, to see the aforementioned barn-in-a-lemon-grove, garage-barn and the potentially perfect unseen venue, Santa Margarita Ranch. It didn’t take long to realize she was right. The ceremony site was on a lawn, under a giant old oak tree. And the reception site was a barn built around a half-completed California mission made of stone. It was surrounded by newly planted grape vines, and had lush green rolling hills in the distance. There was an old movie marquis. And a decommissioned Disneyland steam train that people could tour the property on (not really our jam, but it looked cool). It was rustic and funky and earthy and elegant all at once. It was affordable. We could bring our own caterer. We could bring our own wine. We could be ourselves.

We could get married.

Quinn Hatfield

What do poets and journalists have in common? Unless you’re the talented Amy Scattergood from the L.A. Times, I’d say: not a whole lot. Journalism school ruined my poetry. Wildly lyrical juxtapositions, I learned, had little place in clear communication. I wrote poetry to obfuscate, articles to illuminate. Even when I tried my hand at playfully mixing the two, a la the great Andrei Codrescu, the sentiment fell flat. And since life as a poet offered so few opportunities to make a living that I ended up in j-school in the first place, I knew I needed to find a new muse.

She came dressed at “motivation,” which is funny considering the number of people out there questioning mine in this new era that I’ve taken to referring to as “Post-FBCE” (Food Blog Code of Ethics). Nonetheless, I love finding out what makes people do what they do, to hold their beating hearts up to the world for all to see. Of course, there’s an inherent danger, I think, in trying to understand people’s motivations. If you connect, it draws you closer to the subject, veils your thinking in admiration and skews your writing. If you don’t, it can cast an odd patina on their work, causing you to confuse your dislike of their motivation with what they do.

My objectivity, when it came to the Hatfield’s, was shot long before I met them, long before I ever enjoyed my first meal at their jewel box of a restaurant on Beverly Boulevard, because they were friends of a friend, and because I knew people who worked there. But when Karen and Quinn invited a handful of foodies in to preview their new DIY prix fixe menu pro bono, I jumped at the chance. I hadn’t been in because I was under the impression it was beyond my budget (with the new prix fixe, it costs no more than other area restaurants), and the food was well worth the wait. Each dish, from amuse bouche to pillowy beignet, was thoughtfully composed. While we all shared most of what we ordered, I was compelled to hoard my dish like the youngest in a huge, hungry family. It was delicious and it was mine!

After the meal, I wanted so much to write about it, to tell everyone I knew to go eat at Hatfield’s, but wasn’t sure exactly how to share. Then I bumped into Quinn and Karen and their adorable daughter at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market picking through pea tendrils next to me. I asked Quinn a bit about his philosophy on cooking seasonal, local ingredients and his response blew me away. He started talking about being inspired by new ingredients that he found at the market, but also understanding the unique growing conditions where we live. If farmers are able to grow berries, or corn or tomatoes outside of the traditional “season” because of Southern California’s temperate climate, then why not use them, he asked? And use them he does…Last night Quinn twittered, “Early season corn and little tomatoes (both surprisingly good) made their way into an anglioti dish-with dungenous crab-fava beans-hon shimegi…”

And there it was, motivation doing her little dance before me yet again (that vixen). So I emailed Karen and Quinn for some insight into their creative minds about running a restaurant and cooking. Here’s their response. I hope, despite my obvious bias toward them, you give the restaurant a shot. If you love well-prepared, seasonal food accented with a dash of creativity, then Hatfield’s is for you. And the restaurant is small enough, you might get the opportunity to know this dynamic duo a little better too.

The two of you have worked at some of the country’s top restaurants, how different is it running your own?
When you work for amazing Chefs in world class restaurants as a cook, your scope is quite small. You take pride in your station and the work you are responsible for. You try to be perfect all the time, to be a good employee, to make yourself valuable to the chef. As an owner your world becomes all about the guest. You look for ways to make their experience better, how to give them the most and still be successful as a business.

What was your vision when you opened Hatfield’s? How has that evolved over the past few years?
Our vision has always been the same. We wanted to have a restaurant where the food was center stage and we wanted to accompany it with our idea of good service—Friendly and comfortable without ever feeling stuffy.

How did the restaurants that you worked at previously inspire you? Was there one chef’s whose work really spoke to either of you?
I always related to David Bouley’s food and style. I really appreciated how focused on the plate he was. That may seam like a simple concept, but in reality running a restaurant is a hectic job and chefs loose sight of why people are really there. To me the Chef is (or should be) the best cook in the building, and he should be doing as much cooking as possible…

When we ran into each other last week at the farmers market, Quinn, you talked about how you let the market inspire you. Do you mentally prepare dishes as you buy ingredients, or do you get back to the kitchen and then start figuring out how to put it all together? Describe how you work and give a recent example, if you can.
For me there are many ways that creativity works. We could just do this interview on that subject. Sometimes it is just ingredients— sometimes you base everything around a technique or central ingredient, and build out finding things that are in season that accomplish what you want texturally of flavor wise. Sometimes an entire complete perfect dish just pops into your head… Sometimes it is too easy-sometimes you struggle and the dish never comes together.

Karen, how much are your desserts inspired by the market? Same question as above?
Same answer as above… LOL is that lame? People say we share a brain…
Your menu changes frequently. Are there any dishes that you can’t get rid of?
I always have the Croque Madame and the Date and mint crusted lamb on the menu… They are actually two of my earliest dishes and I love them both. It might be hard to get rid of them, but I am not planning on it, so it’s not an issue. It is just important, as a chef, that your signature dishes speak to you.

What ingredients have you really fired up right now?
I got into this weird Oatmeal thing, based on cooking for my daughter… I ended up doing a dish with octopus, Oat Groats (un-milled oatmeal), and making a crisp out of overcooked rolled oats. The oatmeal crisp is one of my favorite elements in our kitchen.

How much do you talk to the farmers you buy from? Have you ever asked them to grow something specific for you?
I have a good relation with many of them… I like to let them do what they do—I like the mystery/seasonal property of cooking and using what is available—so no I haven’t placed any special orders.

How is cooking in a restaurant different in Los Angeles than in New York or San Francisco? What are the benefits? The downsides?
I think S.F. and N.Y.C. restaurants capitalize heavily on tourists, less so in Los Angeles. This leads to a slightly heavier reliance on regulars and it makes it harder to take advantage of early and late seatings. From a business standpoint I think that makes L.A. a harder place to be a restaurateur. As far as diners I find that they are similar, in this time, in big cities, people are pretty food/wine savvy.

Your wine list has a lot of international values as opposed to the usual suspects. How do you choose the wines on your list? Do you have a favorite right now?
We use the same approach to our wine list as our menu, small and interesting. Exceptional wines, good value, and accompanies the food perfectly.

Anything new on the horizon that Hatfield’s fans would be excited to learn?
As usual, we just keep doing what we do… I know that is not the big scoop, but for us it is not so much about re-inventing ourselves, its about evolving and getting better without loosing sight of the original course. We always want to hold on to what made people love Hatfield’s in the first place.

I think the tension between honesty, fairness and accuracy and subjectivity has been the bane of the “journalism” world for decades. All one has to do is watch Fox News and MSNBC to see that different people perceive facts differently. Personally, I like to know what filter someone’s looking through. I read Mother Jones because I know it skews liberal and I read the Economist because I know its writers synthesize everything through an economic lens. If I want human interest, I look somewhere else.

But when I started reading other food blogs, I frequently found myself lost. How did this person get the product they were writing about? Was this nasty review written because of one bad dining experience or two or three? I mean everyone has a bad night, right? I know I had them when I waited tables and when I managed restaurants. And then suddenly, how did my photo end up on that person’s blog. There’s no link, no attribution—that’s stealing!

I started reading commentary about blogs, nasty tirades about amateurs and hacks. I stumbled across stories about Yelpers blackmailing restaurants to get free food or risk getting panned. I learned more and more about people getting plagiarized, their images getting lifted, and people who personally attacked chefs in their reviews, but then didn’t have the courage to put their names on what they wrote.

And it made me sad.

So I started talking to other food bloggers who, I found, were frustrated with the same things. And I found that my writing partner, Foodwoolf, was particularly fired up about the subject. So we set out for breakfast one morning to talk about standards and ethics, about honesty, fairness and accuracy, and expressing our opinions.

What we came up with was this: The Food Blog Code of Ethics. It culls from our personal experiences as bloggers, journalism school grads, photographers, waiters, restaurant managers, diners and common sense. It is by no means perfect, but it’s a way to start a conversation. We hope you join in.

It’s been a stressful week, and the words are just not coming. So here’s a quick teaser for next week’s recipe…

Looks good, right?